23 students displaced as fraternity house burns

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

Amherst firefighters battle the fire that destroyed the Delta Upsilon fraternity house on Oct. 5. (Stan Sherer photo)

n Oct. 5 fire that rapidly destroyed the Delta Upsilon fraternity house at 778 North Pleasant St. put 23 students in temporary housing on the eve of the Columbus Day weekend. The blaze began around 2 p.m. Within an hour the building was disintegrating.

     None of the fraternity's members was reported injured.
"There were a few members that were in the facility when [the fire] actually started," said Michael Wiseman, director of Greek Affairs. "A lot of them left with just what was on their backs."

     One student, whose family was in the process of moving, reported losing everything he owned because he was storing his possessions at the fraternity. Some of the group's new members, who hadn't yet moved into the house had property there, as well, Wiseman said.

     "So it has impacted more than just 23 students," he said. "They'd been spending money on the house to improve it, and they lost computers, textbooks, and class notes. They have to play the Survivor game, and it's not going to be like it is on television."

     The Lincoln Campus Center Hotel housed the fraternity members over the weekend, while the University arranged to house students at the University Motor Lodge until the end of the semester, Wiseman said. The students are free to make other off-campus arrangements as the opportunity arises.

     "Probably most of the membership are moving in the University Motor Lodge for the rest of this week and next week," he said Tuesday. "Some of them are going to start looking now for the rest of the year. They have a place to stay, and that gives them time to either find something now or for when the spring semester starts.

     "Off-campus places are at a premium. In the spring, we do lose a few on-campus places to transfers and withdrawals, so maybe a few of the younger students could move into the dorms.

     "There have been offers from around the University community. Other fraternities have offered spare rooms. At least one staff person has called to say that she has space."
Wiseman said fire fighters reported that a candle may have caused the blaze and that one of the students believes it was a short in an electric fan. In either case, the fire department reported some of the smoke detectors in the house had been covered with plastic to prevent them from going off.

     Although Wiseman said the fraternity had been sanding floors and walls and varnishing and painting, and that this could account for the covered detectors, he also said local press reported that a weekend inspection of other fraternity and sorority houses by the Amherst Fire Department and staff from the Office of Environmental Health and Safety found at least two similar violations.

     Delta Upsilon owns the land the house stood on, Wiseman said, so if the fraternity can rebuild within two years, it can maintain its current zoning there. After two years, the zoning would lapse, he said, and it might be difficult to get permission to have a fraternity there again.

     "With this being Homecoming Weekend, many of the alumni were already planning a trip here," Wise-man said, "so they're going to use this opportunity to assess the situation. They're looking at building a facility that is actually intended to be a fraternity house."
In the meantime, the chapter will have to find another space to build community.

     "It will continue operating as a chapter and have meetings in a campus space like a Campus Center room," Wiseman said. "Our Student Union building is full to the seams.
"They're asking, 'How do we stay together and how do we maintain what we've had living together now that we're living apart?'

     "They would hang out in each other's rooms and borrow things from each other's stuff. They know each other's secrets. It is in some ways like a family. Some of these members have been living together for two years in this intimate environment.

     "They're feeling bewildered and confused and lost, and ... they'll be going through a grieving process. I told them that they need to be aware that they are going through this process and that they need to ... support each other and to ask for help.

     "As big as UMass is, it's times like this that make you realize how small a community this can be because of the response. Even people who are just doing their jobs, they're giving above and beyond their jobs. I can't say enough about the Dean of Students Office and their staff. If there is a good side to this, it's seeing your colleagues come together to help the students out. It's really reassuring."