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I am just a brother and not on the housing committee so I do not know all the specifics. I do know we had a large fundraising drive with our alums. We raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million. My understanding is that we will have control over the house and the grounds, the entire development is privately owned but the University did give some of the land. The main drawbacks if you consider them drawbacks are: the parking for the entire development is considered FSU student parking so any student can park there not just the members of the 8 or so fraternities moving in. On the other hand there will be an average of like 1.5 spots in the development per person and it isnt in a spot that would be a high demand for student parking, unless ofcourse its gameday or something like that which makes the entire campus crazy. The other concern is that FSU police will patrol the area, while this may seem like they are interfering with us they will not be able to actually go inside the houses without proper procedure. It really is a fantastic plan but like always there are drawbacks. But it will be realtively cheap. Its about $385 per brother to live in the house. This is very cheap considering you get your own bedroom and bathroom and share a kitchen and living room with just one other brother.
I understand the concern of brother interaction, but I think the new setup will actually increase brother interaction. With over 60 brothers together in one house we will always have something to do and someone to hang out with. The chapter house will have a pool table, plasma televisions and tons of room for parties.
While the traditional setup of a fraternity house would probably be a slight bit more condusive to brother interaction, I can tell you the apartment style is a real bonus for general quality of life. We can have girlfriends or friends stay with us in comfort and not have to worry about the bathroom down the hall being clean for our girlfriends. I know atleast for myself I would never consider living in the old house but because we will be able to study and sleep when we want I am all for the new hosue. Im very excited about the project and I will ofcourse keep all of you up to date as we plan on moving in in late august.
The one drawback that I think every fraternity thinking of building something like our new house is chapter size. The house only works if you have a strong large chapter. Building a huge house would backfire on us if we were to go on probabtion and lose a large amount of our brothers. As of right now we are one of the strongest and largest chapters on campus, but in order to stay on the top we will really have to work hard as always.
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