Second Ward is becoming EaDo…
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I graduated in 2005 and that was the Sigma Nu house when I was in school. Times have changed, I would not expect Greek housing to provide a party atmosphere, our Greek organizations cost a fraction of what they do at other schools. When I was in my chapter’s leadership 20 years ago we could not afford to even discuss a non-BYOB party, and the upkeep on a mansion gets crazy.
One of the problems we have is we don’t have any lower grade real estate on the non-third ward side of the school that attract the kind of bars that create the college atmosphere. We have the Den’s strip center, and the old Calhoun Roof Top strip center that regularly chokes out their tenants with rent increases. Everything else UH has eminent domain-ed into parking lots. Old Chinese Star known for $4 pitchers - parking lot, Pizza Hut, which also became Chinese Star 2.0 - parking lot. The only reason The Calhoun Roof Top strip center exists is because they fought the eminent domain claim in court.
When I was in school there were several student rental houses on Wheeler that hosted the best parties… Metro eminent domain-ed them.
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That’s how most college campuses are… Chapel Hill for sure…
Nothing will improve until Third Ward improves…
The Deed Restrictions are the biggest issue. Houston Admins do not want Third Ward to have any relationship with UH.
Edit: Are you saying that this used to be Sigma Nu’s house? Where did Sigma Chi live before this one? This mansion was right across Bayou Oaks.
My Dad was a Sigma Nu advisor when they built that house there on Calhoun.
They lost that at some point, and I guess Sigma Chi took it over.
SAE used to have a house on MacGregor.
SAE was thrown off campus and lost that house in the mid-90s when they had a party where a girl allegedly got her finger bitten off.
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Sigma Chi had a house in Bayou Oaks until Sigma Nu lost their charter in 2007. Sigma Chi bought the house from them. Sigma Nu re-chartered in 2013.
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EaDo is East Downtown, aka, Old Chinatown…Eado ends at the RR tracks
As long as UH makes it optional for freshman to live on campus and there is no off-campus fraternity and sorority housing, the Greek system at UH will always suffer. Off campus housing has more to do with the fraternity or sorority alumni than with UH. My guess is the Greek organizations would prefer to live off-campus and have no funding from UH, and thus, not be subject to any university rules or code of conduct.
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Most of the national fraternities internal rules and codes of conduct are as stringent or more stringent as UH’s. Several of our Frat’s that have lost their charters due to hazing or alcohol lost their charters from their national headquarters not the university. A lot of “frat parties” at other universities will have a vendor providing the alcohol and security for liability reasons. The national insurance is expensive enough as it is. When I was in school 20 years ago we worked to maintain a 40 man chapter, pre-covid we were over 100. It has improved but it takes time. I don’t know what its like these days but Bayou Oaks is better then nothing, we don’t have a natural Greek row and never have, the houses were scattered about before Bayou Oaks.
The infrastructure for Bayou Oaks would be enough if it was just home for Greek Organizations instead of being an housing complex for both Greek and Non-Greek
There’s enough space for it, but I doubt they would ever do it
Sigma Chi was on MacGregor in the late 80s.
I just noticed that Sam Houston has ten frats but not many sororities. ??
I would think Big 12 would elicit more interest in Greek organizations.
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Lovely story.
Unknown quote:
“These are the kind of gentlemen we want at our university”
Ho, Ho, Ho
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Idk… ask Hank Hill… 
This is my point with Cinci counting Dayton’s population as its metro area AND also counting those people as Dayton’s metro area…
Arlington would fall in the same category because they are part of the DFW metro area… shouldn’t be vice versa…
Is that house now a private family residence?
It is.
We are NOW in the very exclusive P4 club…I hope we start acting like the other schools in the group WE CHOOSE to be a part of…even if that means Texas politicians have to get OUT of our way (ie Whitmire).
Looks like covid killed off the momentum we were making 2015+ but we can get it back but right now we are the sole P4 outlier…even UCF and UC have more of a traditional campus core than us…and we are 40 years OLDER than UCF!
We got booted from the SWC/Big 12 conference because we were a non traditional commuter school with mediocre fan support.
Those who fail to learn from their mistakes are destined to repeat them
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No.
The girls practice formal rush where they have the parties and the weird dances over a series of days and each day they will receive an invite to the houses that are interested in them, what is really happening is they know how many girls are going through and approximately how many girls each chapter will get, when I was in school the quota was 50 or 60, and because it’s done formally if all chapters are not at their quotas they can stop other sororities from chartering. UH usually has something similar again when I was undergrad we had 6 sororities and 9-10 fraternities and it is more now. The girls are way more organized and help each other out more than the boys.
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