Donors rebelled when Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, made fraternities go co-ed after a drunk student broke his neck in a shallow Psi Upsilon pool, Bloomberg News reported in May. With a private-equity veteran, real estate investor and stock analyst among grads condemning the school’s efforts, Trinity President James Jones decided to resign a year earlier than planned.
Dissolving ZBT
Patrick Laterza, who works in wealth management for Citigroup, went to Binghamton University last year to try to preserve Zeta Beta Tau’s chapter there, e-mails obtained through public-records requests show. It lost recognition from the fraternity’s national organization and from the school, a State University of New York campus. A pledge complained he had been waterboarded, the e-mails show.
“The situation with the chapter that was there was from my understanding a financial one,” said Laterza, who manages $130 million according to his LinkedIn page. “We found out later that there were more issues which were then discussed, and in the end the fraternity was dissolved.”
The most valuable thing fraternities do to prepare their own for Wall Street isn’t controversial or secretive, according to some of the men who went from one to the other.
“It’s going to help you assimilate,” said Theta Chi alum Christopher Albrecht, who joined Deutsche Bank AG after graduating from Lehigh University in 2007. Colleagues “want to hire people and bring up people you can get along with.”
Mock Interview
Matthew Benson, a senior at Penn, recalled last month how he was led through a mock interview in January by an older Alpha Epsilon Pi member while sitting near cabinets lined with empty whiskey bottles. The fraternity, now known as Apes, moved off campus in 2012 instead of complying with sanctions that followed hazing claims, according to a university official.
The senior timing Benson’s answers and telling him to smile more is now an analyst for a multibillion-dollar buyout firm. Benson landed an internship with a merger adviser, then a job offer for next year. He’s already doling out advice to younger fraternity members, including one preparing for a venture- capital interview.
“I was helping him craft his story,” he said. “The kids are actually very proactive.”