'The Dark Power of Fraternities'

None of my closest friends joined a fraternity but I was in one for four years in college.

Had I attended a school with a 40% or 50% Greek culture (Missouri and Illinois have been mentioned here), I think I would have been miserable in a house. Yet I graduated from a gigantic school with a tiny Greek influence - only 4% - and I found it the perfect fit. Still had 1,500 people in the system but it wasn't an overarching element of my life.

Also depends on the house itself. We were 28 guys in a house (with 20 more members) who just liked to party on the weekends, work all the time and always have other people around. I lived in the house for two years and on my own for two. Both had their pros and cons.

I joined the particular fraternity that I did on two major purposes: The guys I met through classes who were already in it and they had a strict policy of NO HAZING. That meant exactly that.

No hazing. We were given a 1-800 number to call if we were ever hazed.

The only time we were "hazed" was when we were forced out of our sleeping bags during Hell Week and were taken to IHOP at 4:45 in the morning.

Other houses (this was pre-social media) did horrible incidents to their pledges. Elephant walks. Endless shots/binge drinking. It does exist. Alcoholism is a problem in the Greek system but my university also had a very permissive drug culture and it's in beer country anyway.

The benefit that I have now, 20+ years since I joined a Greek jouse, is that, when I return to my alma mater, I already have a place that welcomes me, my wife (who partied with me there a time or two 20+ years ago) and our children with full honors. I pay $55 a year in dues and that entitles me to "alumni in good standing" treatment. When others feel lost in the crowd at some bar they used to go to half their life ago, I have a place where, during Homecoming, I'll see familiar people and catch up with their families.

I'm certainly not best friends with any of these guys but we did have a common experiences that we do bond over. Road trips all over our conference. A few videos from 1993 of our parties that HAVE ended up on YouTube, always worth a chuckle. We're all now older, a little heavier, a little balder (except for me, of course) and we almost all have kids. At a massive school like this, it is pleasant to have a place where you don't feel like another alum.

 

The frats at my college was strongly against hazing (at least the few I interacted with).

I never had any real desire to join a frat, although I did end up a frat party once. It was what it was and while the few minutes I was there didn't suck, it certainly wasn't Animal House.

Maybe I could have gotten laid a little more often, who knows, but I don't regret not joining a frat. My bigger regret was sticking with one or two extra curricular activities and shunning the rest. At worst, I could have had my eyes open to other paths that weren't journalism. At best, I could have made more friends. As it is, the friends I made in college all moved away after graduation and I never made new ones after college.

 

It's amazing, given the economic climate, that frats and sororities are still going strong. If you're a student looking for housing and social options, they have to be absolutely the most expensive.

I just read a history of student life in America (Campus Life, by Helen Lefkowiz Horowitz) and fraternities were originally considered an improvement by some college heads in the 1800s. Before then, students were rich and bored and seemingly filled their days by dueling, horsewhipping tutors, and burning down college buildings in riots. Frats at least directed their energies towards "quieter" pursuits like endless drinking.

 

I never felt the need to buy friends. Or play grab-ass with other adult males. Who had time for that shit, working multiple jobs and trying to keep up with classes?

Fuckabuncha "Greeks"

 

I was in an Animal House for two years at my first college (I won't say where). Left me with some psychological (and substance abuse) issues that took a long time to get over.

My second college was all about busting my ass and getting a degree, and I didn't have time for any nonsense. Would absolutely NOT recommend the Greek experience to anyone.

On the other hand, my baby sister was a DG at Ole Miss and she loved it. Of course, it helped that she was well-organized and goal-oriented (she finished in 3 1/2 years), and for most of her time there she had a steady boyfriend at another college, the guy she eventually married.

 

My three memories of the Greek system at my school was that the fraternity parties all had the most beer, which was good, but also had more people attending, which was bad.

My second memory was of one fraternity, who had a terrible reputation, ended up having two pledges hospitalized because of hazing. Arrests were made, the frat lost its charter, and several members bitched about how we on the school paper were covering it because "we didn't understand what it was like to be a Greek".

My third memory was of a female friend on my floor who was pledging a sorority, but during Hell Week, flat-out cracked up and started sobbing and bawling like crazy in the girls' bathroom, loud enough for the whole floor to hear. Found out later that she hadn't slept for three days. Sorority stopped their Hell Week right there.

 

GDI, in much the same manner as Rhody. With me, it was a group of five other guys. I essentially lived with them for three years, although I moved in with them just for the senior year.

All I know is a pretty good friend from high school pledged one of our frats (yes, frats). They drove him almost exactly halfway across the state of Pennsylvania, made him strip and then drove off, letting him make his way home himself.

That's enough for me.

 

That certainly was not a fraternal thing to do. Did they Ookie Cookie, too?

 

I and some classmates in the journalism school drew a little ire from the Greek system at Alabama in 2002. Homecoming queen and court are 99 times out of 100 from a sorority. We were experimenting with an Onion-like side project away from the regular news web site we worked on (sponsored by the J school). We ran a girl on an absurd platform that mocked the entire process. She made court. We thought it was hilarious.

We heard some of the Greek leadership was a little pissed, but it wasn't bad. This was the university where Greeks allegedly burned a cross on the lawn of a black student government presidential candidate. In the late 1990s.

 

I was a GDI until the middle of my sophomore year. Got elected chapter president before I was done with school.

Until I got elected, college was kickass. Afterward, it felt like I was spending 3 times as much on the chapter as I was on my classes, and this was while I was student teaching. The hell of it was knowing which brothers would be good at what jobs and having the chapter nominate and vote differently willy-nilly.

Nothing dark about college frats at all as long as you aren't rushing complete Neanderthals and scrambling to cover that.

 

Never joined a fraternity but I went to the parties all the time because I had a friend in one. He never had anything good to say about joining though and never suggested I do the same.

The bar scene was so much better than house parties.

 

Pledge semester is fun. Being a JI is fun. First semester as a big brother is fun. After that, frat life can be a real drag - which is why about 15 of my 20-man pledge class either went inactive or transferred to another school by their senior year.