Dear Reader,
I want to tell you about a place that has meant a lot to me since I have come to study at the University of Louisville. The place is the Triangle fraternity house, located on Louisville’s Greek row. It’s the blue one second from the end on the right. I want to tell you about this particular place so that you can understand how I feel about it.
When I walk up the front steps to the house I can smell the food that is being cooked at west, mixed with a bit of car exhaust, and a nearly inconspicuous bit of nature. As I walk up to the house I usually don’t look up, I know by heart what I would see anyway: blue painted house, small tree to the right and left, bit of shrubbery, old and very large tree to the right side of the house, porch swing and bench. Instead, I keep my eyes to the ground to make sure I step on the Delta T symbol, which has been crafted into the sidewalk, for good luck. Not sure why I think this will bring me good luck, no one ever told me it would or anything. It just feels right.
Once I reach the porch and the front door I pull that key that I earned out of my pocket and prepare for a fight with the lock. The lock, I guess from a lot of use, has never worked quite right. Well, it keeps the house locked, so it does its job, but it doesn’t always let people in. After a few moments of jerking and finagling the key in the lock the door opens to a dimly lit entrance room with an old chandelier hanging in front of you, the Triangle crest painted on the wall, a closed up fire place to the right, in front of the fire place some recently added couches, and a hallway dead ahead with stairs a little ways down to the right. To the left is the study room.
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| Study Room Table |
The study room is actually a dining room, but we are frat guys so it gets mostly used for studying. The table was made by Triangles that have since graduated, it is thick and sturdy and has a large Triangle symbol inlaid into it with slightly different wood from the rest of the table. The chairs for the table, up until recently, have been assorted and most somewhere between nearly broken and broken. Now there are new chairs that I must say are rather comfy. Up against the wall is another closed fireplace and to the sides of are two book shelves. Above the mantle of the fireplace is the most recent composite of current Triangle actives. On the wall facing the front of the house is a window which is often used to people watch people walking by, or to do our more favorite activity: watch people try to Parallel Park. You can often smell some recently eaten Sub Hub or other near campus food. This is also my favorite room in the house. I like this room so much because when I am in it I feel better about the hard classes I have to take at J.B. Speed. When I’m in this room there is almost always someone to help me with whatever class I need help with. I guess you could say it’s my educational safe place. The room brings me a lot of peace and good memories of long hours spent there learning with friends. But there is yet more to see.As you move into the next room from the door way in the study room, or by walking down the hallway and taking the first left, you enter the living/ hangout room. When coming in from the hallway there is a bulky TV on the left in the middle of the doorway to the study room, pictures of past Triangle composites covers all of the walls, yet another closed fireplace with a baseball bat that is spit in two on top of it. There are three heavily used couches that from a square with the TV and a coffee table in the middle. This is where we hang out, sometimes just to watch TV, but other times to tell old stories, learn more about Triangle from older members, or just use the area as a meeting spot for something we are about to head off to. This is where I go to relax and be surrounded by friends. In this room I feel like I belong. It is in this room that I met up with Phil Rensing and conducted an interview.
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| Living Room where interview took place. |
I was hoping Phil could tell me stories about his time at the house. He told me that he didn’t have any stories. Since Triangles aren’t allowed to live in the house, he said the only stories that he could tell were ones of hanging out watching TV, playing cards, tutoring someone, or about rush. Since none of these seemed to fit my agenda I let him pick whatever Triangle story he thought would be most fun to hear. He started the story off with “never ever where fruit scented sunscreen while out in the woods.” I knew right away this would be goofy. Phil goes on to tell me about a time when the brothers went canoeing. Phil himself was the one who put on some banana sunscreen. He said that while he was paddling down the river he “must have attracted every fly for at least a mile.” Phil told me how he tried to fight back against the fly invasion with nothing but his bare hands. The flies were so thick that he was actually managing to kill them this way. He looked at me with distant eyes, like someone remembering a war story, and continued on about how he tried to finish the trip in the canoe. Ultimately Phil abandoned ship; I smiled and commented, “Sounds like you can’t be a captain then if you won’t go down with your ship.” After the heat of battle, once he was safely in the water, Phil looked around and saw that all the other Triangles on the trip were having a hard time breathing from all the laughing they were doing. Phil reported that he couldn’t even form a coherent sentence himself to tell them to shut up. Luckily by this time they were near the end of their journey and Phil was able to just float the rest of the way. Phil concluded where he began with “and that is why you shouldn’t wear fruit scented sunscreen.” There is much more to see of the house. Two more stories up and a basement to talk about, along with finishing the first floor. However, I feel like I have hit the most important things about Triangle. I hope you can feel a little of what I feel when I think of the Triangle house.
