Letter from Sean Wagner
Monday, October 13, 2025
In the latest issue of The Scroll, you will read about bold leadership from Phi Delta Theta to create and implement the alcohol-free housing policy that went into effect on July 1, 2000.
In February 1997, when the policy was announced, I was a high school junior who wasn’t sure where I was going to college, let alone if I was going to join a fraternity. Over two and a half years later, on September 12, 1999, I was initiated into the Pennsylvania Mu Chapter of Phi Delta Theta at Widener University. Ten months later, the alcohol-free housing (AFH) policy was implemented, and while we were a group that wasn’t quite ready for this change, I had the opportunity to serve as Social Chairman during our first “dry” semester, then as chapter president in 2001. I didn’t join Phi Delt for alcohol, but it was a big part of what my chapter had to offer at the time, and I wasn’t in those roles because I was a transformational leader, but because someone had to “step up and step in.” My years in the chapter at that pivotal time helped shape me into the leader I am today and taught me valuable lessons, including change management, scenario planning, coalition building, and the importance of leading by example.
You’ll read in these pages that this policy has drastically changed Phi Delta Theta for the better, and it has, but that doesn’t mean it came easy for those who lived through it. From a policy implementation standpoint, resources were spent on determining where someone could and couldn’t bring a beer, but much less on assessing the impact on the experience of current members and how to attract future members who wouldn’t be rolling into our house for parties on the weekends.
Over time, our chapter decided to move into the dorms and join student organizations to find new members who were more interested in our mission than our social calendar, but not before shrinking and regrouping years later. This was an experience that Phi Delta Theta experienced as a whole by dropping by as much as 16% in members and 10% in chapters in our first decade of AFH. Over time, the ingenuity and hard work of our brothers, recruitment strategies to build personal connections while promoting a values-based leadership, and the introduction of the “Greatest Version” brand launched in 2011 have helped make Phi Delta Theta what it is today and substantively a different organization now twice its size since in 2000.
Today, we recognize that the policy isn’t perfect, but it effectively helps chapters prioritize their values, resulting in our houses being cleaner and statistically safer than those of our peers. Fortunately, the hard work due to the cultural shift is done, but that’s not to say chapter leaders today have it easy. Quite to the contrary, challenges with keeping their members safe remain, along with topics like Phiekia education, mental health, and everything that society projects on college campuses, making the chapter president’s job arguably harder than it’s ever been. My belief, as someone who was part of the challenges of the change, is that its results put us in a better position to support our brothers today and ensure Phi Delta Theta’s legacy for years to come.
Fraternally,
