22 | NOVEMBER 3 • 2022 

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her friends met at the MSU 
Union. Others on campus 
told them they were wasting 
their time. Guys in the Jewish 
fraternity at the time warned 
them that others had tried to 
bring a sorority onto campus 
and had failed.
“Maybe we took that as a 
challenge, but by the time the 
national people showed up to 
make presentations, there was 
a small but amazing group of 
women who really wanted to 
represent a Jewish community 
in the sorority system,” said 
Cicurel, who now lives in 
West Bloomfield and runs a 
public relations agency,
The rejuvenated Beta Beta 
Chapter welcomed its first 
new members in the 1983-84 
school year: 25 women from a 
half-dozen states. 
Finding a physical home 
for the organization was the 
purview of the Beta Beta 
Housing Corporation. For 
several decades, the sisters 
rented a variety of houses 
in East Lansing, including 
some fraternity houses. More 
recently they worked with 
the Community Resource 
Management Company 
(CRMC), the largest property 
management group in East 
Lansing, and rented four 

neighboring houses on MAC 
Avenue. It wasn’t ideal, said 
Rodnick, but it made the 
group more cohesive and 
helped increase membership. 
“We created a strong 
sisterhood, but the houses 
were too small for many 
programs,” she said.

BUILT-TO-ORDER
A few years ago, the Beta 
Beta Housing Corporation 
and CRMC decided to work 
together to build a house 
designed to meet the sorority’s 
current and future needs.
The approval process 
was tedious, said Rodnick, 
because the plans involved 
demolishing several older 
homes. The sorority also 
needed the approval of their 
prospective neighbors.
The new 16,000-square-
foot-house, at 710 Grove 
St., about a seven-minute 
walk from the MSU campus, 
opened at the start of the 2021 
fall school term, even though 
some facilities, including the 
commercial kitchen, were 
unfinished. Some of the 
sisters lived there, but because 
of COVID, the sorority held 
most of its programs virtually.
The house can accommo-
date 45 of Beta Beta Chapter’s 

The dining 
room

One of the 
bedrooms
A peek 
inside

ABOVE: Ari Beard, Huntington Woods; Donna Schock, Bloomfield 
Hills; Lanie Silverman, Upper Dublin, Pennsylvania; Carli Bordelove 
and Rachel Kruman, West Bloomfield; Joley Bancroft, Huntington 
Woods; and Becca Beinstock, West Bloomfield.

OUR COMMUNITY

