ResLife informed Fraternity and Sorority Life presidents on Feb. 26 that all Simpson College-owned Greek houses will be required to house non-member students next year temporarily.
Due to the number of rising sophomores and lack of space in residential buildings, ResLife will have to put returning students in open beds in some fraternity/sorority life (FSL) houses, and members no longer have the option to purchase a single room unless it’s medically necessary or they are a CA or the president. The contracts between the houses and Simpson make this possible.
The Greek houses owned by Simpson are Lambda Chi Alpha, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Alpha Tau Omega, Kappa Theta Psi and Kappa Kappa Gamma.
Following housing selection, ResLife will send a list of unplaced students to the FSL presidents to review. The presidents will report what students they’d like to take in and any students they have issues with.
Heather Emery-Cunningham, the director of Residence Life, will be working closely with FSL presidents to ensure they are as comfortable as possible with the students who must live in their houses. “I don’t want to cause more turmoil or anxieties with it for anybody,” she said.
Gabriel Bruns, president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE), is thankful the houses will get a say in who will be living with them, but he has concerns about the many hurdles the houses will have to jump through.
There’s an in-house chef and fully stocked kitchen at SAE, which may require locks on the doors next year. Along with the kitchen, Bruns noted they may have to lock the basement during rituals and even during events like their fall formal.
He’s worried about how everyday life will change too. “I wouldn’t want to leave my door open all the time if strangers were living there on the third floor and we have an open-door policy,” Bruns said.
Hazel Morgan-Fine, community advisor of Kappa Theta Psi (KOY) and team lead of the Greek area, is upset and worried about the number of concerns she’s heard from her fellows in KOY, the only gender-neutral FSL house.
“Our house has a lot of people who are LGBTQ+, and if there’s someone put in that house that isn’t, it would be nice to know what that means and what that looks like for [members],” she expressed. “I’m upset because I didn’t know as a CA…I don’t have the information to give them.”
Accessibility, private ceremonies and the potential for non-members to reflect poorly on the houses are more concerns Morgan-Fine highlighted about this change. As a CA, one of her biggest concerns is how ostracizing it may be for non-members to live in FSL houses.
“We’re trying to make the Greek community more inclusive, but if we’re putting people in houses who don’t know the people there or can’t go into certain spaces or use certain things, it’s not going to be giving that message,” she said.
This housing situation is only temporary. Once the houses recruit new members who want to live in-house, the students temporarily living there must move elsewhere because members have priority over those spaces. The students will likely swap places with each other.
This situation has happened before, and Emery-Cunningham hopes ResLife can make the process run smoothly and more routinely as ResLife works through it.