Sororities and Brothels: Do Local Laws Draw a Line?

As one story goes, sororities on some college campuses have been rendered illegal by old laws forbidding a certain number of women to live in one house. The alleged reason?

One version has it that six or more women living under one roof automatically constitutes a brothel. The number varies from campus to campus, but the main idea is always the same: too many women in one house means that sex must be for sale. The laws cited are usually vague 19th-century ordinances that, though now largely irrelevant, were never erased from the books.

So what’s the deal? Are old laws interfering with Greek life by turning sorority houses to-be into potential palaces of sin?

Matt Monkan, a junior at Monmouth University, doesn’t think so.

“Never heard of that,” Monkan said. “Sounds silly.”

And indeed, it is. An article in The Yale Herald acknowledges this myth has its place among the ivy, but denies that the famed “brothel laws” exist. The myth also exists at Pennsylvania State University, and was put to rest by an intrepid reporter writing for The Collegian, PSU’s student newspaper. Herman Slaybough, a zoning officer, was quoted saying, "I've been here for 25 years and in those 25 I have never seen a law regarding this issue.”

Interestingly enough, there are often zoning laws that regulate how many unrelated people can live under one roof. This may be the springboard for the sorority-brothel legend. Prostitution laws, however, have nothing to do with how many people live in one house, but rather what those people are doing. If they’re not in there to get groovy with lonely people down on their luck with the opposite sex, they don’t live in a brothel.

Anthony Tarallo Jr., a Pace University junior, didn’t believe in the myth himself. He got a funny twinkle in his eye, though, when faced with the prospect of sororities and brothels becoming one.

“Personally, the more females in one home, the better,” he said.