The number of University students staying in on-campus Greek chapter houses during Hurricane Gustav is unknown, but individual sororities and fraternities began preparing for the storm earlier in the week.”The organizations own their own houses, so we did not ask them to tell us exactly what was going to happen,” said Angela Guillory, Greek Life director. The University has 11 sorority houses and 17 fraternity on campus, which house 869 Greeks during the fall 2008 semester, Guillory said.Individual chapters make decisions about closing their houses and making emergency plans, Guillory said. Greek Life does help with general guidelines and plans, but most chapters began preparing for Gustav before receiving instruction from the University.”They were absolutely being proactive, which was great,” Guillory said. “They don’t really wait for the University to start doing things.”Guillory said the Greek community learned from experiences when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005. “Post Katrina, they looked at … what’s going to happen if we do have families, and what that’s going to look like,” Guillory said.This time around, fraternities and sororities have taken into consideration issues relating to housing family members of the opposite gender, which wasn’t considered in every case when Katrina struck, Guillory said.Guillory said the Greek houses do not have alternative means of power and are on the same electricity grid as neighboring houses. After Katrina, these houses had power restored two days after the rest of the University.Guillory advised Greeks evacuating on-campus houses to bring with them any valuables, and she said individual chapters are keeping count of their members both evacuating and staying on campus to communicate developments with the storm.Guillory said the Greek community will provide any assistance asked of them by the University or state, including providing available beds to those in need.”This will certainly be a test, but I feel they are more prepared this time,” Guillory said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen with this hurricane, but if they do rely on the Greek community to provide any help, we will.”
—-Contact Nicholas Persac at [email protected]