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There's a lot of apocrypha that goes on about Greek Life on any campus (hence why it's so damned hard for us to stop that stupid brothel law rumor!), so it's hard to know how much of that's true without doing a ton of research. A lot of stories, legends, and flat-out lies have been spread from generation to generation. If I didn't previously work for a firm that did a lot of work on Columbia's physical plant, and if I hadn't spent a brief amount of time working with the Housing Corp., I would probably agree with a lot of what you said.
I wrote my senior thesis on the postwar architectural program of my college (not Columbia). Some--not all of the fraternities--did indeed sell their houses to the University in order to be able to move to the new Greek housing, but there was so much hearsay about why they did it, and for how much, that I couldn't confirm without reviewing property records. It had nothing to do with the war, but a changing attitude of what it meant to be in a college fraternity throughout the country.
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