Twelve national Sigma Alpha Epsilon alumni Saturday pledged $300,000 to remodel the defunct fraternity’s house on Gardner Street as part of a drive to improve relations with Boston University after being thrown off campus 12 years ago.
The pledge came at a membership review meeting during which current fraternity board members and SAE’s National Alumni Commission discussed ways to improve the chapter’s campus reputation and rebuild the organization, according to the BU SAE University Relations Chair Peter Ross. SAE members had planned to discuss ‘old traditions’ that may have damaged their reputation with BU in the past, national SAE President Ali Betil said.
Though the fraternity does not want to get back on campus in the immediate future, Ross said they are pushing to improve their reputation to lay the groundwork for official recognition in the future.
But university officials say that may not be so easy. SAE was kicked off campus in 1991, but has continued to operate as an underground, unrecognized organization, Assistant Dean of Students Allen Ward said in an email last week.
‘As an unregistered group, they have purposefully and repeatedly misrepresented their relationship with the university, to students and others, after numerous warnings that this misrepresentation would jeopardize any future possibility to return as a registered group,’ Ward said.
Before being removed, SAE had maintained a healthy relationship with BU for almost 100 years, Betil said. Betil admitted SAE had remained on campus despite BU’s warnings, but he also said the fraternity is currently undergoing major reforms.
SAE was removed from campus in 1991 for violating two parts of the Inter Fraternity Sorority Council’s ethics code, according to 1991 Daily Free Press reports.
A freshman who was served alcohol at an SAE rush party had to be hospitalized for alcohol poisoning for a day after he was left unattended by three other students, sparking an investigation of the fraternity. The fraternity did not register with BU to serve alcohol at the event and IFSC claimed the organization did not display responsible personal behavior. Both actions violated the code.
Ward said there are a number of reasons why a student organization could be removed from campus, including institutional violations, arrests, hazings and incidences of serving alcohol to minors.
Betil, who became the SAE president two years ago, said he did not know why the fraternity chapter was removed from BU, but admitted that it was ‘rightfully kicked off.’
‘For most of the past two decades, Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s Massachusetts Beta-Upsilon Chapter has proven to be a major headache for both BU and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon International fraternity,’ Betil said.
Last year, the city of Boston closed down the SAE house, located on 49 Gardner St. in Allston, because of fire hazards, Betil said. But under the governance of an Alumni Commission made up of chapter alumni and province, or regional, officers, changes are going to come, Betil said.
‘Our national office stepped in a week ago and put us all in suspension,’ Ross said. ‘We’re going to push for some major reforms within the fraternity.’
In the past, hazing incidents or drug abuse may have occurred, he said, but ‘we’re trying to change all that.’
‘We may expel a few students, and discuss the future of SAE after we have lost all the bad apples,’ he said.
Betil said the Alumni Commission and the fraternity’s current leadership want to ‘create a chapter of the highest academic and social standards.’
‘Any brother that does not uphold the ideals of the fraternity is subject to suspension, or in the worst cases, expulsion, by the commission,’ he said.
Despite its questionable reputation, BU’s SAE chapter has had notable members, including Harry Agganis for whom BU’s new hockey arena will be named and is the largest fraternity in North America with over 210 chapters and 250,000 total initiates, Betil said.
Currently, it also has chapters at Harvard University, Emerson College and, starting last year, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But according to Ward, SAE’s popularity will not put them in a better position.
‘There are many national fraternities that would like to come to Boston University,’ Ward said, ‘but our system would not survive if we open our doors to all of them. We look at growth as it would serve our great community as a whole.’
Ward said BU has asked SAE several times to stop operating unofficially over the past 12 years and the university will continue to do so. Until SAE stops their unofficial activity, the university will not recognize them, Ward said.
Betil said he is determined to change SAE’s reputation and make it ‘a chapter that Boston University would be proud to invite back on campus.’