K-Day, short for Keweenaw Day, is today! An annual tradition at Michigan Tech, held on the Friday of the week of Labor Day, K-Day is a great way to make new connections, learn about student involvement, and catch a break from classes. This year’s theme is Camp K-Day and will include a student organization fair with about 200 groups in attendance.
While students are bussing or carpooling to Camp K-Day, held at Chassell’s Centennial Park, they will pass by a classic Michigan Tech landmark, the Sigma Rho House. On the side of US 41 on the north edge of Chassell, the Sig Rho house is one of those fraternity houses with a unique history.
From the Daily Mining Gazette, May 29, 1976: “The Sigma Rho boys are again in their own establishment after a period of prolonged stay in the edifice of the former Congregational Church in Chassell. The Sigs are greatly enjoying their new Fraternity House and they are entitled to happiness in that theirs has been a life of shifting about due to, first, the fire which destoyed their first Chassell House, the former Worchester home, and then the blaze which consumed their unfinished house just as it was about ready to permit the entrance of the Tech students who are members of the frat. Fourteen young men now live at the house on the Chassell Lakeshore. Come fall and the number will be up to its regular 24. Dave Crockett, one of the social officers of the Sigs, says that the first house burned in 1974 and the second, the very next year. During one time in the fraternity’s history its house was in Houghton. It occupied a position on a hill exactly where East Wadsworth Hall is currently. The newest building has 12 bedrooms and a fireplace along with eight other rooms.”
As you pass by the Sig Rhos, be sure to beep or wave. Be safe, have fun, and most of all, happy K-Day!
MTU & Kday vet 81-85
BSME, my formative years
Kegs at McClain State Park, no more, and bands, and buds at SigRho…my great friend Jim N. From Saginaw;
Long live the copper county, unknown gem of Gitche Gumee, Precambrianlike, like so many of the vast other places in that Western Superior Basin;
Watch the sun rise, and set, from Union Bay, next to the biggest mature hemlock forest than I’ve seen in PA; Great Sand Bay; Brockway mountains;
Some of the best years of my life, and the most austere;