Fraternal Disorder

Fifty guys can’t fit into a dorm room. Sigma Chi knows. They’ve tried.

Evicted from 43-45 Mount Auburn St. this fall, Harvard’s Kappa Eta chapter of the national fraternity has been knocked down to the ranks of the other homeless social groups on campus. And since College policy refuses to recognize single-sex organizations, junior common rooms and classrooms are off-limits—at least technically.

So they wander in the proverbial desert, finding temporary oases like the Advocate building and the third floor of the Kong. The promised land is just a few steps away from Tommy’s Value: their former chapter house. Its only current inhabitant is a “FOR SALE” sign, placed there by the Pi Eta Speakers Associates.

Until a little over a year ago, Sigma Chi and Pi Eta were partners, hoping to continue the tradition of non-final club social life at Harvard. Their relationship soured when Pi Eta decided it was time to sell the house. Sigma Chi filed a suit against Pi Eta, Pi Eta filed a countersuit against Sigma Chi, and now the only date in their future seems to be the one in court.

Two weeks ago, the liberal magazine Perspective posted signs saying: “Pi Eta advertised to its members the ‘Amazing pounding of private parts some poor suspecting fat load is going to take this Saturday by your huge and erect penis.’ Boycott final clubs!” The poster neglected to mention that this quote was from a 1984 newsletter of a group that was disbanded in 1991—and was not a final club.

These omissions were all the more marked because, until those posters appeared, most current students had probably never even heard of Pi Eta. Like many things in Cambridge, its origins date back to an earlier century. Five undergraduates founded the club Nov. 24, 1865, decades before the creation of many of the final clubs that exist today. According to a history of the group, “For many years, meetings were devoted largely to formal debate, individual recitation, and general literary discussion.” As students’ ideas of fun shifted in the mid-20th century, club activities became more geared toward dances, suppers and the traditional Pi Eta theatrical productions.

Its status at Harvard was unique in that it stood outside the rigidly elite final club hierarchy. An 1953 article in the Pi Eta News explained, “The most striking trait of most clubs in our system is their exclusiveness, for, due to high expense and restrictive policies, many clubs only elect men from private schools. This obviously limits from the start the variety of personalities represented in each club. Within this restricted atmosphere Pi Eta is an exception. Our group is made up of almost every type of personality at Harvard—athletic, intellectual, well-to-do and scholarship holders, private school and public school.”

Pi Eta’s reputation for being more open and diverse than the final clubs served it well for many years. The Crimson, which frequently ran stories predicting the demise of the club system, included a mention of Pi Eta in its 1971 registration issue. “The Pi has a lot of jocks, spaghetti dinners, and all the beer you can drink, which makes it a better deal for your money than any of the ‘final’ clubs,” The Crimson advised.

When Pi Eta merged with the Speakers Club, another prominent non-final club, it moved from its home at One Winthrop Square, where Grendel’s Den now stands, to the house at 43-45 Mount Auburn St. The Pi Eta Speakers Club thrived there—until 1984.

George Orwell’s infamous year started poorly for the men of Pi Eta. A copy of their club newsletter—containing such gems (allegedly meant as jokes) as the phrase quoted on the Perspective posters and a reference to female party guests as “a bevy of slobbering bovines fresh for the slaughter”—was accidentally released and circulated in April. More than 100 students rallied in front of the club the following Saturday night during a party, and that Tuesday, Dean of the College John B. Fox ’59 and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III asked the club to shut down. The previous fall the club had closed for a month when 10 initiates were sent to University Health Services after consuming too much alcohol, but this time the club refused to obey administrators.

Epps’ relationships with all of the clubs were growing strained during this period. In fact, less than a year later the College decided to break ties with the final clubs (which included disconnecting the clubs from Harvard heating and phone systems, among other mostly symbolic actions) because of their discriminatory admissions practices. Still, Pi Eta was particularly special. “The other clubs were seen as gentlemen’s clubs. [Pi Eta] was thought of as the fraternity at Harvard,” Epps recalls. “It was mostly a social club for boys who had not made the varsity teams. I’d talk to the undergraduates about serving alcohol and they promised to control the drinking, but something always occurred.”

A string of incidents and revelations over the next few years damaged the club’s reputation further. A woman alleged she was raped by a Harvard student at the club in 1986, though the district attorney’s office dropped the complaint due to lack of evidence. An assault-and-battery was reported to Harvard police in 1987, Cambridge police arrested three men involved in a brawl outside the entrance to the club in 1989 and there were various complaints about naked men standing in the windows in the fall of 1990. The event that got the most attention was the alleged rape of a female Northeastern student in 1988 that was eventually settled out of court in 1991. A Crimson article noted that court documents claimed “the club maintained an unsanitary ‘mattress room’ for sexual exploits and promoted the room in its newsletters.”

