A history of the end: My experiences in Gamma Zeta and the final years.

[GammaZeta]

Just to let you know the background is boring, but I promise keep reading and it will get alot more exciting in my next post.

I. Background, a brief history

Where to begin. I was/am a member of Gamma Zeta at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

As some of you may know, New England is the region which gave birth to our great fraternity. Boston University was our first chapter, Alpha, Umass-Amherst was our second chapter, Gamma, and owners of our very first chapter house in 1914.

Gamma Zeta has a long and unique history in it's 90 years of existence, some bad, most good. In 90 years we have initiated an estimated 1,495 brothers which equals to having about 16.6 (or 17) active brothers a year. It is relatively small compared to many of the other LCA chapters. If I recall the most active members it ever had was around 60 and the least members (besides the initial class) was around 10-11.

We have had some famous alumni, Rick Pitino being the most recent. Rick was the coach of the Boston Celtics and various other sports teams over the last decade. I'll look up some other famous alumni later.

Over the 90 years we were not in operation twice. Currently the chapter is inactive (cross your fingers that it won't be for long) and the years 1976-1980, which I was told because of an unfortunate "incident" which I KNOW about but will not TALK about, so you should get the idea.

The house itself in it's current state leaves much to be desired. There are some major repairs that are needed, like a new roof, but in general it is a sturdy structure that is still standing today on it's original foundation. In 2003 (I think, not sure of the exact date) Gamma Zeta sold the house to LCAP.

The original portion of the house is almost exact to the other 7 surrounding fraternities known as "frat row." It is comparable to today's factory built houses or modular homes with very little differences. I am not sure if it was built to house a fraternity along with the other houses or if it was meant as a residential building. According to the town of Amherst acessors, it was built in 1903 on the corner of North Pleasant St. and Fearing St. a major road in Amherst which is one of the two gateways to Umass-Amherst. It is assessed at $370,000 but in the Amherst market there were offers to buy it for between $600,000 and $700,000.

It is capable to housing 30 brothers, very cramped brothers. It has a non-functional kitchen and laundry room. The first floor is fully handicapped equiped. It does have a four way divided common rooms, a group shower, three toilets and one urinal. It has two maintenance closets and a ritual closet. There are three floors and a very small attic. The third floor was renovated from being an attic in one of the renovations. It has a spacious porch in front and a non-functioning third floor outside area. Parking is difficult and usually on the grass along the side of the house.

It is old, but there is a very special charm to it. Everyone who ever lived there loved it.

II. Umass-Amherst and the Greeks

Umass-Amherst is located in a small college town in Western Massachusetts. Located right of the Mass Pike and I-91, it is about 15 minutes away from Springfield, birthplace of basketball. Amherst itself is an upperclass town with high property values.

Umass-Amherst itself is a primarily middle class school, composed of students mainly from Massachusetts but it does have a high portion of New York and out of state students.

The greek system when I first came to Umass (in 1999) was divided into three segments:

1. The Jewish Fraternities - Umass has a high population of Jewish students and has three prominent Jewish fraternities. AEPi, SAM and ZBT. They historically have always had big numbers for Umass, usually over 50 brothers.

2. Ethnic/Special Fraternities - Usually based for African Americans or latinos or Asians, they typically did not have a house and prospered in the dorms. There was also a marching band fraternity.

3. Drinking Fraternity - (I'm just joking about the drinking part) If you weren't one of the above you fit into this category. They are considered your more all american typical fraternity. I guess you could compare it best to Animal House. They were deverse groups, you had drinking fraternities, partying fraternities, drug fraternities, etc. Pretty much there was a fraternity for everyone. Most of them were located along frat row but there were several located a little further from campus.

Umass over the last several decades has always had a small greek population. In 1999 I recall it being a little less than 2%, with fraternities being maybe .6% or .7% out of a student population of around 25,000.

Umass was known as a party school until around 2001, when police and administration started to crack down after several nationally recognized riots after sporting events and other events like the "Hobart Hoedown" got out of control. Currently it is a much more sleepy school, with parties sparse.

In the 1970's it received it's reputaion of ZooMass, and from the stories I heard, even that name failed to live up to what really went on.

Next up: The start of one man's experiences...