Brian Stannard is a freshman English major.
By Brian Stannard
Before entering college, I never had a high opinion of
fraternities. This may be due to the fact that when I was 16 a
bunch of friends and I tried to sneak into a Berkeley fraternity
party and got chased out because we weren’t on the guest list, and
more importantly, because we weren’t beautiful girls.
For the most part, I always had the impression that fraternities
were for people who couldn’t get a beer on their own. They needed a
large group of like-minded people to hold their hand along the
way.
Now that I’m actually in college and have experienced rush week
firsthand, I have even less respect for the greek system. Now I
know there are good fraternities out there somewhere, but I still
haven’t found one, so I’m just going to relate my personal
experiences.
First off, I love how many fraternity parties turn up the music
so loud and dish out so much free beer that intelligent
conversation is basically useless. For the most part, I’ve found
that fraternity parties are basically advanced high school – a lot
of drunk people crammed into a stranger’s living room. The only
element missing from a fraternity party is the police breaking
everything up at midnight.
And I find it funny that both fraternities and casinos give out
free drinks. Why? Because both of them want to make you
incapacitated so that they can get into your pants. Casinos want to
get into your pants pockets to steal your money and drunk
fraternity boys want to get inside a girl’s pants for … well, you
know.
But the specific incident that disturbed me most about rush week
occurred last Monday night. After lying to the bouncer that I was
interested in rushing, I managed to get into a fraternity party
that had a cool band inside that I wanted to check out.
The band was rocking and everything was going great until I made
the mistake of deciding to go to the bathroom. After walking
through hallways strewn with empty Keystone cans and people making
out against the wall, I finally found the men’s room.
That was my big mistake. While in the middle of doing my duty, I
heard a slurred voice yell out to me, "Hey, what the hell is this
guy doing pissing in my urinal?" Through intuition, I figured out
that I was using the guy’s urinal. Then he got closer to me and
repeated the question again to a couple of his other brothers who
were giving him emotional backup. I could understand how there
could have been a problem if I had been going to the bathroom on
the floor or on the guy’s leg, but I was simply using the urinal
like any other civilized human being.
After the guy warned me to hurry up and get the fuck out, I was
out of there. Later a quote by Henry Rollins came into my head –
"whatever you possess possesses you." I found it amusing to think
that the guy was possessed by a urinal.
I came to the conclusion that maybe people should pass up the
big fraternity parties and instead do something constructive like
maybe have a more intimate party in the dorms, suites or apartments
where people can actually converse with each other and learn new
things. Individuals are usually more interesting than large groups
of people anyway.
Like I said before, I’m sure that there are great fraternities
and sororities that do positive things, but the lesson I learned
that Monday night was that the greek system is not for me. There’s
something about the group I just don’t trust.