While the Kappa Alpha (KA) fraternity was informed on Friday that it has been taken off housing probation, the Sigma Chi fraternity was informed by the Greek Housing Review Board (GHRB) that its housing probation will continue until the fraternity resolves specific issues concerning the organization and maintenance of its house. The GHRB had placed both fraternities on probation in February 2003, after an annual review.

“We do not view this as a setback here at Sigma Chi,” said junior Graham Gilmer, president of the fraternity, in a press release. “The University has given us clear goals in order to better our chapter and we look forward to meeting them. We expect to be in full compliance by spring quarter.”

The GHRB recommended that Sigma Chi improve its kitchen, summer housing management and residential education program — and document these changes in writing — in order to achieve a measure of sustainability. The fraternity plans to hire a professional hasher and bring in a summer management team in order to address these issues.

“Although Sigma Chi has not been taken off housing probation at this time, I feel that they are very close to meeting the Housed Greek Criteria,” said Joey Greenwell, associate director of student activities and fraternity advisor. “I look forward to working with them and having them taken off housing probation in the near future.”

Because Sigma Chi has made significant progress since its last review in areas such as house occupancy, alumni involvement, fire-code regulations and grounds upkeep, the housing probation is not being extended for a set period of time. Instead, the chapter will be reviewed again whenever it fixes the specified problems.

“We are confident that Sigma Chi will quickly address the remaining concerns identified by the GHRB,” said Jane Camarillo, director of Residential Education.

In taking KA off housing probation, the GHRB cited improvements in the fraternity’s leadership structure, residential education programming, a campus-wide program on date rape on college campuses and higher-quality community service initiatives. Similar issues were cited by the board when KA was placed on probation.

“We were alleged to have ‘apathetic,’ ‘anarchist’ or ‘counter-culture’ attitudes so it was mostly a matter of separating ourselves from and overcoming certain outdated perceptions,” said senior Doug Johnstone, KA president.”We also put effort into beefing up some programs and conveying that we are a fully functioning organization in areas of community service, Res Ed and pledge education.”

Housing probation does not affect a fraternity’s ability to organize social activities, like parties. Instead, housing probation is a warning call to fraternities to improve their residential and programming issues to avoid losing their housing, which may occur after repeated years of probation.

“[Housing probation] gave us more ‘street-cred’ and made us sound a lot tougher; this will ironically probably help with rush,” Johnstone said. “Being taken off didn’t come as a surprise since we went into it totally confident because, in our and the rest of the campus’ eyes, we did nothing egregious. At this point we are probably supposed to show some contrition but the process itself took a lot more time and energy than making the actual changes.”

Although KA’s hearing took place on Feb. 3, with the results being conveyed to Johnstone this past Friday, he had yet to tell his house about the findings.

“I decided not to tell anybody else because I didn’t want us to be tempted to throw a double header penthouse party,” Johnstone said.

Greek houses are subject to annual reviews of various criteria including their financial status, occupancy, membership, community service projects, residential programming, conduct and leadership. A house can be placed on housing probation if it has a pattern of significant shortcomings in multiple areas. The University can also chose to commend Greek chapter houses for repeated successes in these areas.

“The GHRB and the University are holding housed Greek chapters accountable to higher housing standards expected of groups with a subjective selection process,” said senior Doug Carter, co-chair of the GHRB. “The reviews are evidence to the fact that housed Greek chapters take the [University] expectations seriously and continually strive to improve and go beyond what the University expects of them.”