All these parts of the house and the memories attached to them started somewhere, and are rooted to what it means to be a Triangle. The date that Triangle itself became an incorporated fraternity, and the day we celebrate each year as founders day is, April 15, 1907. While this may not seem like a big deal to anyone outside of Triangle, it means a lot to the people on the inside. Founder’s day is celebrated by getting dressed up and going out to a nice restaurant or winery, somewhere we can rent that holds a lot of people. When you’re there you get to sit and talk with some of the oldest and newest members of Louisville Triangle. We take this time to honor the Alumni who have done the most for our chapter over the past year, and honor the current active brothers who have showed excellence in one or several aspects of being a top notch brother or college student. This is also when you get to hear stories about what other Triangle chapters or alumni are doing. This is where I learned, I mean really understood, what it means to be in this organization of Triangle. Up until this point Triangle was just two things to me, help for school and fun time when work was done. The realization occurred after all the speeches were done, and the meal was finished. I watched as a few people starting pushing tables and chairs out of the way, the music starts up, and as I watch some of the most ridiculous spasmodic body movements, that I think we call dancing, it hit me. This will last my lifetime. I never really thought that Triangle would be able to help me after I got out of college, but after spending the night seeing and meeting several alumni, I began to think that I might never be without help and support ever again. And I think that’s what Triangle has really come to mean to me: a pillar of support in my life, now holding me up and helping me reach higher than I have in the past.
I later found that this new since of belonging I had was a part of the fraternity’s mission statement that was composed by a group of over one-hundred Triangles. That statement reads: “The purpose of Triangle shall be to maintain a fraternity of engineers, architects and scientists. It shall carry out its purpose by establishing chapters that develop balanced men who cultivate high moral character, foster lifelong friendships, and live their lives with integrity.” Fostering a lifelong friendship is something I had never really given much thought to. Up until high school I had spent at most three years in one place, but more commonly only one year. Moving so much isn’t the type of scenario that is conducive to fostering anything but a buddy or two for a while. But now I can see that could change through Triangle. Time passed after Founder’s day and I often caught myself thinking about what it means to be a lifelong friend. Surely you can’t stay close to someone forever. I’m only a year out of high school, but when I have chance encounters with some of the people I went to school with every day for four years, there is usually a surprised face, a quick interest into what either party has been doing, and then an awkward silence. Even though at one point in time we had nearly everything in the world to talk about, it seems like there is a great distance between the two of us. When I begin to worry about this happening between me and my friends in Triangle it nearly depresses me. But then I think about the study room, where so many of my good memories at the Triangle house have come from. I think of the Delta T in the middle of the table and, I remember what it means. The triangle, or more specifically the equilateral triangle, was chosen because it is the most structurally sound shape. No matter where you push on that triangle the force will be distributed equally and in the same way. I think about that and I hope that’s how my friendships among Triangles are. No matter how much time pushes up apart, our friendship will still be no less strained and complete balanced.
Sincerely,
Joshua Frasure
P.S.
Proposal:
Though I cherish the Triangle house, I wish it was in better condition. As it stands the house is not up to the codes required by the University for the Triangle house to be lived in. We aren’t even supposed to take naps there. In order to bring the house to a livable condition I know some, but not all that needs to be done. I know that it needs major renovation, with one of the top things on the list being a sprinkler system for fires. I hope that those reading this, that have the power to make the necessary changes, find a way to work with us at the Louisville chapter to make our chapter home livable. The ultimate goal being to create an environment in which enduring friendships may be formed, and there is little that is more bonding than living together.
When I personally think of Fraternities, I think of tradition. Tradition that would bond brothers who have been alumni for many years with the freshest of actives. Ideals are one of the first traditions I learned about when I pledged Triangle, and they are the most important. But ideals can be personal, slightly changing with each person and hard to bond over. However, a house, a place to live, a home for several generations can create a tradition of bonding. Bonding between those living there and those who have lived there. At the Louisville chapter we don't have this. Yes, we have a house, but because we are unable to live in it, there is a gap between those who lived there and those of us who can't. I have met and heard stories from some alumni who have lived at the house in the past. They seem to have fantastic stories to tell about their time there. I just want the chance for all the Triangles that come through Louisville to have a chance to bond in that way.
Work Cited:
"Purpose of Triangle." triangle.org. Triangle, n.d. Web. 17 June 2011.
triangle.org. Triangle, n.d. web. 17 June, 2011
Rensing, Phil. Personal Interview. 6 July. 2011.
