Sleep Porches
 

I've always wondered this. For you people from the ginormous chapters that had sleep porches, how did that work? From pics I've seen, it's just a giant room with endless bunk beds.

Then you have a separate room in the house that you and a couple other brothers share (for TV, vid games, PC's, lounging, etc).

Are people constantly passing colds back and forth?
What the hell do you do when you have a girl stay over?
What is done with people that snore? (order a code red?)

My sorority didn't have sleeping porches (or cold airs as they were known on our campus) but many fraternity and sorority houses did.

FME, each person had a separate room (usually shared with 1-3 other people) where they would have couches, desks, dressers, tvs, etc... to hang out in.

I don't know about passing colds back and forth, but I would guess it's no more frequent than in other chapters where members sleep in their rooms.

As far as having girls/shackers, I think many guys hung sheets around their beds to act as curtains for privacy. Actually, the guys that had bunks in their room usually did this as well. It also somewhat helped with the noise issue and I'd guess people either learned to be discreet when hooking up or learned to tune out the noise.

I've no idea about snoring, but if it were really bad, the guy would probably end up sleeping on a futon or couch in his room or something. IIRC, a lot of houses had a rule about alarm clocks, too...

HoBoy, I was thinking of this and gagging and choking laffing so hard!

What about firing up farts?;)

My mother in law remembers the "quiet rooms" in her sorority house as a godsend. The only thing allowed in these rooms was sleeping (1950's no shacking up in the sorority house). The girls were assigned another room where another girl lived fulltime and in that room was her dresser, closet, desk, etc. So, for those girls who really liked it quiet and undisturbed while sleeping, this arrangement worked out great.

I think sleeping porches are pretty much amazing. They're always dark and quiet, and although it gets pretty cold in the winter with the windows open, it's actually a pretty comfortable place to sleep. Snoring and other sleeping noises aren't an issue because we have a couple fans constantly going so all you really hear is a constant fan noise, and I've never heard of people having an issue with that. We have one room in the house with a single bed that's designated for people who are getting sick, so unless multiple girls get sick at the same time, passing colds around isn't really an issue either. Since it's a sorority, we obviously can't have guys stay over anyway, so that's not an issue for us, but in most of the fraternities on campus guys tend to hang sheets around their beds. It's a little weird, though.

The fraternity chapters I know of that had cold airs/sleeping porches/open airs/whatever, did not allow girls in them. If you were hooking up, you took the girl back to your "other" room, and used the couch or futon as necessary (hopefully, for your roommates' sake you put some sheets down and made sure you did laundry often). I do know that the Betas at KU do not allow any girls above the first floor - Seniors and early roll number Juniors got the pick of the downstairs rooms first. I've heard but can't confirm, that the basement of the house gets used by younger guys, and that there's a fair amount of sneaking girls upstairs as well, but again, I have no idea how true that is. It's just one reason why I'd never have been able to be a KU Beta.

As for alarm clocks, every chapter I've heard of uses a system where pledges each take a week or two in which they are required to get up at 4:30 or 5am and then wake brothers up at the requested time throughout the rest of the morning. I'd imagine most times you could just put your schedule down for the semester and it'd stay pretty constant from week to week.

Yeah, wouldn't be a smart idea to kinda put guys who wake up around the same in time in a group or such?

My campus calls them Rack Rooms, and it was the best sleep I ever had!!

Our rack room was on the third floor of our house, and had the rows of racks (beds) and a bathroom. The gigantic exhaust fans made great noise, and it was quiet 24 hours a day (unless a fraternity did a Rack Raid, but that's another story...), so I loved to go up there and nap between classes. I had my room downstairs that I shared with two other girls, and it had our sofa, desks, dressers, closets, etc. Then each girl had a rack upstairs--most were bunk beds, but a row in the middle had no bunks above them. Those were coveted and willed to younger sisters at Senior Wills.

We all had our alarm clocks next to our beds or somewhere at the foot or head of them (the cords could be very hazardous). Strangely, you only heard your own alarm clock every morning--I have no idea how I tuned the rest out, but I did. You were only allowed to push snooze one time out of courtesy for your neighbors (The fraternities had their pledges do "wakes"--they had a list of what time to come wake up the actives, which was pretty interesting if a girl was shacking with them.). Also, it was chilly up there in the winter because we always had one window cracked (to keep the air flowing supposedly), and "warmish" in the fall. People were actually sick less frequently by using the rack room than they were if they shared a sleeping room with a roommate--it seemed like the whole air-flow thing may actually have had a purpose.

To answer the other question--when you shacked at a fraternity (since no guy ever would shack at a sorority!!), you either stayed downstairs in his room or he would put up blankets and sheets around his rack for a little extra privacy.

Oh yeah, I forgot about wake-up duty. I've seen it where some places have a "map" of the racks on the door to the cold air room. Each bed on the sheet had the name and the time that person wanted to be woken up. I think generally it was every half hour or so from 5:30-7:00. After that you were on your own.

Racks? Wake-ups? Sounds like Army basic training to me! LOL. I've never heard of these sleeping porches but the logic would be that you'd get sick a lot but having the air circulating constantly sounds like it takes care of that problem pretty well...

I've never heard of these. Anyone have a picture?

Wow, I always thought sleeping porches were a very common arrangement. I guess not!

ETA: Here's info. with a photo of a porch at the UW Alpha Xi Delta Web site: students.washington.edu/alphaxi/recruit.php

ETA again: More photos here from an AGD chapter site: agddeltatheta.com/workpartypictures.htm

My house had a warm air dorm (windows closed) and a cold air dorm (windows open). Most of the problems with illness came in the warm air dorm.
I agree with others that sleeping in the cold air dorm was a great sleep. My bed was right next to the window, but I was never cold. Everyone had electric blankets in the winter. I would liken it to getting in a hot tub in the winter. You are warm, but still have the cool fresh air to breathe.
We had wake duty so alarm clocks were not an issue. You also did not have to fight with your roommate about what time the lights went out.
Lastly, were were not allowed to have guys above the first floor so shacking up, not an issue.

I loved the sleeping porch until I had a single room - and then I slept in there (even though I wasn't supposed to).

Though I think the last straw was when someone threw up on the porch - I was not amused (though she did apologize for waking me up...)

How many people sleep in these things?

I mean, we don't have sleeping porches...but several of the houses have rooms with ALOT of people in 'em. Tri-Delt (I believe) has a 9 girl room.