March 3, 2011 - 5:41pm
Beta Theta Pi to return to campus with renewed charter
BY CAITLIN HUSTON
A colony of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity will return to campus for the 2011-2012 academic year, with plans to re-issue their charter.
The fraternity — whose charter was initially revoked in May of 2007 — will begin recruiting pledges this fall. After the rush period, the fraternity plans to return to their chapter house on 604 South State St.
Chris Haughee, assistant director of Greek Life at the University, wrote in an e-mail interview to The Michigan Daily that the fraternity will begin as a colony and will be eligible to receive their charter once they satisfy specific guidelines.
Haughee wrote that as Beta Theta Pi begins the more than year-long process of re-colonizing, two national staff members will be involved — one to monitor their progress and the other to organize recruiting.
As one of the first fraternities established at the University, Beta Theta Pi became a part of the Greek system in 1845 until it was disbanded in 2007.
According to a May 20, 2007 article in The Michigan Daily, the fraternity was put on probation after one of its members, who was a minor at the time, was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. The incident — one of many prior — forced the Beta Theta Pi’s national organization to forbid alcohol in the fraternity house.
The University chapter was then officially disbanded on May 2, 2007, after the national organization received a photograph of a member drinking alcohol in the house on St. Patrick’s Day.
Though the fraternity plans to return to their former State Street location in the fall of 2011, the house — which is currently called the Graduate House — will be rented out to tenants until that time.
George Conkey, manager of Alpha Management Group, said the current tenants are aware of the fraternity’s possible return.
“All the tenants have been let known that the fraternity was prospectively coming back in,” Conkey said.
Conkey added that the company, which manages several fraternities on campus, has ensured that all of the leases will end in August of 2011.
Conkey also said that though the house is currently billed as a Graduate House, there is a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as other tenants who live there.
