Ellington

Walk into the stereotypical fraternity house on an early Saturday morning and you may stumble over wreckage from the night before. But the Lambda Chi Alpha house at UTC—even on weekends—is spotless. The furniture is dusted, and not a single dirty dish is left in the sink.

Though nearly every wall in the house is covered with photographs of grinning members, you might never know this is the stomping ground for more than 60 college boys. Members say such propriety is just a small example of how Lambda Chi in Chattanooga is turning common perceptions of ‘frat’ boys on its head.

“A lot of frats get a bad rap… people think we are just a drinking club,” says Josh Reed, vice president of UTC’s chapter of Lambda Chi, a national fraternity founded in 1909. “Ever since the movie ‘Animal House’ came out, we have been fighting the stigma.”

So the Lambda Chi brothers reach out to the community through public service campaigns like next month’s Great Strides Walk, supporting the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

One of few Greek organizations at UTC undertaking two large-scale, annual community service projects, Lambda Chi raises thousand of dollars for charity. “We didn’t come in here just wanting to party,” notes Reed, a sophomore business major. “It’s not all fun and games. The purpose of a fraternity is to make you a better man, and instill values you can take with you the rest of your life.”

On April 17, Lambda Chi will host a campus-wide event, hoping to increase awareness about cystic fibrosis and encourage students to participate in the Great Strides Walk the following day. Following the summer break, the fraternity will spend several months collecting money and food to support the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.

Lambda Chi hosts dozens of competitions during Chop Week, which pits UTC Greek organizations against one another in competition to support the Food Bank. His fraternity gave 9,754 pounds of nonperishable goods to the Food Bank last year—the most the organization collected for the charity in more than a decade. “Sororities do watermelon relays and build sculptures out of cans,” explains Reed. “Brothers will go down to the food bank and help them package food. They don’t have much help there so we go down and do whatever we can.”

Lambda Chi hasn’t always had its priorities in order, leaders admit. Five years ago, a True Brotherhood Initiative was launched, aiming to offset its partying image and refocus on core values: loyalty, duty, respect, personal courage and character. “Fraternities were in the public eye for negative things,” says Sean Dunn, the current president of Lambda Chi, who plans to start medical school in Memphis this fall. “It was a call back to the values we stand for.”

Today, the fraternity is looking for students who want to make leadership, academic success and community engagement priorities, adds Brett Young, vice president of internal relations at Lambda Chi. UTC students rushing to join Lambda Chi know what will be required of them if they join. They can expect to make friends, but they can also expect to get their hands dirty.