After waiting a year in off-campus housing, the brothers of Kappa Delta Rho have finally settled into their own home at 208 Walnut Place.

‘We outgrew our old house,’ said Geoffrey Levine, a senior information studies and technology major.

‘I think there’s some attraction in being with the other fraternities and sororities that have houses on campus,’ said Joe Oravecz, the associate dean of students in the Office of Greek Life and Experiential Learning.

Until spring of 2002, KDR was located at 795 Ostrom Ave., or Hafts Hall, an old dormitory. When the Psi Psi fraternity brothers, who occupied the Walnut house, were faced with eviction, the KDR brothers decided to try to secure the house for the 2002-2003 academic year.

‘It was fairly risky because there was no guarantee that we would get the house,’ Levine said.

Psi Psi remained in the house for another year, finishing out its lease. The KDR brothers had already consented to move out of Hafts Hall and were forced to find apartments off campus. When the Walnut location opened up in the spring of 2002, they jumped on the opportunity to move.

Deborah Manobianco, the office coordinator for OGLEL, said that the difficulty of switching houses discourages fraternities and sororities from moving often.

‘In my experience, it’s not a common thing to have a fraternity move from house to house,’ Manobianco said.

Each fraternity or sorority has a housing corporation, usually comprised of Syracuse alumni, which owns the house and makes executive decisions for the house. It takes a lot of meetings and negotiation to make a move official, Manobianco said.

Residences outside a university PID zone aren’t allowed to house more than five non-related occupants, said Laura Madelone, the director of the Office of Off-Campus Student Services.

‘A PID zone is set up so fraternities and sororities can operate in a structured way that doesn’t disrupt fire and safety codes,’ Madelone said.

The brothers, in attempt to make the move worthwhile, will be making yearlong renovations to the new house. Levine believes that KDR’s standard of living is higher than that of other fraternities.

‘We’ve had people tell us that our house is nicer than other ones,’ Levine said.

The house, built more than 100 years ago, was in bad condition when it was signed over to KDR, Levine said. While they’ve already done a lot of work on the house, they intend to keep some historical mementos.

‘It still says Beta on the chimney,’ Levine said, referring to decorations left over from a time when Beta Theta Pi occupied the house.

Oravecz is confident that the brothers will truly appreciate their new location.

‘I’ve been down there a couple times already, and it looks great,’ he said.

Published on September 4, 2003 at 12:00 pm