Last week, the brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) discovered that brothers had been living illegally in their fraternity house for 13 years. The source of the issue dates back to 1996, when the Yale SAE chapter applied for a special permit to make the original one-family residence a communal rooming house, but never obtained documents required to do so. City records show that in 2001, the fraternity was made aware of the permit situation, but sent in forms that were incomplete. The issue was not pursued at the time. In fact, the city did not take notice of the problem again until April of 2009, when officials reviewed a neighborhood program’s records and fined the fraternity one thousand dollars.

SAE members are currently working to address and rectify the situation. Representatives of the fraternity have already appeared before the Board of Zoning Appeals, and have presented proof of an off-site parking lease agreement, the first in a series of steps that must be taken in order to legalize the existence of their fraternity house. The Board is not expected to take any further measures to penalize the fraternity.

Greek presence on campus has had its share of turmoil over the course of its 173-year history at Yale. The first fraternity at Yale, Alpha Delta Phi, was founded in 1836, followed almost immediately by Psi Upsilon in 1838 and Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) in 1844. These and subsequent Greek organizations originally met in secret, undisclosed locations until the 1920’s, when the construction of Sterling Memorial Library and other buildings prompted them to build extravagant houses on York Street and Park Street, a cluster of buildings collectively named “Fraternity Row.”

The fraternity buildings were characterized by their elite styles and structures, which bothered many—both inside and outside—of the “chosen” brotherhood circle. In fact, this concern over exclusivity and elitism was what prompted Edward Harkness, YC 1897, to fund construction of the first residential colleges at Yale. Harkness’s ideas served in the 1930’s as a democratic counterweight to the dominant culture and social life of Greek houses among undergraduates.

Before the residential college system was instituted, fraternities acquired most of their revenue from students who purchased meals at the fraternity houses. However, when the Great Depression hit, relatively low labor and construction costs incited Yale to replace its old dormitories, and Greek organizations found themselves in a state of financial crisis. The luxurious amenities of the residential colleges, as well as the newly introduced dining requirement that students eat a minimum of ten meals a week there, meant that fewer students spent time at the fraternity houses. Thus, a majority of them, including Alpha Delta Phi, did not survive the Depression.

“Fraternities used to be seen as taking students away from their residential colleges,” explained former President of Sigma Phi Epsilon, Matthew Eisen, PC ’10, “but I don’t think that this is the case anymore.” Today, he says, “Greek life is part of the extracurricular experience here. You can choose how much you want it to be a part of your life. There are a lot of things on this campus that take you away from your residential college, and I don’t see much validity in the opinion that fraternities hurt colleges more than any other activity.”

But it was the waves of social change during the late ’60s and early ’70s that dealt fraternity life at Yale a coup de grâce. Even the Yale chapter of DKE—the founding chapter—was forced to close down and give up its house on York Street. It is now named the Rose Alumni House, and is owned by the Association of Yale Alumni.

“When I came in the fall of ’69, there were only very few fraternities left on campus,” recalled John Hale, JE ’73, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology. “DKE was the last and most prominent one, and even they went under during my undergraduate years.”

DKE’S demise was caused by two factors: First, DKE got into financial hot water because of tax issues, and second, the director of admissions at the time wanted to make Yale’s classes look more like America—in other words, increase diversity. Hale’s was the first class at Yale to admit women, and also the first that tried to achieve an ethnic balance at Yale. Therefore, according to Hale, students were not as eager as their predecessors to find a niche where everyone was like them.

“Those were the years when people were lighting fires in the ROTC building and taking over the President’s office, and being chased by tanks on New Haven Green—and there was tear gas floating around campus because of riots,” Hale recalled. “A lot of old Yale traditions went under. And fraternities were just one of them. They went under partly because no one would pledge.”

However, the mid-1980’s saw a strong revival of Greek life, mostly due to the more conservative atmosphere that infiltrated the campus. The infamous 1984 dining hall workers’ strike, which closed down Commons, also inspired a renewed interest in meeting different people, especially from other colleges, through Greek organizations. Today’s fraternities, though unlikely to ever regain their once encompassing social prowess on campus, retain a strong presence and robust membership.