Graduates—especially those in prominent positions—took notice of these problems. Under media scrutiny, then-Mass. State Treasurer Joseph D. Malone ’78, once a member of Pi Eta’s graduate board, severed ties with the club in April 1991. Later that year, the graduates decided to shut the place down. “They got tired of the police showing up every weekend,” Epps explains, adding he was “pleasantly surprised” by their decision.

For five years, the building sat empty. But in 1996, what Epps deems an “unfortunate development” occurred. Sigma Chi moved in.

Fraternities at Harvard have always faced a serious obstacle—Harvard doesn’t like them. It started when Phi Beta Kappa was almost kicked off campus in 1831 until members revealed their rituals, like their secret handshake. Since then, administrators have been concerned about outsiders ordering Harvard students around, and students have traditionally preferred more elite Harvard-based clubs, so national Greek organizations tend to be short-lived at best.

But in recent years, Greek groups have experienced a surge of popularity. Sigma Chi started the wave when four students formed a colony in 1989. After they maintained an active and interested group for a few years, the national fraternity granted the Harvard students a charter to become the Kappa Eta chapter in 1992.

Joshua A. Feltman ’95, who will graduate from Harvard Law School in June and is the current chapter adviser, was around for the fraternity’s early days. He recalls joining his brothers, who were “definitely a random group of guys,” for a range of informal activities, including tutoring at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, taking trips to Wellesley and drinking.

Without the ability to poster or advertise through any of the official Harvard channels, getting the Sigma Chi name out to the campus proved difficult. Feltman would never have even heard of the group had it not been for his brief stint on the rugby team. A few of the guys invited him to check it out and soon he was a committed member of the brotherhood. “There’s very little that reinforces community at Harvard,” he says. “What we’re about is community.”

Like Pi Eta a few decades earlier, Sigma Chi prided itself on its outsider status. As the President of Perspective, Feltman says he would not have felt comfortable joining the Delphic or the A.D. like his roommates, and the fraternity promised a close-knit brotherhood he considers tighter than that of the clubs. “We were able to sell it as ‘not a final club,’” he says.

The clubs did have the advantage of physical spaces, and without a house, Sigma Chi was forced to be creative about meeting. “We’d scam wherever we could,” Feltman says. “We’d sign up for a JCR under the auspices of being a study group.” Administrators, particularly Epps, were not pleased about the students’ involvement with the organization and students caught bending the rules were taken to task—and to the Administrative Board. In retaliation for Epps’ actions, Sigma Chi declined to name their fifth class of pledges “Epsilon,” instead skipping straight from “Delta” to “Zeta.”

Sigma Chi knew that having a house of their own would keep Epps and other administrators from cracking down on their meetings, but getting property in the Square is no easy task. Real estate is rare, prices are high and social clubs need unusual spaces like large function rooms.

Luckily for them, serendipity struck when tax foreclosure proceedings on the Pi Eta house began in 1995. Pi Eta was considering selling the house, a well-located property with large rooms suited for group gatherings, until members heard about Sigma Chi’s needs. Ordinarily the price for such a space would have been out of range for a fledgling fraternity like Sigma Chi, but Pi Eta decided to cut them some slack.

On April 20, 1996, three Pi Eta members met with a representative of Sigma Chi at a Bickford’s Restaurant on Route 1 and hammered out new bylaws for the Pi Eta Speakers Associates, the corporation that controls the property at 43-45 Mount Auburn St. For 10 years, seven members of the board would be Pi Etas and five would be Sigma Chis. Over the next 10 years, the makeup was to be even, six Pi Etas and six Sigma Chis. The 10 years after that, Sigma Chi would have the majority of members, with seven members versus Pi Eta’s five. Thereafter, Pi Etas would no longer need to serve on the board.

In exchange for their membership in the Pi Eta Speakers Associates, Sigma Chi promised to arrange for a loan of $200,000 to fund capital improvements on the house and take on the responsibility for operating and maintaining the property. In September 1996, students again set up shop at 43-45 Mount Auburn.

A Crimson article on the arrangement noted the dilapidated condition of the property, describing the first floor, covered with paint cans and bottles of disinfectant, as “a work in progress.” But students moved in immediately to help defray costs by paying rent for their housing. They painted and cleaned and, pretty soon, Sigma Chi had a cozy home to call their own.

The founders of the Kappa Eta chapter never imagined that Harvard could support such a flourishing fraternity, but over the next few years, Sigma Chi became a successful campus presence, both socially and in the community. They began to sponsor the annual Miracle Jam, an a cappella concert to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network, and helped support the fledgling Greek community on campus by holding events with other Harvard fraternities and sororities. Kappa Alpha Theta and Delta Gamma, the two largest sororities on campus, both started with the support of Sigma Chi and used the house for their chapter meetings as well.

