Eviction of fraternities brings shift at Denison
Academic life has improved after move in 95, officials say</p>
<p>GRANVILLE, Ohio The orderly line of historic homes that once made up fraternity row is now known as the North Quad. And memories of cheap couches being dragged into piles and set afire by angry young men grow fainter each year.</p>
<p>It hardly seems possible that police and firefighters here once dodged bottles heaved by Denison University fraternity members upset about the schools decision in 1995 to move them out of their traditional homes.</p>
<p>College life on “The Row” as Denisons line of fraternity houses once was known has changed, as the private college sheds its hard-partying skin for more scholarly ways.</p>
<p>Raucous parties havent been eliminated this is college, dude but there is no doubt that the decision made by the Denison Board of Trustees on April 22, 1995, forever altered a cherished way of life on campus.</p>
<p>A decade later, the campus social scene and academic life have taken new forms, to the delight of administrators and the dismay of some recent alumni. As the prominence of Greek life recedes on campus, a more academically inclined student body is finding new ways to spend its college days.</p>
<p>At the core of the Denison shift is a “much healthier” academic life today than in 1995, said Tony Lisska, a longtime Denison philosophy professor.</p>
<p>“I remember having students telling me that when they went to the library on Saturday, they used to hide their books so no one knew they were studying,” Lisska said. “I definitely dont see that happening anymore.”</p>
<p>While the 1995 decision to move nine fraternities out of their historic homes was a shocking shot heard round the quad, it didnt happen overnight.</p>
<p>Long at the center of campus social life, the fraternity brothers had felt the screws tightening for several years, recalled Chris Elliott, a 1995 graduate and member of Kappa Sigma fraternity.</p>
<p>Gone were keggers on the hill overlooking the football field. Weekday parties were slowly cut back. Complicated rules for serving alcohol were enacted to end underage drinking.</p>
<p>Denison had sororities, too, but they did not have residential living.</p>
<p>Fraternities were on a tight leash but didnt seem to care, said Joe McMahon, a longtime trustee who waged an unsuccessful fight to keep the houses open to the fraternities.</p>
<p>“They had plenty of warnings and plenty of second chances,” said McMahon, a 1962 graduate and Lambda Chi Alpha member.</p>
<p>What they didnt have were a lot of defenders in high places, thanks in part to the run-down conditions of the fraternity houses.</p>
<p>“They had these nice historic homes that were just totally trashed,” said Susan Studer King, a 1996 graduate.</p>
<p>With some chapters unable to raise money from alumni, they turned to the school for low-interest loans to fix up the houses. That inevitably led to charges of special treatment, because most students werent eligible for the program.</p>
<p>“There was really no good answer to get around those questions,” McMahon said.</p>
<p>Led by Michele Myers, then Denison president, the board of trustees studied the issue for months. Still, when the ax fell, it sparked an outcry from fraternity members suddenly made homeless.</p>
<p>Impromptu bonfires began on fraternity row and on athletic fields near the football stadium.</p>
<p>Police called it a riot, but some students who were there remember it more as a party.</p>
<p>Some former fraternity members vowed to never give Denison a dime, and hard feelings from alumni likely were behind a 10 percent drop in giving to the school after the decision.</p>
<p>Just ask alum Chris Elliott, who rues the day that trustees made their move. “It soured not only me, but a lot of people see it differently now,” he said. For his 10-year reunion this fall: “I probably only saw seven people back for homecoming that I knew.”</p>
<p>Lounging in a chair near a clutter of hockey equipment on the basement “chapter house” floor, open only to Phi Gamma Delta members, senior Porter Hayes shrugged off the changes.</p>
<p>“Alumni are more angry about it than we are,” Hayes said. “Weve never known it any other way.”</p>
<p>And since the initial hit in the wallet, overall alumni donations have increased almost threefold to $13 million in 2003-04.</p>
<p>The fundraising success comes as Denison attracts what the school considers a better crop of students to the quaint, self-contained campus, located 30 miles northeast of Columbus.</p>
<p>Stewart Dyke, the schools director of public affairs, said measures of incoming student academic achievement highschool grades and SAT scores are higher.</p>
<p>“The movement is clearly going that way as a natural result of this (decision),” Dyke said.</p>
<p>If the new face of Denisons student body has a Greek poster child, its Tyler Blair. The earnest junior is one of the founding fathers of Beta Theta Pi, a once hard-partying fraternity that is being reborn after it was closed because of hazing issues.</p>
<p>“Guys joining my frat are more interested in leadership development and less in the Animal House scene,” Blair said.</p>
<p>Thats not the case everywhere, though. Mark Brinkman, a senior from Ann Arbor and former chapter president of the Phi Gamma Deltas, said most of his fraternity “definitely” joined for the time-honored social traditions of brotherhood, babes and bashes.</p>
<p>The number of reasons for joining Greek life may be up, but overall numbers are down from 51 percent in 1995 to 39 percent of the student body this year.</p>
<p>That is largely because a lack of residential living space is a deterrent for potential recruits who looked forward to living in a fraternity house, Brinkman said.</p>
<p>With fraternities reduced to watching Animal House instead of living it, social life once dominated by big Greek parties has turned to more intimate romps in newly built apartment-style dorms with common rooms.</p>
<p>It seems Greek life still has a place on campus its just not in front wearing a lampshade anymore.</p>
<p>“People viewed the Greek system as a total social entity and that was it,” said John Beckman, the schools associate dean of students. “Now, I think its seen as a developmental entity first and then all of the other stuff that comes with it.”