New Fraternity Row Needed on Livingston/Busch

[rutgersal]

Sad to see Fraternity Row on Union Street Eviscerated. A New Fraternity row on Busch/Livingston is needed. You look at Cornell, Dartmouth, Maryland, and many other SEC schools, and the fraternitys are awesome, and an essential part of campus life. I would like to see a BRAND NEW Fraternity row built on Busch/Livingston. Those fraternities who want to remain in their houses can remain in their houses. These new fraternity houses would be owned by Rutgers and would have a graduate student alum in residence.

This idea was considered in the '90s than dropped for some unknown reason.

 

[bac2therac]

No its not needed and it a waste of money...is this an April Fools joke

 

[Caliknight]

Seems Rutgers is on a path to eliminating frats all together. Little chance the school leadership would spend money on this. I agree though, you rarely see really beautiful campuses that don't have a row of great looking Greek system houses.

 

[RU85inFla]

What are the benefits to a Fraternity by not living on College Ave and moving to Busch? After trying to answer that question, you will understand why it will never happen.

Great fraternity systems were created decades ago when Universities had the foresight to invest in fraternities. Lease land and or houses back to the fraternities causing them to be kept up. Nobody at Rutgers had that foresight - even in the '90's.

This post was edited on 4/1 3:22 PM by RU85inFla

 

[rutgersal]

Originally posted by RU85inFla:
What are the benefits to a Fraternity by not living on College Ave and moving to Busch? After trying to answer that question, you will understand why it will never happen.

Great fraternity systems were created decades ago when Universities had the foresight to invest in fraternities. Lease land and or houses back to the fraternities causing them to be kept up. Nobody at Rutgers had that foresight - even in the '90's.


This post was edited on 4/1 3:22 PM by RU85inFla

Many of the fraternities that were on college ave are simply no longer there. Thats why its an opportune time for Rutgers to build facilities and then lease them back.

 

[demauroj]

Originally posted by rutgersal:

Originally posted by RU85inFla:
What are the benefits to a Fraternity by not living on College Ave and moving to Busch? After trying to answer that question, you will understand why it will never happen.

Great fraternity systems were created decades ago when Universities had the foresight to invest in fraternities. Lease land and or houses back to the fraternities causing them to be kept up. Nobody at Rutgers had that foresight - even in the '90's.


This post was edited on 4/1 3:22 PM by RU85inFla

Many of the fraternities that were on college ave are simply no longer there. Thats why its an opportune time for Rutgers to build facilities and then lease them back.

I know that many schools do not necessarily fund this. A buddy of mine was a greek at Penn St.

To build there new house They actually did a fundrasier with Previous brothers where they actually invested in the house, and saw returns for investing.

What a novel idea....actually working to get what you want instead of it being handed to you

 

[RUfinal4]

Rutgers and New Brunswick see greek housing as a liability. Imagine a dorm type of environment with no RAs? That is what you have in Greek housing. They prefer to work with local developers to build apartments for students.

Realistically, there is a zoned area between College Ave and Easton that allows greek housing. If Rutgers or the Greek System invested in buying out all the little houses, knocking them down, and building nice Greek housing it can work. Some of these little houses are used by various departments at Rutgers. They can be moved to a new office type building with modern amenities.

Problem is- none of the departments want to give up their little properties. They have more control of their property this way vs. a large building with multiple departments.

It is possible but not likely.

 

[RU85inFla]

My belief from when I was a greek at Rutgers and visiting our chapter at Penn State was that the University built the Houses and leased them back to the chapters. I know specifically they were quite concerned about obeying "University rules" within the house. Much more so than any non-university owned house I was ever in. But that was long ago.

As far as a University building Fraternities and leasing them, its just like building dorms. Kids need places to sleep. At FSU there is a Private company that has come in and bought up land and built a complex like what Al proposed. Completely private venture. The houses out there are like at Rutgers, 100% locally owned and falling down. Unfortunately, the location is about 1/2 mile off of campus so the fraternities on campus that are falling down still do relatively well.

