the house after the furnace that caused the accident was replaced. But membership did suffer after 1934, and eventually the chapter house was razed in 1940 and a new building, the current chapter house, opened in 1941. Breaking from Theta Chi Alpha Theta was one of the first collegiate fraternities in the United States to break from its national organization over civil rights issues, and the first at the Greek-dominated Dartmouth College. In 1951, while Dickey served as president of the college, the student body passed a resolution calling on all fraternities to eliminate racial discrimination from their constitutions. The Theta Chi national organization's constitution contained a clause limiting membership in fraternity to "Caucasians" only. On April 24, 1952, the members of the Dartmouth chapter voted unanimously to stop recognizing the racial clause in Theta Chi's constitution. Upon learning that the Dartmouth delegation to Theta Chi's national convention later that year planned to raise questions about the clause, the Alpha Theta chapter was derecognized by the national organization on July 25, 1952. The house reincorporated as a local fraternity and adopted the name Alpha Theta. Coeducation Alpha Theta was one of the first all-male fraternities to admit female members. In 1972, Dartmouth admitted the first class of female students and officially became a coeducational institution. Alpha Theta also voted to become coeducational. After a few years, most of the women in the fraternity had become inactive and the house voted to become male-only again on November 10, 1976. The house returned to a coeducational membership policy in 1980. Embezzlement case In February 2011 the Alpha Theta House Corporation filed suit against a former treasurer, Bruce McAllister, alleging that he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fraternity. McAllister was also sued by the Meccawe Club, a private fishing club in Vermont, and became the target of a federal investigation later that year. In November 2011 McAllister, a former financial auditor at Dartmouth College, was indicted for wire fraud following an investigation by the United States Secret Service. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and was also assigned a court-appointed attorney. However, on April 25, 2012, he changed his plea and entered a plea of guilty. McAllister was sentenced on November 26, 2012, in United States District Court in Burlington, Vermont, to 18 months of imprisonment following his guilty plea to wire fraud. U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions