Both the University and the national headquarters of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity withdrew their recognition of the Binghamton University chapter of ZBT on Thursday after the chapter said they were unable to pay back the large debt they had accrued during the past several semesters.

The chapter owed the national organization nearly $20,000 dollars, according to Laurence Bolotin, executive director of ZBT’s Indianapolis headquarters.

The debt began with a small mismanagement of funds several years ago, according Brandon Lentino, president of the BU chapter of ZBT.

“It kind of snowballed … into a bigger debt which made managing it that much more difficult,” Lentino said. “We did our best to try and rectify the situation that was started before some of our current members were in and we just weren’t able to do it in the timely fashion that nationals looked for.”

Although Lentino said ZBT remained “mostly current” with their payments over the last three semesters — while he and Dominick Matarrese were president — they were unable to generate significant revenue to chip into the debt while paying their current dues.

He suggested that the size of ZBT, which is only around 14 members, down from between 17 and 21 during previous semesters and significantly smaller than chapters at other schools, made it more difficult for his chapter to generate the large sums national demanded.

“We were able to stay mostly current on most of our current fees but some of them weren’t able to get paid just because our chapter is smaller and they just kept adding those onto the debt,” Lentino said. “It’s unfortunate because when this debt was started, the chapter was a little bit bigger, there were more members on the national roster.”

While Lentino said he worked with the national organization to try to develop a payment plan, the two sides could not come to an agreement.

“The type of the money they were expecting is the type of money that comes from a chapter that is 30, 40, 50 kids,” he said. “The scale they used working with larger chapters with larger amounts of members paying dues isn’t the scale that we were on.”

Bolotin, however, said that when the organization worked with the chapter to agree on a payment plan, the BU chapter was “unresponsive.”

“We’ve been working with them for over six months to try and pay off part of their debt and they haven’t paid off any of it,” Bolotin said.

Due to University policy, ZBT will not be allowed to continue operations on campus without a national sponsor.

“We tried to keep ourselves motivated and keep up with other options in the hope that nationals would see we were trying … I think they felt that the best option was not to continue on the path we were on,” Lentino said. “As far as letters that brothers paid for themselves like i.e. the t-shirts sweatshirts, stuff like that that they wore on campus, I would assume that each brother is probably going to keep them in some box in the back of their closet or in a drawer somewhere to remember the experience that kept us all together during college.”