Ben Johannes ’10: “You’ll get out many times over what you put in.”

When Ben Johannes arrived at Maryland, he had no interest in joining a fraternity. (“I wasn’t against them. It just wasn’t on my radar.”) A Facebook message from a high school friend was destined to drastically change all that: Would he be willing to attend a free happy hour meeting with Sigma Chi alumni about possibly recolonizing the Maryland chapter? 

“As a broke college kid, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll absolutely do that.’ I was expecting 20 people to be there. It ended up being like 100, most of whom were alumni. Some of them were guys from the Fifties and Sixties. Instantaneously that hit me like, ‘Oh, this matters to them.’”  

The impact of seeing dozens of Sigma Chi’s, spanning several generations, return to campus in support of giving their fraternity second life got his attention, and the chance to see a complex and challenging task through to completion appealed to his hands-on nature: “I latched on to this as important to these guys. This is a project I can work on to get from just a bunch of dudes hanging out at a bar to a fully established fraternity. Let’s pull together a group. Let’s see what kind of paperwork we have to do. Let’s see what kind of process is needed. It ended up being exceedingly more fulfilling than I ever could have hoped for.” 

What followed was a multiyear journey of hard work, memories made, and lessons learned by Ben and his fellow “pledges,” but at its end, Sigma Chi had returned to the University of Maryland.  

“There were maybe 50 of us in that first group. I always joke I was in the world’s longest-tenured pledge class. We were technically pledges, because we weren’t fully colonized for like three semesters. Our first meetings were at the student union in an empty room, because we didn’t have a gathering place. We had an alumni advisor, Scott Werber ’86, who was instrumental. We would have failed a million times over if it weren’t for Scott. He was the adult in the room.” 

Ben recalls that, even in its earliest days, the newly resurgent Sigma Chi found ways of harkening back to the chapter’s long and proud tradition of standout athletics. 

“We were active – not always good – but we were active in intramural sports. Randomly one of our best teams was the volleyball team; none of us knew that we were actually any good at volleyball, but we had a bunch of tall guys. We would get to games, and the other fraternity would have maybe a girlfriend or two that would show up. Maybe one or two other guys that had nothing to do. We would have 30 guys show up and cheer obnoxiously loudly. We eventually got a formal complaint from the Interfraternity Council that we were too mean, too aggressive and loud in our chanting. We took pride in that. We were absolutely wearing it like a badge.” 

Looking back on the recolonization effort now, he recognizes it as the most instructive and valuable experience of his college career. 

“It’s very weird, because I think back to a bunch of 18- to 21-year-olds who didn’t really know what they were doing, and we were able to not only survive, but eventually to build something that thrived. The phrase that the alumni always used to say would be, ‘You’ll get out many times over what you put in.’ And I thought that just was like some nice-sounding stuff to say, but it turned out to be true. I definitely got more out of it. My best friends are all guys from that time. To this day, I know I can give all those guys a call at any time, and they’ll pick up the phone.” 

After graduation, Ben worked in sales before transitioning to commercial real estate analysis and research. His employer, Fraser Forbes Real Estate, does land development and real estate brokerage and recently launched a townhome building and rental company where he serves as principal.