Dean Ameer Clamps Down on AD Living Situation

The Alpha Delta Fraternity house. No AD brothers will be residing in their house hereafter.

In a campus wide blitz today on the 18th of June, Dean Inge-Lise Ameer affirmed that Dartmouth students either enrolled in classes or not “may not live in a Greek Letter, undergraduate, or senior society facility that is not recognized by the College.” Given the Alpha Delta Fraternity’s recent derecognition this past March, the blitz further clamps down on AD’s already precarious living situation. Hanover zoning law already prohibits more than three unrelated adults to legally occupy a non-College affiliated residence; now, zero AD brothers will be able to live in the house they themselves own.

The blitz’s timing is noteworthy. Classes for the 2015 summer term officially commence in just three days on Thursday; members of the class of 2017 will begin moving in for their famed sophomore summer term shortly. In the past, Greek life has been a dominant aspect of the sophomore summer experience. Affiliated students – which account for over 60% of each non-freshman class – routinely elect to live in their Greek houses over normal College-maintained dormitories during their sophomore summer if space permits. Multiple Greek houses have even developed their own “sophomore summer traditions” that take advantage of the fact that many, if not all, of the members of each pledge class get to live together in their Greek house over their sophomore summer. The AD brothers in the class of 2017 will miss out on this experience entirely.

On a broader note, the re-affirmation of this policy – which was enforced up until 2011 – deprives Alpha Delta of vital rent revenue. As Alpha Delta owns its own house and property, it can keep all of the rent revenue collected from brothers who live in the house. Given that, in normal circumstances, in excess of 30 brothers can reside in the house per term, and that most Greek houses charge a College-enforced minimum rent of around $2,400 per term, AD’s inability to house brothers in its own plant will severely cripple the fraternity financially. In sophomore summers past, AD had a cushy budget of around $60,000 from rent alone for social and brotherhood activities, as well as for house maintenance. With no brothers residing in the house and therefore no rent revenue coming in, how AD will even properly maintain their property and plant is unclear. Whether this is a deliberate or unintentional consequence of the re-affirmation of a housing policy ostensibly made for the “health and safety” of students remains unclear.