After years of low rush numbers and campus involvement, Sigma Nu fraternity is no longer an active member of Northwestern’s Greek life.
Due to a dearth of members and severe financial difficulties, Sigma Nu’s president, Ian Dew-Becker, decided to suspend his fraternity for the 2004-05 school year.
“We will not be living in the house and we won’t have any organized events or rush,” said Dew-Becker, a Weinberg junior. “We will not be an active member of the Interfraternity Council.”
IFC, the umbrella group overseeing most of the sanctioned fraternities on campus, does not yet know of Dew-Becker’s decision.
“From our perspective the frat exists unless we hear otherwise from them,” said IFC president Mitch Holzrichter, a Weinberg senior and the business manager for Students Publishing Co., which oversees The Daily. “Sigma Nu is on campus this year and rushing, and there is no change in their status.”
Dew-Becker admitted his fraternity’s official standing with NU is “unclear” and he is working with alumni to determine how to proceed.
Dan Maslauski, president of Evanston’s chapter of the Sigma Nu Alumni Association, said that his organization is “working closely with the university administration on a positive future for Sigma Nu at Northwestern.”
When Sigma Nu decided to take a hiatus last May, the house had 20 active members and had pledged only four new ones last year, the fewest of any IFC fraternity. Dew-Becker said the fraternity was already in trouble last year and was not organized enough to draw in new pledges.
“It was a lack of effort on our part in terms of general organization,” he said. “Plus we didn’t have enough people rushing the new pledges.”
One of last year’s freshmen pledges, Robin Brusen, said the fraternity’s problems stemmed from members partying too much and not paying enough attention to “fraternity stuff, like philanthropy and just cleaning up after one another.”
Brusen, now a McCormick sophomore, said Sigma Nu’s members found themselves in a cycle of revelry and apathy.
“The kids in the house simply did not do what they needed to maintain a fraternity,” he said. “Their main priorities were drinking and partying and maybe if they had enough energy the next morning they would actually do some work.”
Brusen said he realized how poor the fraternity’s situation was when a group of alumni came to speak to the house last year.
“Lets just say the house had a pretty large debt towards the liquor store,” Brusen said.
Although Sigma Nu has some notoriety for members’ heavy partying, according to several Greek insiders, Holzrichter emphasized that the fraternity is not in any trouble with the university, and Sigma Nu still will maintain the lease on its house. The fraternity has not decided what to do with the house when members move off campus.
Although fraternities have regained their status and flourished after temporarily disbanding in the past, Dew-Becker is not optimistic.
“You can’t make a fraternity out of 10 people,” he said.
Dew-Becker said alumni, not the current members, would rush new members if the fraternity were to come back to NU.
“We would have our alumni coming in and rushing people, which isn’t really a situation which any of us would be interested in, since the idea is that you join a house because you like the people in it,” he said. “I don’t really know what the process would be but I wouldn’t be part of it.”
Reach Julia Neyman at [email protected].