In actively pursuing community service and publicizing their rush, Sigma Chi tried to prove that they were a more open group than the other clubs on campus. Feltman says they regretted their party policy of not admitting non-Sigma Chi men. “It was part of our risk management agreement with Pi Eta, but it made us seem more final club-like,” he says.

The house was a center of activity for the group, and members also frequently pitched in for maintenance jobs and cleaning duty. One of the brothers held the position of house improvements chair. “We spent quite a bit of money fixing it up,” says current Sigma Chi president Chris J. Harrington ’03. “People would help out painting upstairs and doing other work on the house.” The brothers of Sigma Chi felt like they were doing quite well for themselves.

Pi Eta, though, had a different view of the situation. By August 2000, they decided they wanted out of the deal. Brian R. Barringer ’88, one of the Pi Etas, says they were simply disappointed with the relationship. “We had expectations of the group and they didn’t live up to them,” he explains. “We were interested in an organizational structure and a group that could have financial strength.”

Barringer attributes the decision to a “lack of synergy” between the two groups. The main problem with the personal relationship between the organizations seems to be that Pi Eta is no longer much of an organization. Pi Eta grads occasionally gathered at the house after football games and Sigma Chi has invited alumni to past events, but without a more explicit connection to an undergraduate body, many Pi Eta alums seem to have lost interest. “We do have alumni, but I wouldn’t describe them as particularly active,” Barringer says.

As there is no undergraduate Pi Eta group, the society lingered on as little more than a landlord for a national fraternity. This status continued to bother the Pi Etas, who saw no reason to continue their end of the 30-year deal. It seemed like the best choice was to give up, and against the wishes of Sigma Chi, the house was placed on the market in January 2001.

As Sigma Chi brothers were enticing Spring 2001 rushes with pool, Playstation 2 and poker at the chapter house, a broker was fielding offers from prospective buyers.

Prior to the meeting of the Pi Eta Speakers Associates April 18, 2001, the Pi Eta members put together a special agenda. Among the orders of business were to amend the bylaws to clear the board of Sigma Chis, request the resignation of Sigma Chis and conduct an election to fill all of the vacancies in the officership of the corporation. The Sigma Chi delegation walked out and filed a suit against the Pi Etas in Middlesex Superior Court the next day. Not to be outdone, Pi Eta filed a countersuit against Sigma Chi.

Both parties refuse to comment on the merits or the details of the case as they are in the midst of legal proceedings, but the court documents reveal a great deal about the nature of the dispute.

At the center of the case is the question of the 1996 agreement. Sigma Chi says they lived up to their end of the deal—paying off taxes, spending more than $100,000 on capital improvements, putting in 6,000 man-hours of “sweat equity” labor and trying to foster a relationship with the Pi Eta alumni through social functions. They claim that these actions have given them an ownership interest in the house and that by removing the Sigma Chi members of the Pi Eta Speakers Associates, Pi Eta alumni are “attempting illegally to divest and disenfranchise the Kappa Eta/Sigma Chi members.”

Furthermore, they argue that the agreement implicitly ensured that Sigma Chi members would retain their seats as long as they upheld the agreement. The votes taken at the April 18 meeting therefore are “void and without effect because they are contrary to public policy and law, they are in violation of the purposes of the Corporation, they are contrary to the Corporation’s contractual obligations, they are inconsistent with principles of natural justice and they would deprive the Kappa Eta/Sigma Chis of property rights and/or personal privileges.”

The Pi Etas have responded to these charges by arguing that “it was explicitly discussed, understood, and agreed to at [the Bickford’s meeting] that the first ten years of the arrangement would be a ‘feeling out’ period, and that the Pi Eta alumni would be able to ‘unwind’ the arrangement if, during that ten-year period, the Pi Eta alumni wished to do so.” Additionally, they deny Sigma Chi’s claim that there was any decision that Sigma Chi members would have an ownership interest in the house.

Although Sigma Chi claims to have lived up to financial expectations, the Pi Etas disagree. Since the turnover rate for the undergraduate group’s management is so high, communications over finance reports have often been sporadic. And though Sigma Chi often proposed capital improvements, many times these changes were not made or deferred to subsequent years. Pi Eta also points to the weak ties between the groups: “A not insubstantial part of the motivation for entering into the arrangement with Sigma Chi was to foster the undergraduate-alumni relationships that had long been a key component of the purpose for the Pi Eta Speakers Associates. For a variety of reasons, not all due to the Sigma Chi group, those relationships have not been established.”