“We usually have somewhere between 30 and 35 people rush every year, and we generally take between 16 and 20. I can’t speak for other fraternities but over the past few years, ours has really grown,” Eisen said. “We take people who we consider to be well-rounded, very involved in Yale activities and willing to take on leadership roles. Here at SigEp, we’re trying to create a culture that moves beyond the traditional conception of a fraternity. The social component is certainly important, but we’re trying to take on issues and service projects that can not only better the guys in the fraternity but also the school at large.”

Hale recognized that fraternities have grown in popularity since his time as an undergraduate. “I perceive now, after 35 years, that there are a lot more students who are interested in fraternity life. That was not an appealing model to us, but it is understandable that young people, especially when first arriving on campus, should want become part of a stable group of like-minded peers,” he commented.

While the era of anti-war riots and hippie movements seem far removed from contemporary concerns, the age-old “rivalry” between Yale’s fraternities and the residential colleges, continues, albeit with the tables turned. Most fraternity brothers do not even live in the houses, and those who do are usually officers and seniors. According to Eisen, renting out rooms to non-brothers has nothing to do with financial trouble, but rather with the difficulty of attracting brothers to live in the house.

“This year, we have a girl living in the house, and last year we had a guy from outside the fraternity who didn’t end up joining,” Eisen said. The national organization gave Yale’s chapter of SigEp a spacious house on High Street, pays for upkeep, and, since it has a mortgage, requires all 14 rooms to be rented out each year.

“We would love to have all of them occupied by brothers,” Eisen said. “But at Yale, you can’t even think about living off-campus until you’re a junior.” Two-fifths of SigEp’s brothers, by Eisen’s calculation, are ineligible to live in the house because of that policy. Moreover, many of SigEp’s juniors study abroad for a year. A final factor that makes the pool of brothers who could live in the house smaller, according to Eisen, is their connection to the residential colleges they were assigned to.

Eisen went on to explain why fraternity houses were losing this tug-of-war to the colleges. “I myself lived in the house my junior year and moved back to Pierson my senior year. Residential colleges are hard to compete with because they have such amazing amenities and have such a great social atmosphere. So it’s sometimes difficult to find fourteen people who want to live in the fraternity house. That’s why we’re happy to have people that we know and like and trust living in the rooms that we can’t fill.”

As for having a female lodger in an all-male house, Eisen claimed that “it doesn’t create any sense of weirdness at all. Actually, it’s been great to have a girl in the house, and the brothers all love living with her.”

The sole female resident of SigEp, Adriel Saporta, TC ’11, could not be reached for comment.

Interestingly enough, the same phenomenon occurs even outside of the Greek circle. Tom Stipanov, TC ’10, is one of several students living at 36 Lynwood Place, an ordinary, quiet-looking brick house close to campus. This used to be the fraternity house of Beta Theta Pi, whose Yale chapter collapsed in 2007 due to negative publicity about alcohol problems and illegal possession of firearms by one of its boarders (though himself not a member). Since the building was not owned by the fraternity, but by Second Century Fund, Inc., an outside company, it was then appropriated by the varsity men’s swim team. Now, however, only a little more than half of the lodgers in the Palmer House, as it is now called, are actually on the team.

“There’s really not a team affiliation here at all. I think there are about 13 people living here and only seven of them are on the swim team,” said Stipanov. “Most of my good friends were planning on living off campus this year, and a group of us got together and decided to live in the Palmer House. Even though the swim team does hang out a lot here, many other groups of friends do as well, and we don’t feel excluded at all.”

For Stipanov, living in off-campus housing like the Palmer House is preferable, both financially and socially, to staying in a residential college. “The rent is really reasonable. It’s actually less than the room and board we pay for living in the residential colleges,” he said. “And the amenities here are great—we have a kitchen, a large common space, and big rooms. I wouldn’t call it the swim house anymore, it’s just the Palmer House. For example, last year there was a Princeton grad living here, and now there’s a guy who plays in a local band living downstairs. So this is definitely not an exclusive residence.”

It is clear that throughout Yale’s long history, the University’s social life has become much more democratic and less stratified. Hale sums up the evolution of residential life at Yale well: “Joining a fraternity or any other social group is no longer restricted to the privileged, and the choice of where to live, is truly the student’s.