In the basement of a freshman dorm, far from the lavish houses that occupy frat row, three students committed to brotherhood and public service planned on how to keep their fraternity alive.
Alpha Delta is a fraternity who has chapters all over the country, including one here at The University of Maine, but due to a rebranding and the Covid-19 pandemic, they were on the verge of shutting down just two years ago.
William Barry, a former president of Alpha Delta and current risk manager and advisor to the president, oversaw the fraternity while they were on the brink of being shut down.
“For most of the 2024-2025 school year, we went from five brothers, to four, to three, which was the scariest. We were basically given an ultimatum by student life to get above this number or you’re going to get shut down by the end of the semester. And by the end of the semester, we got to five… So when I took over, we were coming in at that bare minimum,” said Barry.
Low membership was not a new thing for Alpha Delta – historically they haven’t had membership rates that match the other fraternities on campus. However, their split from their national identity, Alpha Phi Omega, due to differences in how they thought the fraternity should operate, stunted their ability to recruit.
“Alpha Phi Omega was, I mean, it was the premier service organization at the time. It was the Eagle Scout fraternity, everyone kept saying. And to go from having a reputation to being this brand new frat with no name, it really caused people to just not know who we are and what we do, even though we were the same organization as APO of old was, people just didn’t know that,” said Barry.
Greek life took a big hit when they shut down the campus for the 2020-2021 school year, and Alpha Delta was no exception. The rebrand combined with the shut down made it so that the history of the fraternity was practically wiped from campus. Even against those odds, there were a few brothers who didn’t want to give up on their mission.
This past year, Barry and the rest of the Alpha Delta brothers put everything they had into a rush campaign – their selling point was the brotherhood you would become a part of and the service that you would do for the community.
“Our three key pillars are brotherhood, leadership, and service. We’re more than just friends. We’re more than just guys in an organization. We are brothers,” said Barry.
And the pitch worked, these past two semesters they have had the two biggest recruitment classes in the organization’s history and now have upwards of 20 members.
The current president, Rocco Scott, a first-year kinesiology major, was a member of last semester’s recruitment class, despite having no plan of joining Greek life.
“Me and my friend Chase, he also is from Reedfield, we came up here together, we went to the same high school, and we weren’t really interested in Greek life, but we kind of wanted to check it out. And we had this big idea of being able to shape a frat to our image. And so we kind of looked around to see if there were any frats that maybe were struggling to stay afloat. And we found, he lives in Somerset, so we found Alpha Delta off of a random Rush event,” said Scott.
It took little time for Scott to take a liking to Alpha Delta, but shortly after becoming a member he wanted to get more involved.
“I was the president of my pledge class, and so it was kind of like a natural movement for me to take that role. And I’ve kind of been in leadership roles for my whole life … I was student body president for two years in my high school, and then I was captain of my football team and stuff like that,” said Scott.
He has a strong vision for what he wants for the fraternity in the future as it grows.
“We’re already working on taking on more cool service projects. We already do bananas in the foghorn, but we want to kind of diversify that, because it kind of ends up we’re doing the same thing every year. So, we’re working on a late-night local, which would be like a drunk bus to drive people around, designated driver. We’re just looking at more fun things we can do, but also just stuff for camaraderie.”
The biggest thing he wants for the fraternity is for it to move out of the basement that housed their resurrection.
“We’re trying to get at least a satellite house for next year, because I think that’ll be huge. One of the biggest turn-offs, I think, is that we’re in the basement of Somerset as our main place, so I think five of us are looking to get a house that at least the brothers could go hang out in and just have more fun activities for us to do,” said Scott.
While the frat has only just escaped being shut down, they have nothing but plans and optimism for spreading their mission and service as far as they can.
