This summer, several problems, including roof leaks and mold growth, surfaced at the Greystone house regularly leased by Sigma Phi Epsilon on Southeast Missouri State University's campus.

Greystone Estate was built in 1921 and is located next to the Show Me Center on Sprigg Street. The house has been owned by the university since 1985 and has been used for housing for Southeast students ever since. Currently, Sigma Phi Epsilon is under a 10-year leasing agreement with the university and has been leasing the house regularly since 1999.

"That house is such an importance to this chapter," Aaron Clite, residence assistant and vice president of new member development for Sigma Phi Epsilon, said. "It's an importance to our alumni because they have put so much money, tens of thousands of dollars into renovating it."

Kathy Mangels, vice president for finance and administration at Southeast, said the university was working with the fraternity this summer to replace the floors and do some painting when workers discovered problems inside the house including leaks in the roof, leaks around windows, issues with water affecting the insulation in the roofing and drywall, issues with the plumbing, the heating and cooling system, or HVAC, and its ductwork.

"... this is a wood structure house so it's not like other university buildings where it's built to be a 50, 75, 100-year building. ... Over the years it's had some natural decay that you'd have on any residential house," Mangels said.

"It's kind of like your house, if you don't maybe see a water spot in the ceiling you may not know you've got some roof shingles missing and that you've got a water leak," Mangels said. "... Until we were starting to do some interior finish work, that again we had to take some drywall away, you started peeling back and started seeing behind the wall and, you know, you just keep discovering other problems and then, you know, you need to investigate."

Mangels said that along with the other problems in the house, mold was found within the drywall insulation, and it was attributed to water leaking in through the roof.

"There was mold in the building. We did test to determine what kind, and that was part of the concern of not having anyone in there because once you get the start of that and when it's in drywall and, you know, the way you get rid of it is you take out the drywall and you take out the insulation. So there was a concern with the mold there," Mangels said. "It was Stachybotrys mold, we did test it, so it was a concern and that's why we didn't allow -- that was one of the major factors [for the closing of Greystone] and we know that we can't get this abated, you know, take the drywall out, put new drywall in, paint and all of that -- we could not get that all done before school started in the time frame."

Stachybotrys is a genus of mold that can, in time, be toxic to people. This type of mold can cause irritation in the eyes, mucous membranes in the mouth, nose and throat, along with other symptoms like coughing and wheezing. In severe cases of long periods of exposure to the mold, some individuals' symptoms can worsen to the point of fever and shortness of breath.

Once the larger maintenance issues were discovered in Greystone, Kendra Skinner, the director of Residence Life, and other university officials decided that there was not nearly enough time for all of the structural and interior work to be completed before school started up again in August. At this point, the university notified the members of Sigma Phi Epsilon that the house would not be available for the fall semester.

"It has some major repairs that are needed that were discovered. Discovered, unfortunately, right before school started, so Residence Life had to work with the fraternity in order to find some other housing options and we needed to bring some other folks in," Mangels said. "We went in with a contractor thinking we're painting, we're doing those kind of things, now we're talking we need somebody who can look at the roof, who can assess HVAC, who can assess plumbing. That gets into some other engineering that needed to be done to determine just what is the extent of the repairs that are needed."

The building regularly houses around 20 members of Sigma Phi Epsilon and was closed about three weeks before the beginning of the fall semester.

The fraternity decided to try to place as many of the men who were originally supposed to live in the Greystone house in the fraternity's dorm building, or K Building. In an attempt to account for the extra 20 guys who needed a place to stay, all rooms in the dormitory that were planned to be singles for the semester were transitioned into double living spaces so two members could live in each room.

Even though the fraternity was able to transition its members into proper living situations without Greystone this semester, it still hopes to have the house back as soon as possible.

"We're frustrated obviously with it," said Clite, who added that the university only notified the fraternity about the leaks in the roof. "We want to get our guys back in there, obviously that's huge. That's a huge asset to our chapter and our alumni have put lots of money into the building, it has a great historical presence to us and we're just trying to hope it gets opened up soon. We're hoping that it's on track."

Mangels said it was better that the issues were discovered during the summer because the house was vacant. She said it would have been even more difficult to handle the issues during the school year because housing would have had to have been found in the middle of the semester and it would have been harder on the students involved.

Skinner said that there is no residence assistant or hall director that helps supervise and maintain Greystone or the building next to it called Shivelbine, which the university also owns, and that this could be one of the reasons why the house fell into a state of disrepair. Although she said that the students living in these houses do report things to the university and put in work orders to have small repairs done, nothing of this magnitude has come up before.

Skinner said that the university is taking this opportunity to assess Greystone fully while it's offline and do a complete "bottom to top" analysis of the building's potential issues.

"We're working this semester to really do the thorough assessment and get good cost estimates, actually bringing in those outside folks, whether it's the roofing engineer or the HVAC contractor so we get good numbers so we all know the magnitude of what we're dealing with, both in terms of the work needed and the cost so we can make good decisions together going forward," Mangels said.

Skinner said that the repairs on the house may take a considerable amount of time because the university will have to schedule appointments with contractors and decide what its best options are cost-wise to fix all of Greystone's problems.

Mangels said that there is no projected end date for the renovations since the university is still having the building assessed for further problems. After the assessment of the structure is complete and a cost analysis is created, the university will then decide what is the best plan for fixing the problems at hand. Considering these renovations will most likely be costly due to their magnitude, the university will have to decide which renovations are most important at this time and which improvements can wait to be dealt with in the future.

Clite said that once the renovations are complete the fraternity hopes to pick up where it left off and start to have its members live there once again, since it has been such an integral part of the organization for over a decade.

"That house ... it means a lot to this chapter. ... Not just to our current members but to our alumni and people in years past who have spent a lot of time in that house. And that's where they kind of grew up in their college career and they have a lot of great memories there. So it's always sad to not be able to have it back right now," Clite said. "... I hope we are fully operational come next fall, and I definitely look forward to seeing some of the new renovations."