Sigma Chi does not really buy these excuses. According to one of the court documents, the Sigma Chis have looked into the Pi Etas’ motivations for selling the house and have concluded that their claims are false: “Upon information and belief, the real reasons why the Pi Eta Alumni Members had decided on their own to sell the House was [sic.] because the real estate market in Cambridge had experienced unprecedented growth recently and the Pi Eta Alumni Members wanted to liquidate the asset and reap the appreciation while the market remained so strong. Additionally, their decision to sell was motivated by the fact that many of the Pi Eta Alumni Members were tired of serving on the Corporation and having any responsibility for overseeing the House asset.” Sigma Chi also says that the general graduate membership of Pi Eta has not been informed of the recent moves to sell the house, nor have they been included in any discussion about the matter.

The case was originally scheduled to go to court April 8, 2002, but due to a court backlog, there has been an indefinite postponement. The next scheduled date is a July 2 meeting with the judge to update him on the matter. In the legal world though, the case is still young, and it could be years before it gets resolved in court.

In the meantime, the house is still vacant and very much for sale. At the April 18 meeting in which the Pi Etas voted the Sigma Chis out of the corporation, the board discussed an offer of $3.3 million from noted philanthropist Gregory Carr. He proposed to use the historic building as a headquarters for his human rights education foundation. Soon, though, he realized that the site was not big enough to suit his purposes, so the building was again up for grabs.

Sigma Chi put together several bids, as did some commercial developers and the Seneca. None has gone through.

Pi Eta alum Michael J. McHugh ’73, whose law firm Rich, May, Bilodeau and Flaherty is representing Pi Eta in the case, says he is not sure what will eventually end up in the building. “There are, I’m sure, hundreds of good uses. We’ll see if anyone wants it,” McHugh says. “We’ve encouraged any undergraduate groups to express their interest.”

The Pi Etas have also discussed forming another undergraduate Pi Eta club, though without an involved alumni base, such action is increasingly unlikely. “There’s always been a possibility of that,” Barringer says. “Under the right circumstances, we’d consider it. We’d have to have a good feeling for how that would be done.”

In any case, Barringer says he hopes the building will stay within the Harvard community. “To be honest with you, it would be nice for it to have a relationship with the undergraduate body,” he says.

Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 would also like to see the house playing a role in undergraduates’ lives, but from a more official standpoint. “We have lots of needs,” he says. “The Foundation needs space, we need practice rooms, student offices. You could put money into it and convert it to seminary rooms.” But he says the building is most likely not prepared for any of those uses and the amount of money required to bring the property up to code makes it financially unlikely that Harvard will make a deal.

It also seems improbable that Pi Eta will lower their price expectations for Harvard or even a student group. “We also have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the proceeds,” Barringer says of the house’s future. The Pi Eta Speakers Associates have not yet earmarked a recipient for the money they make off the eventual sale of the property, but as they are a non-profit corporation, it can’t go to the members.

McHugh says the group has yet to determine the “appropriate not-for-profit purpose,” and Barringer says “our discussions are what I would call confidential,” but Illingworth is hoping the College will get to see some of the money. “Somebody said it might go to Harvard. If it does, that would be great,” he says. “Maybe they’ll give it to a women’s group.”

Since the College has no ties to Pi Eta or Sigma Chi, Illingworth and other Harvard administrators are staying out of the matter. “They’re all outside my orbit although they involve Harvard students,” he says. “I don’t have jurisdiction over the Catholic Church either. As much as I’d like to make things better, I don’t have the power to effect that.”

While the court battle rages—or actually, before it does—Sigma Chi goes on without a house.

Cleared out of the property, Sigma Chi held a yard sale at the start of the school year and started planning for their homeless existence. “We still hold weekly chapter meetings,” Harrington explains. “But we move every week.” For parties, they rent out the Advocate or The Crimson, or have members throw them in their rooms.

Harrington acknowledges that the loss of the house has been a blow, but he says the fraternity can certainly survive without it. “My personal experience is that [Sigma Chi] is not the house. It’s experiencing relationships,” he says.

Yet the house was key to their ability to gather informally. “It’s hard to hang out randomly,” Harrington says. “It’s presented a logistical problem.”

Feltman agrees that the house had become integral to the group, but he’s trying to have a positive outlook on the situation. “The loss of the house is a set-back for the fraternity overall, but the benefit that it has is that it forces the guys to think about why they’re in a fraternity,” he says. “They’re struggling, but they’re coming up with some great answers.”

There is a tradition that at the end of every Sigma Chi party the brothers link hands, form a circle and sing and dance along to Don McLean’s “American Pie.” The young men tweak the lyrics slightly:

Bye, bye Miss American Pie.

Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry

And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye

Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die—SIGMA CHI

This’ll be the day that I die—SIGMA CHI

At a recent party in DeWolfe, members joined hands to perform the ritual. It was a tighter squeeze than it used to be, but they still fit.