Borough Defines “Fraternities”

On Thursday night, the State College Borough Planning Commission agreed upon a definition of fraternities within the borough; Fraternities in the borough must be recognized by Penn State. To spell it out, fraternities have to be recognized by the governing board of a student organization (purposely not naming names) and then must be recognized by Penn State’s Division of Student Affairs.

It was argued by Sandy Deveney, a Phi Delta Theta alumnus, that doing so limits fraternities to only Penn State students. He said that this vote could be seen as discriminatory since other students in State College would not be able to form/join a fraternity, like students in the South Hills School of Business and Technology (another school located in State College).

Could this policy lead to becoming a law? Will this affect current Penn State fraternities? I’m sure that we’ll read about this more as controversies arise…

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John G

I’m confused at the point of this (so please if somebody knows, enlighten me!). If a fraternity is not recognized by the university then that means that the borough does not define it as a fraternity. Okay… So why should the fraternity care? That means a furnishing charge can’t go to the chapter because it is not a corporate entity because it isn’t university recognized and thereby isn’t even a fraternity in the borough’s eyes. It’s just another high-density housing complex.

Granted, when a fraternity doesn’t have university recognition it can’t participate in certain events but that is a relation between the university and fraternity- not the borough.

What benefits to being recognized by the borough are there?

These are all just thoughts on the surface, so please somebody more informed than I enlighten me!
STEFAN

This really isn’t that big of a deal. This is for rooming houses and housing corporations that are associated with fraternities. A fraternity that has a house really operates as a business and an apartment. This is just saying, unless you are recognized you can’t open a house in the borough and operate as a fraternity (which I’m sure has some local tax implications) and zoning implications. For non IFC fraternities, that do not have a house, this is a non-issue. For fraternities that have houses but were not being recognized by the IFC this was a problem in retaining the house. This really comes back to the Phi Delt house and the fact that the charter was revoked and students continued living there when the University may have had a right to the property. No panty in a twist issue here.