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| Two frats find home under same roof |
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Chris Savan sidesteps piles of empty cardboard boxes, plastic bags labeled "phone cords" and old mattresses propped against the spotless walls of his new house. Brushing aside a copy of Maxim, he chooses a seat in a small room overflowing with mismatched couches opposite a poster of Animal Houses John Belushi chugging a bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Is it a frat thing or is it a guy thing?" he asked rhetorically, glancing around the room with a smile suggesting the decor has nothing to do with his location in the Greek community.
Savan, a junior, and his 15 housemates have been "running around like chickens with (their) heads chopped off" trying to prepare for the school year. And as a member of the newest fraternity on the UW campus, there's a lot to do.
"We just painted the (house's) inside, every single inch of it," he said on Sunday afternoon, glancing toward the still paint-fragrant walls. "It's made me more handy."
Just that morning, the three letters of his fraternity, Phi Kappa Theta (Phi Kappa), were placed carefully on the outside of the house.
"It was surreal," said Phi Kappa president Jack Lo, exchanging a brotherly glance with Savon, the house's associate member educator.
Less than three feet away from the Phi Kappa's shining new letters lives a more seasoned but also relatively new fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau (Phi Tau). Dismantled in 1998 after a shooting incident, the Phi Taus made a comeback as an officially recognized student organization last spring and boarded with the Theta Delta Chi fraternity until mid-September.
"It's basically like running your own company," said Phi Tau president Jared Keller. "(But) it's a different kind of work, not about the organization all-encompassing, but (rather) about every single person involved."
Keller was approached in 2002 by members of the Phi Tau national organization to help assemble a UW chapter. A Phi Tau legacy -- his grandfather and cousin both belonged to the WSU house -- Keller initially lived in the McCarty residence hall.
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"When I came to the University, I honestly did not intend on living in a fraternity," he said candidly. "(But) in the dorms I only talked to my roommates."
Now Keller, along with his 41 fraternity brothers, enjoys the nonstop social life of the Greek community, including visits from interested neighboring sororities Keller compares to "trail(ing) ants."
While the Phi Taus reside in a majestic-looking red brick mansion on 18th Avenue N.E., they answer to the same landlord as neighbors Phi Kappa. The two fraternities are completely autonomous and, as Keller stressed, in completely separate buildings, but they both pay rent to the national Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) organization.
"People quickly realized it's a new house," said Jared Keller, Phi Tau president. "They don't call it the DKE house anymore."
When the UW DKE chapter was shut down last summer after a series of hazing violations involving a suicide in 1998, the two new fraternities quickly seized the vacant property. While the Phi Taus inhabit the main house, the Phi Kappas reside in the annex an arm's reach away. The two are connected by a skybridge that has been closed off and is now part of a Phi Kappa's bedroom.
"We're coming up with the same situation at the same time," said Savon, calling the Phi Taus his twin brothers. "We're basically living in the same house."
The Phi Kappa fraternity was established at the UW in 2001 but wasn't recognized by the Interfraternity Council (IFC) until May 2003. Up until a month ago, its 40 members lived in dorms, apartments or at home and gathered for social functions at bowling alleys or public parks.
Lo, a Phi Kappa member since 2001, is considered one of the fraternity's founding fathers and has worked on every house committee.
"I'd say (the work) was equivalent to taking a five-credit class," he said.
Lo was once offered bids to other campus fraternities but wasn't attracted to the reputations of some of the houses. When he saw a flier in Haggett Hall advertising the new Phi Kappa chapter, he was immediately drawn to the fraternity's high academic standards.
"The main reason a lot of us joined was to start our own traditions rather than be subjected to (other fraternities') traditions," said Lo, an investment banking major.
Savan felt the same way.
"It's not like we're all 3.8 (grade point average) students," Savon explained. "I think every Greek house is trying to avoid that Animal House perception, (but) we don't want that kind of party stigma."
According to Keller, the Phi Taus are also trying to shed the typical fraternity stereotype by doing everything in their power to "come off as gentlemen."
"Every house has a person beer-bonging on the front porch at 11 a.m., there's always people rowdy or offensive or drunk all the time," Keller said. "It's almost impossible to change the stereotype of the entire University."
Neither fraternity has registered for any parties with the UW Police Department, but according to Savon the houses are planning a "bi-ad," or two-house party, to introduce themselves to the Greek community.
"We've been well-accepted by our neighbors," said Keller, adding that the Phi Taus received cheers from other Greek community delegates when the IFC announced their approval to resume recognition of the house last year.
"The community is perfectly ready to have us here."