Fraternity Houses on Campus?
When President Vest first announced, three years ago, that all freshmen
would live on campus starting in 2001 (subsequently postponed to 2002),
some of the fraternities felt very vulnerable. If your house was located
in Brookline, or was run-down and surrounded by BU dormitories, you'd be
concerned for your future too. A small group of alumni officers from a
handful of houses began meeting, to explore the possibility of convincing
MIT to help build new fraternity housing on Campus.
Provost Larry Bacow (now the new President of Tufts University) supported
the initiative with significant study funds and the participation of Steve
Immerman, perhaps MIT's most effective special project manager. The study
that emerged showed that new houses for 40 members could be built for
about 4 million dollars each, assuming a complex of at least 6 houses.
This was seen as being within reach of those operations with substantial
equity in their present houses, but would stretch the capability of new
operations, such as a sorority looking for a house.
I partcipated in this study effort for two reasons. I am chairman of the
Board of Allocation for the Independence Residence Development Fund, and I
wanted to be fully informed about the potential demand that this
initiative might make on the IRDF, which nows stands at a total of 18
million dollars, most of which is already committed in the form of
low-cost mortgages to independent living groups at MIT. I also was
concerned about the future strength of DU, and wanted to keep open the
option of moving DU to campus, if that seemed prudent.
My present evaluation of the situation is that DU is in an unusually
strong situation for continuing off campus. We occupy a prime site
conveniently located at the Boston side of the Massachusetts Avenue
Bridge. There are several adjacent MIT fraternities, which means there is
a critical mass for a continuing MIT presence in the block. The neighbors
accept, perhaps reluctantly, the reality of fraternities.
I continue to be committed to the concept that MIT students should have
the opportunity to take charge of how they run their daily lives. Maybe
the majority of the new generation of undergraduates entering MIT don't
want to have this responsibility. Maybe they just want a place to sleep,
so they can focus on their busy lives and all the different things they do
centered around MIT. But, I think there is still an enduring value to
getting away from MIT at night, to eating and sleeping and socializing
with a small group of close friends that share your goals, to making
decisions about how to run things and then shouldering the responsibility
to follow through on those decisions. So, I think we should work to
maintain a strong operation at our present location, thereby continuing a
long tradition at 526 Beacon Street.
At the same time, I will continue to work with the project to bring some
fraternities into new housing on the MIT campus. I view this as another
piece in the puzzle of student living options. My goal is to maintain a
strong position for fraternities and independent living groups at MIT,
because that also supports a strong future for DU at MIT.
Dave Latham, '61
23 October 2001
