The charter of the Illinois Beta chapter of Phi Delta Theta at UChicago has been suspended by the national fraternity’s General Council. The council cited “repeated risk management violations” by the chapter as the reason for suspension in an email to the fraternity members obtained by the Maroon.
This action comes after the chapter was placed on probation last month for an alleged violation of the fraternity’s alcohol-free housing policy.
According to the email, the charter suspension restricts fraternity operation and takes away the chapter’s rights to “use the Fraternity name in association with any event or activity, and to display the name or symbols of the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity.”
The Phi Delta Theta International Fraternity clarified in a press release sent to the Maroon that the chapter’s operations “will cease until the Fraternity returns to the University of Chicago in 2028.”
Second-year Arav Saksena, who served as the chapter’s president prior to its suspension, told the Maroon that the chapter’s relationship with the national organization had been strained for some time, in large part due to the national group’s ownership of the fraternity house.
“They just had a lot of power over us,” Saksena said. “There were terrible terms for the people living in the house and a sort of pervasive house management.” He added that conversations they had had with the national organization about providing support for the chapter were “pretty bad.”
Saksena declined to provide more specific examples, and the Phi Delta Theta International Fraternity did not respond to questions about his claims.
Roughly a dozen brothers currently live in the fraternity house, according to Saksena, and the suspended members are navigating legal issues surrounding housing and leasing with the national organization while consulting alumni on the path forward. “The alumni are also vexed and trying to do stuff to save the chapter,” Saksena said. “We are all super close friends, and we don’t want to lose that connection, and that’s what we’re trying to protect.”
According to Saksena, the path ahead for the brotherhood is nebulous. Saksena hopes the path they choose going forward will help keep the brotherhood alive. “We would love to still, if not have social events, have brotherhood events.”
The fraternity was previously suspended in 2016, also due to “risk management policy violations.” At the time, the General Council mandated a “recolonization” of the chapter, a process involving hand-selection of new brothers by the national organization and local alumni following the graduation of all the suspended members.
Saksena estimated that the fraternity has been placed on suspension or probation 10 times in the last four years, citing risk management violations which, Saksena said, most frequently had to do with the national organization’s alcohol-free housing policy. Saksena told the Maroon that he views this suspension as permanent for the time being, although he speculated that it might change in the future.
“We are in great standing with the University, with the student government, and the Panhellenic [Council],” Saksena said. “All of this just came from an alcohol-free policy and just a terrible, toxic relationship that we had with [the national organization] rather than [from] Title IX or whatever else.” Saksena claimed that Phi Delta Theta was one of only three fraternities that had not faced a Title IX incident since its 2016 recolonizing.
Saksena was unsure about the national organization’s long-term plans for the fraternity house. “Maybe they’re trying to sell our house; I don’t know what that could look like.”
Saksena said that rebranding and re-chaptering under another organization, similar to Delta Upsilon’s rebranding as the “Iron Key Society” after the revocation of its charter in 2022, is “definitely not out of the picture.”
Editor’s note: Arav Saksena, the former president of Phi Delta Theta, is the Maroon’s chief financial officer. He was not involved in the reporting or editing of this article, beyond being interviewed.
