The path forward is clear, and the early steps are done. The Association committed to the two-year process to reoccupy One Forest Park Lane, retained the professional recruitment firm Phired Up, and brought on a young, dynamic local alumnus to serve as its presence on the ground. Cornell completed a major round of renovations over the summer of 2025, but that was only the first phase. Significant upgrades still remain to be done before the house is ready. The Oliphant and Tanenbaum speaker programs remain a point of pride, and they will be joined by something new: the Sigma Phi Leadership Institute, a first-of-its-kind leadership program the Association hopes will become a model not just at Cornell but across the Greek system nationwide.

What happens next depends on us. The campaign goal is $3.5 million, organized in three parts.

The most urgent need is immediate. Of the $400,000 in renovations Cornell completed last summer, the Epsilon is responsible for half. Combined with loan repayment and the costs of re-establishing the chapter, the Association needs $300,000 by June 30, 2026 to stay on track. From there, a further $200,000 will fund the next phase of work, renovating the kitchen and transforming the basement social space, so the house can be fully move-in ready by August 2027.

Beyond those immediate phases sits a $2 million Facility fund. Annual gifts have kept the house standing, but ongoing restoration of a building like 1FPL has simply grown too expensive to fund year to year. A $2 million corpus, invested conservatively, would sustain the house for the next century and help defray living costs for active brothers.

The final $1 million supports Programs, chiefly the Leadership Institute, which will partner with Outward Bound and on-campus programs and build in an alumni mentoring element so new brothers can draw directly on the talent and success of those who came before them.

There is also a longer-held dream in view. An addition to the original 1933 building, first imagined more than two decades ago and sketched in 2006 renderings by Peter Flynn '66, could finally become real, adding student bedrooms, a classroom for the Leadership Institute, and a faculty- or executive-in-residence suite on land already contracted to the Epsilon. For those moved to give at a transformative level, the campaign offers tasteful naming opportunities, from the Leadership Institute and library to the Tower Suite, and for the most significant gift of all, the naming of 1FPL itself.

As Derek Bok observed, the defining moments of college life tend to happen outside the classroom. For generations of brothers, those moments happened at One Forest Park Lane. This is the moment to make sure they happen there for the next hundred years, and it depends on the brotherhood stepping forward now.