Sigma Phi Epsilon will receive official housing on West Campus next year, completing the transition from a newly reinstituted fraternity to a fully-integrated member of the University's greek community.
The 36-member group is the first greek selective house to be awarded on-campus housing status in 10 years, since Alpha Phi Alpha, a member of the National Panhellenic Council, was given housing in 1993, and the first Interfraternity Council group to receive housing since Alpha Epsilon Pi first settled on campus in 1985.
"We always thought our time would come," said Sig Ep president Elliot Silver. "We think that to a point, [not having housing] helped us to survive. Without a central location, it's made us tighter as a fraternity."
Silver, a junior, said the group would be located in Edens 1B, where the former Kappa Sigma fraternity currently resides. In November, Kappa Sig choose to disaffiliate from its national organization and relinquished University housing.
Director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life Todd Adams said the decision was made jointly by Residential Life and Housing Services and by the Dean of Students office. He said that the group, which has sought housing in recent years since its reinstatement into IFC in 2000, had not received housing because of the uncertainty surrounding the new residential life plan.
"Initially it came to mind in 2000 when they were looking for housing," Adams said. "The University had a policy that groups wanting to receive residential space would reside in Trent [Drive Hall] for two years, so Sig Ep started out with that. In the middle of that process, we got into the residential life review.... Last year, when we were trying to relocate all the selective groups, which was already difficult, it just wasn't a good time to bring them on then."
Much of the impetus, Silver said, came from a committee chaired by Adams and Deb LoBiondo, assistant director of RLHS. The task force looked at creating a process by which new selective groups could apply for--or how old ones could apply for reinstatement of--on-campus housing.
"Sig Ep had been [on the table] prior to this," Adams said. "I'm certainly thrilled they're going to have housing."
Adams added that the task force, which had planned to finish its report sometime in the fall, was still finalizing some of their new recommendations.
"I hope that Sig Ep could kind of be the model of how [selective groups receive housing] in the future," Silver said.
When it was working to reestablish itself on campus in fall 1999, Sig Ep fraternity members said the new chapter would not resemble its rowdier ancestors, which lost housing privileges in 1993 due to University violations. The fraternity's new focus emphasizes a "balanced man" approach that eliminates the pledge process in favor of stressing academics, leadership, community service and athletics.
Sig Ep returned as an IFC member in 2000 and received a national charter in spring 2001 for North Carolina's Gamma chapter. Last fall, the Interfraternity Council elected non-residential fraternity Chi Psi to its membership, even as the council saw its member organizations fall by three in the past three years as Phi Kappa Psi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Kappa Sigma fraternities either lost their housing or dissolved themselves under pressure from nationals.
"I'm pretty happy about [Sig Ep's housing]," said IFC President Jeremy Morgan, a senior. "It's something we've been trying to help Sig Ep with for over a year. Last year, it didn't happen because of all of the housing changes to West. But it's happened this year... and we're looking forward to having another group [on campus]."
In March 1993, the SPEs--as members of the old chapter were known--were found guilty by the Undergraduate Judicial Board of property damage and disorderly conduct. The fraternity's record at that time--which consisted of six UJB administrative panel hearings in the previous three and a half years--led the UJB to impose social suspension and issue its second suspended recommendation to dissolve the living group.
The fraternity was ultimately dissolved eight months later when a November UJB hearing found the fraternity, as well as a few individual members, guilty of disorderly conduct following a brawl that started at a Sig Ep party.
Duke's Sig Ep chapter is one of 260 chapters nationwide. The fraternity, which was founded in 1901 and first founded a chapter at Duke in 1909, has a national membership of 220,000.
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