Penn's Statement Street

At the heart of campus, Locust Walk has long been the focus of attempts to define and reflect Penn's very nature, a process that continues to this day. and Eric Tucker For years, it has been the primary thoroughfare of the campus, a central pathway shared by students, administrators and faculty alike. Among students, fraternities have long populated Locust Walk housing. Whether the brothers are eating lunch together on outdoor benches or hosting public barbecues, relaxing on couches in front of their houses or actively publicizing Friday night parties, Locust Walk fraternities have always been in the public spotlight, a part of the literal and figurative "heart" of campus. But if fraternities on Locust Walk have been important to the campus socially, then they have been equally important politically. For the past decade, the question of what belongs on Locust Walk has been at best an issue for debate and at worst a source of heated controversy. Now, as the University engages in a virtual game of give-and-take with the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs and more student groups, campus organizations and academic centers wait in line to take their places on the Walk, administrators are again faced with the decision of how best to utilize Locust Walk facilities. Over the past 30 years, the majority of fraternity houses that once ran up and down the Walk have been relocated. In 1967, there were 14 fraternity houses lining the main stretch of the Walk. Today, by contrast, there are six, excluding the three houses on the far western end, past the 38th Street footbridge. A long stretch of the 3600 block of Locust Walk -- from the Palladium to the plaza entrance to the Annenberg School for Communication -- is now entirely non-residential. Years ago, most of those facilities were Greek. No one can know for sure how many fraternities, sororities and academic buildings will occupy Locust Walk in the near future, but the possibility still exists that Locust Walk may look as different 20 years from now as it did 20 years ago. Fraternity Row With fraternity houses lining both sides of the street as recently as the mid-1970s, the Locust Walk of yesteryear was not quite the intricate mixture of student residences and administrative facilities that it is today. It was instead a prototypical fraternity row, a stomping ground for Greeks. Many fraternities that current students identify as having off-campus houses -- including Alpha Epsilon Pi, Beta Theta Pi, Delta Tau Delta, Delta Upsilon and Phi Kappa Psi -- were all once located on Locust Walk. Many current administrative buildings, in turn, were once fraternities. The Penn Women's Center at 3643 Locust, for instance, fills the void left by Theta Xi. DU's old house at 3537 Locust now houses the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Alliance, as well as the Management and Technology Program. The DTD house at 3533 Locust is now the E. Craig Sweeten Alumni Center. Last year, the Walk welcomed back two of its longest-standing tenants -- Psi Upsilon and Phi Kappa Sigma -- who were both thrown off campus for disciplinary violations earlier in the decade. But since then, the University has converted the former Phi Sigma Kappa house at 3615 Locust Walk into the Veranda, a temporary student center. And just this summer, Penn administrators announced short-term plans to bring School of Arts and Sciences programs to the former Phi Gamma Delta house at 3619 Locust. Eventually, and maybe even soon, permanent decisions will be made on the future of those properties. 'Roof rating' Bret Kinsella knows a thing or two about fraternity life on Locust Walk. As the InterFraternity Council President in 1990, Kinsella -- a Kappa Sigma brother and an adamant supporter of Greek presence on the Walk -- found himself becoming the primary liaison between the Greek community and the administration during a time when women and minorities claimed they were being harassed by fraternity brothers on the Walk. Indeed, Penn Women's Center Director Elena DiLapi, who arrived at Penn 15 years ago, said the presence of numerous fraternities on the Walk brought what she calls an "overt kind of harassment" into the middle of campus. "In years past, fraternity members would sit in front of their houses or on their roofs, literally rating women with signs from one to 10," DiLapi said. She said "very clearly documented" incidents made it clear that sexual harassment did indeed occur inside Locust Walk fraternity houses years ago. Many incidents, she said, have never been made public. Anthropology Professor Peggy Sanday, author of Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood and Privilege On Campus -- a book chronicling an alleged gang rape inside a Penn fraternity house in 1983 -- has similar memories of a time when the Walk was a controversial area of campus. "A lot of female students were telling me they always avoided the Walk to come to the [University] Museum and always took Spruce Street," Sunday said. Today, having been away from the University for nearly 10 years, Kinsella said he believes fraternities as a whole earned an undeservedly bad reputation for the actions of just a few members. "I remember hearing those things but I don't remember witnessing them," Kinsella said. It was, as he remembers it, only a "vocal minority" of students who opposed the presence of fraternities on Locust Walk and began contacting administrators and writing columns in The Daily Pennsylvanian, marking the beginning of what would be one of the more contentious debates in recent Penn history. White male fraternities It was precisely this notion of Locust Walk as "Frat Row" that students and administrators sought to dispel in the mid-1980s. Amid concerns that a significant presence of fraternities on the Walk created an environment in which women felt objectified and minorities felt excluded, administrators and students engaged in a campus-wide debate focusing on the physical makeup of the Walk. It was April 1990 when then-University President Sheldon Hackney assembled a committee of administrators and students to discuss ways in which the University could diversify Locust Walk. "This was a time when everyone had fairly sharp public postures on questions," said Hackney, now a professor in the History Department. The committee stopped just short of recommending the removal of fraternities from the Walk. Instead, it suggested that Locust Walk be occupied by a more diverse representation of the student body. Hackney accepted the committee's report in September 1991. But the Committee to Diversify Locust Walk was only one in a series of several comprehensive inquiries into the quality of campus life, most of which centered on Locust Walk and none of which had positive things to say about the presence of fraternities there. Two other committees looking at on-campus violence, harassment and discrimination in 1987 -- one headed by then-College of Arts and Sciences Dean Ivar Berg and the other chaired by History Professor Drew Faust -- both suggested that fraternities on the Walk had negative effects on student life at the University. The reports criticized the fraternities for making the center of campus a site of frequent racial exclusivity and sexual harassment. "What