Law doesn’t keep sororities out of houses

Shipments of flesh-eating bananas from Costa Rica have infected the United States…. Shipments of flesh-eating bananas from Costa Rica have infected the United States. Necrotizing fasciitis, a possibly fatal, flesh-eating bacteria, has mutated to graft itself to the skin of fruits, notably the banana.

And a kidney-harvesting crime ring, which targets business travelers, has recently been operating in the New Orleans area.

These unbelievable situations are not limited to other areas of the world. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania prohibits a given number of unrelated females from residing in one house at a time, in order to prevent the establishment of brothels. This number of women, which varies by accounts, could supposedly create a bordello – in layman’s terms, a whorehouse.

The “brothel law,” as well as the others reported on the Internet site Hoaxbusters, is completely false.

The brothel law is an urban college myth so integrated into sorority thought that, when five separate sorority members from different Pitt sororities were asked why no sorority houses exist at Pitt, they all confidently replied something to the effect of, “It’s that brothel law, right?”

But there is no brothel law. While stringent zoning laws do exist, they are not gender-specific. Brothels are determined by what goes on in them, not by the number of women inhabiting the home, according to Pennsylvania laws on prostitution and brothels.

The myth might stem from the general hype sorority women receive from a male-dominated society, according Anita Triggs, Pitt’s fraternity and sorority life coordinator.

“I think it has to do with old-school mentality,” Triggs said, describing the perspective on women gathering and living in a communal setting.

“And once a rumor starts to circulate, it’s a lot easier to believe the rumor than to actually go out and investigate the real reason,” she added.

But while the law might be fictitious, fraternity houses most definitely exist at Pitt, while Amos Hall and part of McCormick Hall provide the only on-campus housing for any Pitt sorority.

“Way back in the day,” Triggs explained, the fraternities’ national organizations went under contract with Pitt to build their existing homes.

“It’s possible that, at that time, sororities’ national organizations weren’t prepared to do the same or didn’t want to,” she added. “There’s so much liability assumed, and it’s such a great expense.”

“At the time that those [fraternity] houses were built and the leases were signed, each national organization contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the facilities that were built,” Triggs said.

Triggs added that, if one organization receives a suite or a house, all the other sororities must have one as well.

“If there’s some kind of movement toward sororities actually having housing, it would have to be a collective agreement,” she said.

After the movement was underway, the sororities would enter discussions with Pitt to find the space to build.

“Quite honestly, here in Oakland, I can’t imagine where they would go,” Triggs said.

Having off-campus housing also creates a safety issue for the sororities. Being in centralized, security-monitored suites gives added protection to the women living with their sororities, Triggs explained.

“To be on campus is a situation that works to our advantage,” said Marcy Megella, secretary of the Panhellenic Executive Board. “People feel safe. I personally feel much better living [in Amos] than I would in an off-campus house.”

Megella also commented on the expense involved in hiring a den mother and a chef, as well as the complication of complying with rules set by the sororities’ national organizations to have sorority houses.

“Not once since I’ve been here have any of the sororities made a real issue about wanting to have a house. It’s not something of high priority on the radar screen for them,” said Triggs, who came to Pitt in July after serving as Pennsylvania State University’s assistant director of fraternity and sorority life.