Primarily known as an arts district, downtown Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row may soon be home to its first fraternity house.
With community outreach as a major goal, journalism freshman Mike Bartelt is spearheading a campaign to create a different kind of fraternity, calling his club “The Downtown Thinking Man’s Association.”
“National fraternity organizations historically started out as academic clubs and slowly progressed into social fraternities,” Bartelt, 18, said.
Bartelt and 20 to 30 other students got together and formed an interest group in hopes of creating a fraternity downtown, which Bartelt said would benefit the community and the university.
With the influx of students over the last year sporting Greek apparel on the Downtown campus, now is a good time to bring Greek life to the campus and community, said Joey Amonett, chairman of the Downtown student government Greek life committee.
In order to establish a fraternity, the group must first function as a club so they can demonstrate to fraternity organizations their ability to organize social and community service events, Bartelt said.
Cassandra Aska, assistant dean of students on the Downtown campus, said in an email that the process of establishing a fraternity could be time-consuming but could become a reality with enough support.
“If there is a active group of interested students that are willing to work with an equally committed national organization, there will be very few obstacles,” she said.
A lot of majors on the Downtown campus deal with nonprofit work and community engagement, and Bartelt said these are students who want to change the world through true civic concern.
“Those majors parallel perfectly with the ideals that Greek life tries to promote,” Bartelt said.
Aska said the ASU Greek community can play an active role in supporting student success.
“Greek members can reap the benefits of belonging to a vibrant, growing student community: academic achievement, service to the community, focus on diversity, leadership development, strong networking opportunities and a strong connection to ASU traditions,” Aska said in an email.
Amonett said a fraternity would greatly benefit the community and Bartelt’s plan could be successful.
“Community outreach is obviously a major goal, so I think the community will be receptive of it,” he said.
Bartelt said the group hopes to colonize with a fraternity by the end of the academic year and charter and open the fraternity by his junior year.
Having a fraternity house in downtown Phoenix is something that shouldn’t be viewed negatively by the community or the university, he said.
“My vision would be to reach out to all students, make it something everyone can get involved in,” Bartelt said. “The work is going to be tough, (but) we have the support. There’s no turning back for us.”
Contact the reporter at maxfield.barker@asu.edu
