Students who want to join the greek community can be stuck between wanting to live in the residence halls or wanting to live in their chapter’s house.

The Department of Residence works with the Office of Greek Affairs to help accommodate students’ living arrangement preferences. 

The DOR requires students living in university housing provided by the school to sign a year-long contract. If the student decides to move out of the residence halls at semester, they must pay a fee for breaking their contract. There is an exception for greek members.

The DOR partnered with the Office of Greek Affairs to allow unlimited cancellation for greek members at 15 percent penalty reduction, said Lisa Ludovico, assistant director of administrative services for Department of Residence.

“The student would still have to pay a penalty but only 15 percent as opposed to the 80 percent,” Ludovico said.

The DOR has tried to accommodate for the increase of students who want to live in the residence halls. Using den spaces as rooms has been one solution, but it is only temporary. Occupants must move out and into a permanent space before the fall semester is over.

The department bought and rented out apartment buildings as well as made plans to building a new residence hall near Buchanan Hall to provide more space.

About 200 students were turned away from housing this semester. All of these students were returning students who already had the chance to claim a residence but turned it down by March 1. If they submitted their request after the required date, they knew they might not have housing.

“As the summer progressed we had a few spaces open up,” said Brittney Rutherford, DOR marketing coordinator. “Our contracting office went through all of those names and made sure to call each and every one of those students and see if they were taken care of. Lucky all of them had found housing off of campus.”

Some of the fraternities can help the DOR by providing spaces for members to live once they are active in the fraternity, she said. But a majority of the sororities are at maximum capacity and need the assistance of the DOR to provide living spaces for their members.

Khayree Fitten, sophomore in political science and member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, was a freshman when his fraternity was encouraging members to live in the house.

“They were able to pick up the tab from our housing corporation so then they gained more money by paying that small fee than me not living in the house at all,” Fitten said.

A number of factors go into whether a student can live in the house, such as grade point average, behavioral standings and amount of members living on campus, among others.

While Fitten wanted to spend all year in the chapter house, his parents encouraged him to spend a semester in the residence halls. He lived on the 5th floor of Larch, something he said he doesn’t regret.

“It definitely opened up my network of individuals that I was in contact with,” Fitten said. “I had the dining center right below me. I had the resources, using the computer lab, printing in the dorms.”

Fitten chose to move into his chapter house because of the connections he saw others making.

“I definitely wanted to make the connection and the friendships and get closer and bond with the people in the house that I saw my brothers had who lived in the chapter facility,” Fitten said. “That was ultimately a part of my decision so I could get closer to the chapter.”