Winter/Spring 2025 Newsletter | Triangle Building & Housing Corporation Social.Professional.STEM
Building & Housing Corporation
BUILDING TRIANGLE’S FUTURE
When Will Our House Be Done? Don Hatfield msu88, Director – TBHC
The Chairman of the TBHC asked me recently to write an article about our success with the Illinois Chapter Home remodel. To gather some details, I reached out to our Executive Director. He seemed to disagree, as he gave me a list of the things that weren’t done! Time Out! It’s nice to claim success, but at the same time I felt conflicted. If you’re truly viewing this “through the Transit”, not all aspects of the original Illinois project are done. For instance, the “Sun Deck” has turned out to be much more expensive and requires some serious engineering and construction to finish it to code and make good on the agreed design. As with all projects, you find new things that can throw your timeline and budget off track. How can I write about success when it’s not 100% complete? Is it possible to reconcile these diverging points of view? Or do I present this with two different points of view? I saw something different. They are both right. The fact is a Chapter Home is never “done”. The men in our Chapters are never done working on themselves and the collective chapter. If we do our job right as Triangles, a man is never done developing and improving. The TBHC knows and understands that the physical Chapter Home is in the same boat. In this world of HGTV home makeovers that seem to take “30 minutes”, it’s easy to assume the timeline and budget will work out, and we all arrive at a happy ending with everything as we imagined. TBHC exists to take care of that Chapter Home so our Brothers can spend their time and effort on growing and strengthening their Brotherhood.
Instead of just focusing on the specific case of the Illinois Chapter Home, let’s review what it takes to get a house of your own. Then we’ll get to the Illinois Chapter Remodeling Project later in this newsletter. Let’s Start at the Beginning – A Strong Chapter The main focus that all of Triangle must keep its collective eyes on is the Member – not only the Active (undergraduate) and keeping that focus on our members as they become Alumni. Without our members, we have no Fraternity. Triangle creates and cultivates an environment in which friendships may be formed and strengthened. This is the true core of our Chapters, whether they have a Chapter Home or not. Once we begin to look at the services and tools to foster and strengthen that environment, we quickly realize that all members need some place to live. If you’re a budding Colony, it doesn’t take long to realize that everyone has to pay to live on/near campus. Normally, that money goes to the university or landlords. The Chapter can redirect those otherwise-spent resources to themselves, and the Chapter Home is the vehicle that allows the Chapter to not only have a place for its Members, but a place for the future members and Alumni to gather and foster its environment. Those resources would still be spent elsewhere with the university or a landlord, why not channel them to serve our needs as a Chapter? As Engineers, Architects and Scientists, we rejoice in digging into the details and solving problems. We also understand that Continued on pg. 2