Walk down Park Place and you'll see the manicured lawns and the clean front porches of the Honors Tutorial College house, the president's house and a professor's house. But at 15 Park Place, nestled between a row of neat buildings and the $60 million grandeur of Baker University Center, is the former Sigma Chi house. The house, once a mess of beer cans and Macy Gray tunes, is now a mess of a different kind ' unkempt and overgrown.
The Ohio University Board of Trustees recently agreed to purchase the house. It will cost $700,000, but OU plans to purchase it and fund all renovations with a $2 million gift from an anonymous donor. The property will be converted into a new international center.
It's about time something was done ' the house looks like it's about to slide off the hill into the pond behind it, and it is a blight on an area of campus that OU uses heavily for recruiting. While it's a shame that OU's president will never again be serenaded to sleep by the sounds of a raucous frat party, the university's intervention is certainly justified in this case. And, considering the state of finances, it's even better that OU is not relying on its own funds to carry out this project.
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University to buy, renovate, use crumbling fraternity house
