Sigma Chi and Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity houses at Hanover College
By: Clarice Scheele
Hanover College is making big changes to the inner workings and organization of their Greek Life.
This Greek Life plan has created an uproar of discontent among the college’s affiliated students.
There are still many details of the plan being worked out, but here it is so far.
Main Goals
Completely effective in 2024, the college will purchase the Greek houses that are on college land. This includes the following:
· Alpha Delta Pi Sorority · Chi Omega Sorority · Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority · Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity · Phi Mu Sorority · Sigma Chi Fraternity
Two fraternities are left out of this plan, Phi Delta Theta and Phi Gamma Delta, because they own the land that their house sits on. For fairness, they will be asked to participate.
Hanover College then hopes to make renovations to the homes and build townhouses for extra Greek living.
House moms and dads will be replaced with Greek Residence Managers who are students, like RAs. The goal is to hire Greek Residence Managers for each chapter.
Finally, Parkhurst will provide food to Greek houses through a special meal plan.
Greek houses have the opportunity to opt in early to aspects of the plan as a trial-run.
What kinds of renovations will be happening to the Greek houses?
After purchasing the houses, the college plans on renovating the inside of the existing houses. These renovations will offer much needed preliminary updates such as painting, furniture, and flooring.
Additionally, the college hopes to open up more space in the individual living areas and transform the rack room into a larger gathering space. Kappa Alpha Theta is an exception since this house does not have a rack room.
Blueprint for Greek townhouses
The townhouses will offer a more independent style of living for affiliated members. Heckler adds that affiliated members would then have the option to live with other affiliated members from other houses and or other unaffiliated students on campus. Unaffiliated students will only be allowed to live with affiliated Greek students in the townhouses.
Sorority townhouses will be placed across the road from the Kappa Alpha Theta house. Fraternity townhouses will go on the opposite side of the Horner lot off of File Street.
The college plans to use funds collected in a Greek Fund to pay for the renovations and townhouses.
When purchased by the college, Greek Life will operate through the college. This means that the Greek houses will be expected to run under living rules set by the campus. For example, houses will be expected to maintain campus quiet hours.
Casey Heckler, the Interfraternity Council advisor, says through doing this, the college hopes to offer a more modern living experience for students in Greek life.
“We want to make sure that we can continue a strong tradition of Greek Life at Hanover College, but then that our housing model reflects the needs of our students, our current students, and our upcoming future students.” — Casey Heckler
Currently, students in Greek life live all four years in a dorm style setting because they are expected to live in house. The concern with the college is that after graduation, students will not be as prepared to live in an independent living setting.
Why has the college chosen to take this action?
Much of this is because of the houses needing repairs. Many of the Greek houses were built over 50 years ago and don’t have strong relationships with their housing corporations to get the renovations they need.
Phi Mu alumna and a college trustee, Lisa Fleming, says that Greek life at Hanover hasn’t had a major change in a while.
“…it has been very, very static since I was there in the 70s. And I think really about the same way since those houses that physical houses and sorority court opened in the early 1950s. So very long time they've operated exactly as they do today,” says Fleming.
Fleming believes it’s time for a change and supports this Greek Life plan.
Casey Heckler mentioned some financial issues with Greek life at Hanover. With Greek life, much of the income comes from members paying dues and housing fees. In the past few years, there have been lower numbers in enrollment which makes it difficult for Greek life to continue to receive money this way.
Greek life does not pay their extra Greek housing fees through the college, but through a housing corporation specific to their organization.
What will it be like to have RAs in Greek houses?
The Greek Residence Managers will be in charge of all facility management aspects of their house that are currently conducted through house moms and dads.
Calling the managers RAs makes it seem as though unaffiliated students will be overseeing the operations of the Greek houses when this isn’t necessarily the case.
Heckler says they will most likely be a position selected by the individual chapters. This is up to the discretion of the organization. If more than one student is interested in the position, a hiring process will be conducted though Student Life.
There are plans to expand Student Life staff to accommodate this change. There will be a position added to Student Life that will oversee all of the Greek Residence Managers.
What will happen to the cooks?
With Parkhurst taking over the dining aspect of Greek Life, the current house cooks will either lose their jobs or can take employment options through Parkhurst.
Dinner meals will be catered to the houses, but students will need to use other dining options for breakfast and lunch. These meals will be prepared in the chapter’s house kitchen.
Houses will also be provided the option to vote how many meals they want catered to the house each week. Four meals are the maximum number of meals that can be catered each week.
Pros and Cons of this Plan
There’s high administrative support for this change, but not as much with the student body. From a poll we put on our Instagram, over half of the responses were against this Greek Life change.
Poll results from Hanover Now Instagram story
Again, many aspects of this plan still need to be worked out and through trial and error. Greek life at Hanover will find the best options for their individual houses.
Have more questions that this article didn’t answer? Be sure to let us know by submitting it in the Rant or DMing us directly on Instagram.
Originally posted February 16, 2022 via Squarespace
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