It was announced yesterday that Drama House, Douglass Leadership House and Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity will be housed on the Fraternity Quad next year. Douglass Leadership House and Sigma Phi Epsilon will be replacing Delta Upsilon Fraternity and the Community Learning Center (CLC), respectively.
The three groups will be housed on the Quad from Fall 2012 to Spring 2015. For the full story, see this week’s issue of The Campus Times.
I do hope that current UR students can take into consideration the history behind the Fraternity Quad and the contributions made by its members. When the River Campus opened in 1930 the Fraternity Quad was just that – all fraternities. Some of the Chapters that existed at that time dated back to the founding of the University in 1850. Greek life has played a very important role at UR. Indeed, it is only a relatively recent circumstance, dating back to around the mid-to-late 1970s, that the Fraternity Quad was not entirely comprised of fraternities.
For all of my time as a student from 1985-89, two houses were non-fraternities: Drama House and Medieval House. As a founding member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon NY Xi Chapter, which was charted in 1986, we have been striving for years to obtain housing on the Fraternity Quad. While unsuccessful in that effort until finally more than 25 years later, the Sig Ep Chapter nevertheless demonstrated incredible success in creating a vibrant organization that contributes significantly to the UR community. That is no doubt one of the primary reasons why the Chapter was granted a three year lease on the house I have always known as the Thelta Delt house.
I am pleased to see that the CLC representative is not holding this decision against the Sig Ep Chapter for there certainly is no issue between the two organizations. The house was available for open competition and the Chapter submitted its application and prevailed. While that is unfortunate for CLC I would hope that the organization can continue to be successful in everything it endeavors to do somewhere else on campus, and I hope the UR Administration ensures that CLC finds a suitable home to continue its good work.
Mark S. Zaid’89