JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

ZBT is Back

By Ami Eden · March 26, 2008

The student papers at the University of Kansas and the University of Arizona both have articles about the Jewish fraternity ZBT making a comeback. Who's their publicist?!

The University Daily Kansan:

A Jewish fraternity is going to join the 40 greek houses already at the University in the next few years.

Zeta Beta Tau, a fraternity based in Indianapolis, Indiana, is coming back to the University after being absent for around ten years. It closed its first house in the late 1990s because of a lack of general leadership in the chapter.

ZBT was invited to start a new chapter by the Interfraternity Council and the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life in September 2007.

Associate executive director Laurence Bolotin said the fraternity had begun to receive requests to start a new ZBT chapter on campus, so it has begun to reconnect with campus and alumni.

After numerous bouts of failed leadership that led to Zeta Beta Tau's removal from the Interfraternity Council and the arrest of the president and vice president in 2005, the fraternity's future looked grim.

Now they're getting a fresh start in 2008.

"We were there for many years and we've come in and out but now we're starting again with a completely new group of guys and none of the old guys will have anything to do with it," said Matthew Tobe, national director of Zeta Beta Tau. "There was poor leadership at the time and now we have a group of freshmen and sophomore men who want to start fresh."

Tobe and his colleagues have spent time on campus recruiting students to become founding fathers of the new fraternity. They already have twelve and are hoping for about seven more, Tobe said.