Teke Life: Ordinary and Extraordinary

You can look at any Greek organization from two points of view: the social, which is everything we do, and the financial, which is the infrastructure that makes it all possible. They are both essential; no fraternity can last long by emphasizing one while letting the other slide.

If we considered only the financial, we might as well be a boarding house with a meal plan. If we considered only the social, then we would have no future as an organization, not even a social one, and our members would leave with some very strange ideas about the way the big world works.

Of the social options at Georgia Tech, we believe that TKE provides the best opportunity for forming lifelong friendships.

First, TKE is as diverse a fraternity as there is at Georgia Tech...we come from every background you can imagine...but membership is still a mutual agreement. In TKE you choose your company when you choose to pledge and later when you help choose others to ask to join.

Second, our large facilities and many activities (athletics, trips, parties, philanthropy etc.) encourage close interaction among members throughout their entire undergraduate sentences at Georgia Tech. 5th year seniors live next to 19-year-old sophomores who have just brought home their first paychecks from their co-op jobs. The relationship between generations is that of friendship and common interests, not what you usually find in the dorms.

In the TKE House, you are part of an unbroken series of handshakes that goes back to our first members, who were veterans attending Georgia Tech on the G.I. Bill after World War II. You are part of something that was here a long time before you were born and will be here for you to return to for the rest of your life.

In financial terms, the Beta-Pi of TKE is a big, successful "co-op" for housing, meals, and social activities. The Chapter takes on legal obligations on behalf of its members and expects each member to live up to his oath of initiation and meet his fair share of those obligations.

Our goal is to make possible the social aspect of the fraternity at the lowest cost we can manage since our chapter never has been or will be a "rich kid's" fraternity.

We budget carefully, offer payment plans, and collect like any serious small business. Over the years, our Chapter has done this pretty well. This is why have a house, heat, water, light, food, parties, etc. how we pay to participate in intramurals and other activities at Georgia Tech, and how we provide other benefits to our members.

Life in the Chapter can be "intense"...intensely active, intensely fun, sometimes intensely demanding and frustrating. And though many "old" guys are ready to move on by the time they graduate, they find the transition to life in an apartment difficult because, for the first time in years, they are surrounded by anonymous neighbors instead of their best friends.

They miss simply walking down the hall into an open room, sitting down on the couch, and starting a conversation for no particular reason. They miss walking downstairs and joining their friends in a game of volleyball or basketball. They miss pre-game and kickball and leaving the House together to go to concerts. And when they talk with co-workers who lived in the dorms or in apartments off campus or in chapter houses that could not hold most of their members, the differences in their experiences become even more obvious.

Life in our Chapter House is extraordinary. There is nothing else like it at Georgia Tech, certainly not in a "residence hall". There will be nothing else like it in your life.