Late last month, the Psi Upsilon fraternity received notification from the administration that the Undergraduate Residential Life Committee (URLC) had rejected its request for program house status.
The decision was made because the URLC found that Psi U was in violation of the University’s non-discrimination policy due to the fraternity’s exclusion of women. Several Psi U brothers said they perceived the decision as an attack on their organization’s financial stability by threatening their ability to have rent-paying boarders live in their house.
Psi U had lost its program house status last spring when it declined to sign a standards agreement because it included a provision granting the University the right to change the terms of the agreement whenever it saw fit. Psi U signed the agreement after the University reworded that clause of the contract, according to Dean of Student Services Mike Whaley. In the interim, the deadline for program house renewal expired.
Psi U made a presentation to the URLC last semester to become a program house. The URLC decision said Psi U must become coeducational in order for their case to be reconsidered for program housing.
The URLC is made up of students from the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA), Whaley, and Director and Associate Director of Residential Life (ResLife) Jeff Ederer and Maureen Isleib.
“The response from the Psi U brothers that presented the proposal was that [coeducation] was something that the organization had talked about and that they might see it happening in five to ten years,” Whaley said. “The URLC was not satisfied with that and so they forwarded a recommendation that Psi U not be readmitted to program housing.”
The decision by the URLC was a recommendation that was made to Whaley and Interim Dean of the College Peter Patton, who approved it. Whaley sent a letter notifying Psi U of the decision on Jan. 26.
“I could not have predicted that the URLC could have taken the stance that they took,” Whaley said.
“The fraternities were initially grandfathered in and once they lost their program housing status they lost that protection,” said URLC Chair Becca Solow ’04. “This is the first time that a fraternity has applied for program housing status.”
Whaley said that neither Psi U nor any fraternity was ever exempted from the non-discrimination policy and that the fraternities had just never realized the intended goal of coeducation. He said that when program housing was first created, he had told the fraternities that they would need to accept female applicants.
“I don’t think they were ever considered compliant,” Whaley said.
He said that the program housing application includes the non-discrimination policy.
“I think that the expectation has always been there,” he said. “ResLife has been relentless with the undergrads there for the past several years.”
Psi U President Matt Gottlieb ’05 said that the Administration had not previously asked it to admit females. He said he did not think Psi U was told that the coeducational issue would emerge when they declined to sign the housing standards contract and lost program housing.
Without program housing status, students need to apply to live off-campus. Last semester, brothers had difficulty getting approval to live off-campus and many were initially rejected due to limitations on the number of students who are allowed to live off-campus until the alumni complained to the administration, according to Gottlieb.
“To my knowledge there has never been any conversation [about coeducation],” Gottleib said. “We were blind-sighted by it basically.”
Several Psi U members said that the decision encroaches upon their sovereignty as a fraternity and complicates the process for getting residents in their house, which they said was financially necessary.
“We have no problem with going coeducational,” said Psi U brother Zilvinas Silenas ’05. “We just want to make our own decision.”
“It’s not Psi U’s opinion, it’s the University trying to coerce us,” said Psi U brother Omair Sarwar ’06. “This is the administration’s agenda.”
Silenas said that the single-sex floors in Hewitt would also constitute a violation of the non-discrimination policy by the URLC’s standards and that Psi U would need more time to decide whether it would co-educate.
“We’ve been like this for 160 years so it’s a big decision to make,” he said.
Silenas said he believed off-campus housing would no longer be an option in a few years when the new dormitory is built. As a result, Psi U’s ability to fill its house would suffer, leading to reduced rent payments necessary for building upkeep.
“Financially it would just ruin us,” Sarwar said.
Gottleib said that there have been differing opinions both between the undergraduates and the alumni about whether to co-educate.
“It’s totally divided the house,” Sarwar said. “It’s a huge issue right now.”
Beta Theta Pi member Jacob Robinson ’04 said that Bea has not experiencing financial difficulties despite being outside the program housing system for the past year. Robinson said that Beta members have not had trouble getting off-campus status to live in its house. He said that Beta’s situation might be different from Psi U though because Beta needs fewer students to fill its house and has already paid for the mortgage on its house.
Whaley, who had met with Gottleib and another Psi U brother, said he believes that there is support in the undergraduates and the alumni for coeducation. He said that the national organization is coeducational so that the Wesleyan chapter can co-educate without being cast out of its parent organization.
“So I hope they do it,” he said. “I think it could be a very positive thing for them.”