NATHAN CONZ PHOTO The fraternity house will no longer be part of the Wesleyan housing system.

Members of a Wesleyan University fraternity, Psi Upsilon, recently decided to remove their organization from the school's housing system, rather than follow newly enforced university guidelines that would force the group to open the house to women.

 

The university had given Psi U until the end of the spring semester to open their chapter house to women, or lose their status as a program house.

"What we're talking about here are students electing to have admission policies that are inconsistent with the university's policy of making its programs available to students from all backgrounds," says Justin Harmon, director of university communications at Wesleyan.

 

Psi Upsilon had been considering the merits of admitting women, long before university policy required it to, says Psi U's alumni president, Evan Drutman, a 1986 Wesleyan graduate. Drutman says the university should not have forced the fraternity's hand, but allowed members to come to their own decision. Disclosure: The author of this article was a member of a Psi Upsilon chapter at another university in the Northeast.

 

"We took the temperature of our brotherhood [an estimated 800 members] and the fraternity was evenly divided [on the co-ed issue]," Drutman says. "When you are the custodians of a 160-year tradition, an even vote is not a sufficient mandate to change the way we've been doing things. Now it may be a change for the better, but it may not, and it's an irreversible decision in many ways."

 

And so, rather than abide by the school's housing rule, the Xi Chapter of Psi Upsilon decided to become an off-campus residence.

 

Says chapter president and Wesleyan undergraduate Andrew Bleeker, "If we were to make the biggest decision that we've had to make in our 162-year history, we were going to do it on our terms and not because there is a policy that forced us into it."

 

Psi U's determination will not come cheap. It is difficult for a fraternity at Wesleyan to exist without program house status because the school requires almost all undergrads to live on campus in housing affiliated with the university. To live off campus a student needs a housing exemption. Only around 200 of Wesleyan's approximately 2,750 undergraduates received exemptions this year. Due to the opening of new dormitories, that number is likely to drop to under 50 next fall.

 

Without program house status, the chapter house will be considered off campus, and one of those scarce exemptions will be needed for a student to live there without being required to also have, and pay for, an on-campus residence.

 

Because its doubtful the frat will get the 18 exemptions it needs to fill the house, most of the new brothers will, thanks in large part to alumni donations, be allowed to live in the chapter house rent-free, paying for an empty dorm room while living in their fraternity house.

 

Wesleyan has long had a non-discrimination policy -- one that not only encompasses residence halls and university-owned apartments, but "program houses" as well. Program houses allow students with common interests to live together. Current houses include Film House, Womanist House (which will similarly be required to recruit men) and Malcolm X House. Such houses are required to show they actively recruit from all segments of the student population. Any fraternity house in the system would not only have to admit women, but actively recruit them (another Wesleyan fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, says it plans to do so).

 

Although the Psi Upsilon fraternity house is privately owned, it has been considered a program house for the past few years. During those years, the rules of program housing have been loosely enforced, says Wesleyan director of media relations David Pesci, allowing single-sex fraternities to remain in the program housing system. That lax enforcement will stop, starting next year.

 

"We can't say to the other program housing candidates, 'You can only do this,' but turn a blind eye to the others. We have a universal anti-discrimination policy at the university and everybody has to abide by it," Pesci says.