 

[sct1111]

Union Street is currently a mess but there is still a handful of fraternity houses spread throughout college ave. The older buildings like Chi Psi, the Zeta Psi house and the old mansion currently occupied by Phi Sig are all very charming looking classic fraternity houses. The rest of the houses, no so much. Why the city decided to build those huge unsightly apartment buildings on Union Street is beyond me. I agree that something needs to be done to address this. Rutgers easily has the weakest greek life out of the Big Ten.

 

[Sir ScarletKnight]

Originally posted by rutgersal:
Sad to see Fraternity Row on Union Street Eviscerated. A New Fraternity row on Busch/Livingston is needed. You look at Cornell, Dartmouth, Maryland, and many other SEC schools, and the fraternitys are awesome, and an essential part of campus life. I would like to see a BRAND NEW Fraternity row built on Busch/Livingston. Those fraternities who want to remain in their houses can remain in their houses. These new fraternity houses would be owned by Rutgers and would have a graduate student alum in residence.

This idea was considered in the '90s than dropped for some unknown reason.

No. No. No. A thousand times no. The last thing the ambiance of Busch and Livi need is frats. Let people who want to party be on College Ave and commute back and forth, and let the rest of us have a more relaxing experience. It's one of the benefits of the way the campuses are right now...each one has a different "feel", and you choose the one which suits you best.

 

[SanFranRutgers]

Funny.

Saw the Headline in the Forum, and saw Al's handle and thought, "here we go ..."

But the odd thing is that it's actually a pretty good idea, depending upon the development opportunities, available real estate and the diversity of the housing groups.

 

[RUBigFrank]

former greek here as well - the system today is sad. what most here do not know - and it has been acknowledged by Scarlet R and successors is that the majority of donations are from greek alum. Yurcak field donated and named for a former Lambda Chi alum.

 

[retired711]

I believe at most schools the fraternity and sorority houses are owned by the national chapter of the house. The university does not build them.

 

[BoroKnight]

Originally posted by RUBigFrank:

former greek here as well - the system today is sad. what most here do not know - and it has been acknowledged by Scarlet R and successors is that the majority of donations are from greek alum. Yurcak field donated and named for a former Lambda Chi alum.

Somehow the fact Mr. Yurcak was an All-American in lacrosse is probably more relevant to the field, but OK.

The thing about greek alumni giving is kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. The kind of personality that wants to be greek has more to do with his future success than being greek does. I mean, you can spot some of them from the first week they're on campus.

Either way, enhancing the greek experience can't be a bad thing, but why in the world would you want to put the houses across the river? Not being within walking distance of both College Ave. and Easton Ave. would be a huge negative, basically a deal-breaker, if you ask me.

I don't think Rutgers should be spending money on greek housing, but there must be some way to assist them in obtaining financing IF there was a piece of land available or a couple of adjoining houses available that could be knocked down. I'm sure the neighbors would be all for that ...

 

[RU85inFla]

Originally posted by camdenlawprof:
I believe at most schools the fraternity and sorority houses are owned by the national chapter of the house. The university does not build them.

Not correct at all.

 

[BigLou]

Originally posted by RUfinal4:
Rutgers and New Brunswick see greek housing as a liability. Imagine a dorm type of environment with no RAs? That is what you have in Greek housing. They prefer to work with local developers to build apartments for students.

Realistically, there is a zoned area between College Ave and Easton that allows greek housing. If Rutgers or the Greek System invested in buying out all the little houses, knocking them down, and building nice Greek housing it can work. Some of these little houses are used by various departments at Rutgers. They can be moved to a new office type building with modern amenities.

Problem is- none of the departments want to give up their little properties. They have more control of their property this way vs. a large building with multiple departments.

It is possible but not likely.

Why is that. Simple - because fraternities are sanctioned by the University so the school feels they are a liability. Privately developed off campus student housing does not constitute a University sanctioned organization so no matter what happens there, the school is not responsible.

 

[nacorwin]

I have no firm evidence, but I suspect that Wisconsin has the smallest percentage of the student body in the fraternity system.

I must admit that I do not see the benefit to the university that Fraternity's and Sororities bring.

 

[Scarlet Shack]

The idea of a new Greek housing area elsewhere was floated in the early 90s and quickly shot down by the Greeks themselves

The heart of campus is college avenue

That is where they need to be