Editor's Note: In this article it is written about the party aspect of a fraternity and how the neighbors of a community really did not like the fraternity in that neighborhood. It was mentioned yesterday that the media and others only see the party aspect of a fraternity and they do not see the charity work that we do, visiting sick kids in the hospital, raising money for those kids, and all the other good things to help out the world.

Free of Frat Parties, Neighbors Still Worry

Credit: New York Times

By ROBIN FINN

Published: January 21, 2007

Setauket

IF zero tolerance resides here, so be it. The homeowners of Fox Hollow Road blame the Stony Brook University fraternity that came to play — and not by suburbia’s rules.

Less than a year after it revved up the action ante on this dead-end street, the house at 9 Fox Hollow is empty: no more Zeta Beta Tau fraternity brothers, and drunken legions of not-so-Greek gods and goddesses of their acquaintance, raising the roof in the wee hours, neighbors say. No more testing the patience of this once-tranquil community to the point where a neighborhood association was formed expressly to retract the welcome mat and apply pressure on town officials to address their complaints about noise and constant traffic. Some wives said they feared — not fantasized; this is no Wisteria Lane — that their sleep-deprived husbands might take vigilante action against the collegiate revelers/renters incongruously in their midst.

What was once inconceivable became a recurring aggravation on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, residents say: the trill of cellphones, the slamming of car doors and the reverberation of inebriated farewells at 3 a.m. Kids urinating on shrubberies, vomiting on lawns, tossing their empties into hostile territory. The new normal? Party central.

“It was the so-called ‘Animal House,’ which means you can call me the party pooper,” said Paul Degen, the Brookhaven official who, as senior investigator for the town attorney’s office and goaded by the neighborhood’s ire, coordinated a multimonth investigation that culminated in a raid last month by town investigators and the Suffolk County Police.

The fun house was shut down for numerous nuisance and occupancy law violations, Mr. Degen said. In exchange for exiting, the renters were not prosecuted by the town. (Mr. Degen vowed not to be as understanding if he runs into the group again.) The absentee owners were fined.

When the violations are corrected and the flophouse floor plan is converted back to a single-family residence (the town says the renters made many unauthorized alterations), Mr. Degen predicts the house will be sold. Any peep of impropriety, he added, and he and his squad will be back. The neighborhood has suffered enough.

“The era of the town turning its back on this kind of stuff is not going to continue; it’s over,” Mr. Degen said, hinting that a reconfiguration of residency laws to protect residential neighborhoods from similar abuses is possible this year.

The only sign of recent occupancy at 9 Fox Hollow is nearly hidden in the trampled foliage by the front stoop: a forlorn aquarium with a red beer cup — not dead goldfish — floating inside. The illegal accessory apartment over the garage is empty, too. But the shellshocked neighbors across the street still block the entrance to their driveway with a chain; hard-learned habits die hard.

Perhaps they aren’t being paranoid, just protective. Why? Because of the adjacent threat that lurks at 11 Fox Hollow: another absentee owner and a houseful of male renters with ties to Stony Brook. This house, unlike the one at No. 9, has a valid rental permit, and the tenants are members of the university’s lacrosse team. A pre-Thanksgiving bash they had — called the Executive Party for its black-tie dress code and costing five bucks a head — brought a visit by the police and was the talk of the block. Not because the neighbors attended, but because it triggered memories of their extended duel with the half-dozen frat boys (as well as a few nonstudent residents) who had so boldly inhabited No. 9. Never fear; Mr. Degen is watching.

Now the frazzled homeowners of Fox Hollow, a tranquil enclave a few minutes’ drive from campus, are hoping winter break lasts forever. And that the street’s sudden Internet repute as a party-friendly fraternity row is fleeting.

Not just the residents’ sanity, but also their property values may depend on it. Hell hath no fury like a property owner who senses his equity going down the drain because of an influx of bad neighbors. Stony Brook, which does not provide housing to its 33 registered fraternities and sororities, says that it suspended Zeta Beta Tau (the fraternity whose members lived at No. 9), and that it cautioned the lacrosse players against any inappropriate behavior, but that mollified the locals only slightly. Neighbors want the university, which has no jurisdiction over off-campus housing hijinks, to put its foot down.

“It’s like being held prisoner in your own neighborhood,” said Ken Bencal, a former New York City police officer who moved to Fox Hollow 21 years ago with his wife, Peggy. “I used to say that even if I won the lottery, I’d still want to stay. We built our dream house here. Now I don’t know. All I can say is, when those kids moved out of No. 9, it felt like a gift from heaven.”

And when those kids moved into No. 11? They and their neighbors braced for purgatory. “You’ll never fit in,” Peggy Bencal said she told the students, “and we want you out.”

Posted By: Kevin Naranjo