ZTA selects house for coming schoolyear

Zeta Tau Alpha will soon have a home to call its own, within only a few months of arriving at Penn.

ZTA will house 18 women this fall at the former Phi Sigma Sigma house at 40th and Walnut streets, ZTA extension director Marlene Conrad said.

According to John Zimitski, property manager for the house, ZTA and Phi Sig are still negotiating the lease agreement.

Conrad said the house was chosen for being “spacious and in a great location.”

The organization plans to renovate and furnish the house before ZTA members move in this fall.

College freshman and ZTA member Rama Hamarneh is looking forward to living in the house, despite not having been inside yet.

“You get a lot closer to girls in the sorority you wouldn’t get to know otherwise,” she said.

On the other hand, Wharton sophomore and ZTA member Amelia Wilson, who won’t be living in the house, said that choosing to live with the sorority is “a big decision to make, not really knowing the girls in the pledge class very well.”

Like many new members she knows, Wilson already had housing arrangements before she rushed ZTA.

According to Conrad, ZTA is already looking for a more permanent home for the new chapter.

“It’s our understanding that the Phi Sigma Sigma chapter will be returning to campus in a few years and will be moving back into their house,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Penn’s Phi Sig chapter closed due to pressure from their national organization over low recruitment numbers. A statement from the Panhellenic Council around the time of the chapter’s closure stated Panhel’s support of Phi Sig returning to campus as soon as 2014.

Phi Sig members are still currently living at the house.

ZTA is likely to lease the house for a few years, Office of Student Affairs/Fraternity and Sorority Life director Scott Reikofski explained in a previous interview.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.