Fraternity Houses: West Coast v.s East Coast

[DeltaSigStan]

The fraternity houses on the West Coast that I've been to are, well, semi presentable to filthy. Even the houses at Fraternity Row are already kinda trashed. And the houses look way more modern, like residential homes, or like a motel building.

The ones I've SEEN on the East Coast and MidWest, and according to what I've been told, are very clean, very "professional", and well kept overall. I also hear of houses out there have house mothers, wheras we don't.

Sorority houses don't count. Theyre always clean hehehe.

I'm just wondering, does anyone else see this pattern?

[FIJI-UC]

Well, I've seen some amazing chapter houses in California (UC Berkeley FIJI house for example) but at the same time there are many, many houses that are just student housing which tends to be rather plain and ugly. I would imagine, from my time traveling and photos that it isn’t a matter of location but rather age... older schools and older chapters tend to have bigger houses with more theme and presence while newer campuses and newer Greek systems have more student housing. Those schools that embrace/support Greeks (or did previously) may have a great fraternity row while those schools that have low Greek %s or simply don't like Greeks tend to have poor Greek housing and often leave it up to fraternities to find their own places. Of course the East Coast has many older schools which often have much better Greek support, much stronger alumni connections and what not while the West Coast has a lot of "new age" schools which would clearly make things seem how you stated them as a generic rule but not in all cases.

[DeltaSigStan]

How old do you think old is? My chapter was chartered in 1948

[FIJI-UC]

Originally posted by DeltaSigStan
How old do you think old is? My chapter was chartered in 1948

That would be "old" for a chapter in my terms but young for many East Coast schools. At the same time (as a fellow California State/UC student) I know how our schools tend to work and the general feeling towards Greeks. UCB is very old and many of the greek houses were bought long, long ago or are homes from long ago purchased in more receent times. This has allowed their Greek row to feature some amazing houses (most of which need lots of work now) where as many of the other California schools have seen a lot of expansion and growth in the last few dcades; many new chapters have come, housing has changed and what not. I've seen the photos of some new greek housing that I believe was in SD and it's amazing to me... not just ebcause it's a unified Greek row but because they houses look like homes and not like dorms like they often do around here...

[33girl]

That TOTALLY depends on the campus...our fraternity houses were all off campus and basically looked like other college houses, which is to say, lots of mac & cheese and semi-dirty. The girls didn't always do too much better.

Some of the other schools though have houses that to me look more like dorms than houses...I think those tend to be somewhat cleaner, or at least look that way from the outside.

[DeltAlum]

Originally posted by 33girl
That TOTALLY depends on the campus...our fraternity houses were all off campus and basically looked like other college houses, which is to say, lots of mac & cheese and semi-dirty.

I'd say that's a pretty apt description. I've been to a lot of Delt houses and they range from OK to pretty shabby.

For the most part, I would use the word "used."

I'd say that the bigger houses, with house moms or proctors, tend to be somewhat better taken care of.

By the way, I wouldn't say that house mothers are necessarily and "Eastern" thing. Our chapters at Nebraska and Texas both have house moms.

[KillarneyRose]

Thr fraternity houses on campus at Pitt (ie "The Hill) were all identical dormitory-style structures. Boring, but usually pretty presentable. The off campus houses looked, for the most part, like Delta House. A notable exception was FIJI, but they're not there anymore.

The most incredible fraternity houses I've ever seen are at Cornell; they all look like mansions. In fact, I guess they ARE mansions!

Im going to keep it real. Out of all the fraternities at UofM that have houses.... only 3 are clean. Most are filthy (not even semi, just plain ole filthy) and there are even some that SHOULD have been condemed back in my day. All are still beautiful houses however. Beta is the only fraternity with a housemom as far as I know still.

[Peaches-n-Cream]

Cornell and Syracuse have amazing houses.

[GeekyPenguin]

I think it depends on the size of the school, the type of school, and the number of Greeks. For example, at my first school, our houses were crappy. I would say my chapter and SigEp had the cleanest houses - but we both had old and falling apart houses, from years of Greek usage. Alpha Gamma Rho had the best house because they built it recently, but it was very far away from campus (almost a mile) and about 1.5 miles from the rest of the Greeks. Almost all GLOs rented their houses and the landlords, for the most part didn't care. Delta Sig has a great house but they don't take the best care of some parts of it.

At my new campus, the sororities have condos right next to each other - they are gorgeous. My campus has older chapters, but this is a wealthier school that generally supports Greeks more and encourages living off campus. The fraternity houses vary - Kappa Sig doesn't have one yet, Delta Chi and SigEp have fairly regular houses, and Triangle has a GORGEOUS home right next to the union.