we found was that there was kind of a symbolic statement having the central artery of campus occupied by the Wharton School and white male fraternities," Faust said. "The current arrangement of the campus, with white male fraternities lining its central artery? is more appropriate to Penn of the 1950s than to what Penn hopes to be in the 1990s," the Faust report concluded. Similarly, Berg, a Sociology professor, said fraternities lacked the "academic justification" that would warrant their presence on the Walk, considered a coveted part of campus. The discussion brought with it one of the more memorable protests in recent history. On April 18, 1990, more than 400 fraternity members marched to Hackney's house to protest his proposal to increase diversity on Locust Walk. And the committee itself was rife with conflict, as several members nearly resigned from the group at Hackney's insistence that fraternities not be relocated. According to Faust, whose own committee recommended the relocation of the 11 Locust Walk fraternities, the Hackney-appointed committee never seriously considered removing all of the fraternities. "[The goal established by Hackney was] finding spaces to diversify Locust Walk, not purify it of fraternities," Faust explained. But Kinsella said he still believes that finding ways to remove fraternities from the Walk was more of a priority -- and even a desire -- than administrators are willing to admit. "The fact was that there were structures [other than fraternity houses] that could have been converted into student houses," Kinsella said. "A group of people had very clear political agendas that were very clearly anti-fraternity." When the Hackney-charged committee released its report in September 1991, it did not explicitly recommend the removal of any of the fraternities from Locust Walk. In fact, four committee members chose not to sign the report because they felt the committee had not gone far enough in seeking diversification. "The fraternities perpetuate a social standard and a mode of behavior which is deplorable and which distresses me? greatly," Adelaide Delluva, a professor in the Biochemistry Department, wrote in a letter of dissent. Berg, who was in Phi Delta Theta at Colgate University in the 1940s, stressed that most members of the committee were not at all opposed to fraternities. He said it is only when they misbehaved that their presence on the Walk became an issue. Disciplinary action against fraternity members, Berg added, was particularly difficult when some of the students guilty of misconduct had prominent parents who could take action against the University. "[What] we felt in giving our report was that these were social organizations in the middle of an academic environment, but they were also subject to a system of law and order that was shot through with hazards," Berg said. A different animal Whatever harassment or sexism might have occurred inside fraternity houses at one point -- and, according to DiLapi, might still exist today -- current Greek leaders say severe examples of misconduct are mostly a thing of the past. "The fraternity system of the '80s was a different animal than that which exists today," IFC President and College senior Mark Metzl said. The Tau Epsilon Phi brother added that fraternities' various contributions to campus merit their presence on the Walk. And OFSA Director Scott Reikofski agreed that having social life on Locust Walk creates a safe environment for the University. "I think that having residential fraternities on Locust Walk provides? an important 24-hour presence and life in the middle of campus," Reikofski said. In addition, several administrators say they support maintaining fraternities on the Walk along with other types of programs. Vice Provost for University Life Valarie Swain-Cade McCoullum, for one, said she believes that today's Locust Walk is "more welcoming now to all groups" than it had been before. University administrators have repeatedly insisted that they intend to preserve a Greek presence on the Walk and will do what they can to make sure that the heart of campus does not turn off its lights and go home at the end of the work day. "There certainly is no long-term plan to uproot fraternities on Locust Walk," University President Judith Rodin said recently. Provost Robert Barchi, whose first months in office saw the FIJI brothers forfeit their house, said his plan for a diversified Locust Walk absolutely makes room for fraternities. "We are really looking for diversity on Locust Walk. I believe we have diversity on Locust Walk right now," Barchi said, adding that fraternity houses placed next to administrative buildings makes the "core of campus a more active and vibrant place." Some students, however, don't necessarily believe the claims of the administrators. Former FIJI President Martin Park, a Wharton senior, said he sees fraternities "being cracked down on a lot" -- so much so that they might not be around too much longer. And there are some, like DiLapi and Berg, who believe that fraternities should definitely still exist -- though not on the Walk. "It would be nice if some fraternities reconsidered their 'need' to be in the middle of campus," DiLapi said. Added Berg: "There's no reason why that space couldn't be used for more extracurricular activities, with the emphasis on 'curricular.'" A curricular emphasis was brought about with the Community Service Living-Learning Program, a group of 25 students who lived in the Castle for most of the 1990s until Psi U returned to the house in 1998 after an eight-year eviction stemming from the 1990 kidnapping of a rival fraternity brother. College senior Hillary Chernow, who lived in the Castle in the 1997-98 academic year as part of CSLLP, said she remembers her former home as a "magical" place that served a positive purpose on Locust Walk. Chernow said that Psi U getting its house back is an indication that "alumni money must have meant more to the University than this important program being in the center of the University." If a Greek presence does indeed remain in the heart of campus, then the issue also becomes whether sororities will again occupy a place on Locust Walk house. Delta Delta Delta is the only sorority to ever live on the Walk when the chapter leased the Phi Kap house in 1994. Tri Delt left the house when the brothers returned last fall. "I'd like to see sorority houses on the Walk. They represent one third of the [female] population," said Panhellenic Council President Becca Iverson, a College senior and Chi Omega sister. "It's an honor to live on the Walk." Reikofski explained that the fraternity system is much older than the sorority system and therefore achieving what he called a "good gender balance" on the Walk is more difficult than just erecting more houses there. Barchi said he would support the "introduction of a sorority on the Walk" but he said that there are "no specific plans or proposals before us." Faust suggested that the widespread construction on campus might place the emphasis on areas other than Locust Walk. "I would expect Locust Walk to become less the focus of everyone's concern," Faust said. These days, "a lot of people are walking up and down Walnut Street."

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