 As did the nation , fraternities at Dartmouth went through difficult times during the Great Depression . The decade of the 1930s saw almost no building projects at all in the fraternity system , and many houses could no longer afford regular maintenance . One of the great tragedies at Dartmouth College occurred on a winter night in 1934 , when nine members of Theta Chi died from carbon monoxide poisoning after a metal chimney on a dilapidated coal furnace in the basement of the chapter house broke in the night . In 1935 , Dartmouth historian and professor Leon Burr Richardson asserted in a survey that , in light of the national suffering , the fraternity chapters should ask themselves if they had " any excuse for existence . " Four fraternities dissolved during the Great Depression ( Alpha Sigma Phi , Alpha Tau Omega , Lambda Chi Alpha , and Sigma Alpha Mu ) , and two ( Phi Kappa Sigma and Alpha Chi Rho ) merged to pool scarce resources in order to survive . All of the surviving fraternities closed for the duration of World War II , as the campus was largely ( although not exclusively ) used to educate , train , and house Navy sailors and Marines in the V @-@ 12 Navy College Training Program . 
