Frat Drops Lake Place Plans

Thanks to the pleas of neighbors weary of sexual harassment, Lake Place will continue to be home to just two Yale fraternities, not three.

A third would-be frat, Chi Psi, withdrew an application to the Board of Zoning Appeals Monday night, canceling its request to move to the residential area after various members of the community protested.

Eighteen neighbors from six properties on Lake Place had submitted letters objecting to the potential move, many claiming they face regular sexual harassment and disrespectful behavior from the members of the two fraternities currently on their street.

In the original application, Chi Psi had asked for a special exception to allow a seven-bedroom fraternity house at 13 Lake Pl. (pictured above) for a maximum of 12 individuals in a middle-density residential area. It also requested a variance to allow a fraternity on land not owned by a university. New Haven Holdings, LLC would own the property.

The City Plan Department’s advisory report recommended denying the application, even before the withdrawal, primarily due to ​“substantial neighborhood concerns.”

Delta Kappa Epsilon already inhabits 73 – 79 Lake Pl. Alpha Delta Phi is at 23 Lake Pl.

Yale’s administration had ​“concerns” about the proposed project, according to a letter from Lauren J. Zucker, associate vice president for New Haven affairs. Fraternities are organizations independent from the university, she wrote, and Lake Place’s two fraternities have already garnered negative reports of noise and litter on their block.

The other letters came primarily from students at Yale Law School who are fed up with having fraternities as neighbors.

Four female law school students who live on Lake Place wrote a letter saying that adding a new fraternity would increase the sexual harassment they already experience.

“Members of these fraternities and their many male guests make frequent lewd sexual comments and gestures to women, including us, as we walk by,” they wrote. ​“When walking home, on repeated occasions, we have been asked to perform acts of oral sex by unknown members of these fraternities. On numerous occasions, members of a fraternity have even sexually harassed us while we were in our house, yelling sexually explicit comments through the windows.”

Michelle Cho warned that allowing another fraternity on Lake Place would ​“drive away future potential renters,” especially from the Yale Law School and Yale School of Management.

Law students Montae Langston, Nicolas Molina Jr., and Michael Roccaforte went a step further. They wrote that fraternities should be ​“banned altogether from Lake Place,” since they cause ​“serious safety concerns that lead us to feel uncomfortable.”

City planner Josh Lecar said the fraternity is not expected to resubmit the application, though he did not know for sure. Frat officials were not at the meeting. Nor was the landlord, a limited-liability corporation registered in San Antonio, Texas. The corporation bought the property in February for $90,000 from the estate of the late Sonia Butler, according to city land records.