Inside 737 Comstock Ave., a collage featuring 53 Sigma Chi brothers hangs on the wall. Within the entryway is a foyer, freshly retiled and made of granite. Farther inside sit three dens filled with $2,000 leather couches and $1,000 arm chairs.

This is the home of 30 fraternity brothers, but even they don’t believe it.

‘It’s like living in a goddamn hotel,’ said Brendan Noll, a junior computer engineer major and member of the fraternity.

Sigma Chi officially returned to campus Aug. 21 after four years at 781 Ostrom Ave. The fraternity lost its university recognition in 1998 after a pledge was sent to the hospital, among other incidents, said Max Dorsch, president of Sigma Chi and a junior finance and marketing major.

The fraternity was evicted from its 737 Comstock house in 2000. For the next four years, members were living apart – in dorms, on South or off-campus. In the fall of 2004, the fraternity moved into its house on Ostrom. During this time, members went by the pseudonym Psi Psi – or a group of ‘underground independents’, Dorsch said.

Without official recognition from the university and the Interfraternity Council, Sigma Chi couldn’t receive funding or insurance, said Mike Schottenstein, former IFC president and a broadcast journalism and policy studies major.

After what Dorsch describes as a long and expensive interview process with the national chapter of Sigma Chi, Psi Psi was once again declared an official colony of the fraternity in 2006. Two years later on Feb. 17, 2008, the brothers were initiated into the fraternity.

Since the fall of 2004, Sigma Chi had called a small, ‘dilapidated cabin’ on Ostrom its home.

‘We tried to operate a 55-person frat in a five-person house,’ Dorsch said.

‘We would throw parties in our attic,’ recalled Brendan Ward, a television, radio and film and finance major. ‘We would cram 100 people into a really tiny attic. Everyone below it would be scared that it would collapse at any minute.’

Now the fraternity brothers fear they won’t keep their new house on Comstock clean.

‘The house is a great gift for us,’ Dorsch said. ‘And it’s our responsibility to keep it up.’

The house was renovated after a $500,000 gift from alumni, which provided new interior paint, carpeting, flooring and furniture, among other improvements.

‘We really don’t like to advertise the house,’ Dorsch said. ‘Although we have a beautiful house, we’re not here for the house, we’re here for the guys.’

Ward said one of the things he loves about the new house is the accessibility it provides to fellow brothers.

‘We have a main central area where a brother can walk into the house at any time and is guaranteed to find a buddy,’ Ward said. ‘When else do you get the chance to live with 30 of your best friends?’

Quinn Callahan, a sophomore in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, said he plans on living in the house in the future.

But Callahan will have to wait two more years until he gets his chance. With such a high demand of brothers wanting to live in the house, the fraternity only has enough living space for seniors. With an exception of two underclassmen, next year will have 28 seniors living in the 30-person house.

Dorsch also said that the size of the house will allow the brothers to host more philanthropy events, which hasn’t been a possibility in the past. They hosted more than 100 alumni at a Homecoming tailgate and barbeque.

Tom Zayan, a junior computer engineering major and Sigma Chi brother, said the brothers clean the house after weekly chapter meetings.

‘We are so grateful,’ Zayan said. ‘It’s a dream come true.’

tpollock@syr.edu

Published on September 24, 2008 at 12:00 pm