By Andrea Frainier, Sarrah Nguyen and Kate Taylor
On the top floor of Tower Hall, some 65 feet above
The “seat of wisdom” on the “plank of courage” is put out the window of Tower Hall during the start of each new semester as a symbol of rush week for the academic fraternity, Tau Delta Phi.
Rumors have circulated around campus as to the plank-chair’s purpose.
“As far as the chair is concerned,” said Danny Galvin, a junior psychology major, “I’ve heard people have put students up there for, like, hazing things for fraternities, and they would just sit them up there overnight.”
Galvin said he had also heard that as long as the students were on the chair, they were not allowed to move.
“I heard that the chair up there was put by some fraternity,” said Chenece Blackshear, a junior chemistry major. “I guess during their rush or pledge week, they would have people actually sit on the chair on the ledge.”
Blackshear said she doesn’t think the chair is used anymore, but doesn’t know why the fraternity would keep the chair if that were true.
The SJSU College of Business Web site states the fraternity that owns the plank-chair is also the protector of the tower room at Tower Hall.
“Guarded exclusively by members of Tau Delta Phi, men’s honor fraternity, the tower room has been known for years as the spot on campus where no women are allowed,” the site said. “Wild rumors circulate as to the punishment inflicted upon co-eds successful enough to gain entrance to the sacred spot.”
Dominic Fass, a senior sociology major and current president of Tau Delta Phi, said his fraternity, established in 1916, lived in the house “back in the day” until the tower was condemned in 1963.
Since their eviction in the ’60s, the tower has been used for the fraternity’s meetings, although only school personnel have access, he said.
The plank-chair that extends from the tower each semester is only used as a symbol, Fass said, but the fraternity has a second plank and chair used for an initiation ritual.
“It’s a safe environment,” he said, “and it’s done by the initiates with complete consent, and they can do it with or without a blindfold.”
Fass said the groundskeepers go up to the tower and put the plank-chair in its place outside of the window, every semester after the fraternity fills out a request form.
The fraternity was an all-male fraternity until 1977.
“A lot of female members in the’ 70s, wanted to get into (the fraternity),” Fass said. “Back in the ’70s a lot of other all-male fraternities, such as Delta Phi Omega, also became co-ed.”
When asked about the alleged no-women-allowed history of the tower, Fass said he didn’t know anything about it.
The tower where the fraternity used to live is accessible through the president’s office. A locked door in the back of the office lobby opens to a spiral staircase wide enough to for one person.
Dennis Suit, SJSU’s facilities manager, said the building used to connect to Dwight Bentel Hall and the university’s old south library by an open-walkway promenade around the tower.
It was taken down, however, because it was not earthquake safe.
There are three empty stories in Tower Hall, and all remnants of the fraternity have been cleared out, except for an old stove on the second floor and, of course, the plank-chair on the third.
Names of old Tau Delta Phi members are scribbled on the walls of the top floor, along with messages and drawings — some of the autographs claim to have been done as recently as Feb. 2008.
Suit said the second floor also had members’ graffiti on its walls, but when the maintenance staff repainted the walls, they were hidden.
The second floor used to house a taxidermic cat as well, propped up on a wooden board that the fraternity called “the sail cat.”
Though the chair is concealed from the eyes of the students below, the “tower of strength,” as the fraternity calls it, will return its seasonal plank-chair to the window at the beginning of the fall semester.
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