This is amazing, even for the National Review (via):
As college students head back to school for spring semester, most will enter largely anti-conservative atmospheres. But for many, the Greek system may offer a respite from the typical environment of academia — or at least a safe and non-judgmental place to believe in limited government and free enterprise.
[….]It’s an interesting phenomenon — if that’s the right word — and it’s reflected, to an extent, in students’ spending habits. Madison Wickham is one of the founders of TotalFratMove.com, a website of dubious literary and educational value that provides content targeted at members of the Greek community. He tells National Review Online that merchandise pitched to conservatives — such as shirts that say “Mitt’s the Tits” and “Back to Back World War Champs” — sells briskly, suggesting that the Greek system contains a strong contingent of young people who lean unabashedly right.
Wag
Duh. But more along the lines of “let’s ge drunk and screw” muscle flexing conservatism. Not so much the evangelist side of the right wing coin.
steveday
G.W. Bush was a “frat boy” at Yale.
Harvard does not have fraternities.
The United States Senate is the nation’s most exclusive fraternity.
Enhanced Voting techniques
Frat boys seems about right for that movement
Chyron HR
Who, Wilson and Truman?
r€nato
I can’t think of a better place to find another of conservatism’s finest qualities: furtive, shame-filled down-low gay sexual encounters.
Nylund
Shorter:
“Conservatism appeals to date-rapists and douchebags.”
Mike E
Roofies and Reagan.
General Stuck
Free the Keg !!!
can the cans
Toga! Toga! Toga!
conservatives are weird. And apparently oppose the libtard recycling industry.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
For many, fraternities are an important introduction to the business world’s old boy’s club system.
A moocher
Misogynist, date-raping, drunken, spoiled, business-majoring, unabashedly pig-ignorent, testosterone-fueled assholes….present company excepted, of course.
If shallow bragging about WW2 is the best you got, you got nothing.
But perhaps Townes Van Zandt said it best:
copy, paste, and FYWP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wYecTIafnM4
Baud
Gamma Alpha Lambda Tau forever!
dmsilev
@Chyron HR:Since the correct 0th-order answer would be the French for round 1 and the Russians for round 2, it’s clear that this upcoming generation of conservatives shares their older brethren’s deep historical knowledge.
General Stuck
AT the end of Vietnam, when I went off to party at a nearby university, fraternities were hanging on by a thread. No one wanted to associate with such status symbols of the system. We all belonged to Phi Beta Krappa. And the folks that still did the Greek thing, were some pure grade wingnuts for sure.
In a brief draft dodging scheme, I signed up for ROTC with Uncle Sam breathing down my neck. That lasted about two weeks with several shouting matches, to where the resident wingnuts did not appreciate my shoulder length hair tucked up under me OD army hat. It did kinda have a conehead look to it.
Xantar
Ever since senior year of high school when I was applying to college, I always wondered what was so “Greek” about Greek life. It always sounded to me like they were trying to come up with a name that sounded better than, “Club of Drunken Assholes”.
Frank
Anyone who can put “frat” and “non-judgmental” in the same sentence, call me. I have a bridge you can buy.
Schlemizel
My younger son joined a frat and I still have no idea why – it was very out of character for him. But from that frat they led several protests to improve financial conditions for students and a 90 mile march on the Capital building to meet with legislators and the Governor to demand the restoration to funding cuts to universities.
Now it could well be like all conservatives they were simply looking out for themselves. I’d guess some of them are but most actually cared about the wider world and hope to leave the school better then they found it.
TL;DR version: Once again The National Review gets it wrong. Cherry-picking facts to prove nothing
Linda Featheringill
If I were a young man who held distinctly minority views, I might seek out ways to associate with others like myself. And if I were susceptible to the us-versus-them point of view, I might bind pretty firmly with that association.
And yes, the beer and the broads and the profanity and etc. But you don’t have to belong to a fraternity to engage in those things.
So I understand collecting into fraternities and such organizations. I do have a question though. Are all fraternities hotbeds of neoconservative thought?
redshirt
The only thing I hate worse than Frat Boys are College Republican Frat Boys. Ug to the max.
Mike in NC
NRO is run by and for frat boy assholes like Rich “Starbursts” Lowry.
muddy
@Xantar: I grew up overseas and didn’t know about the “Greek” system. When I first went to college in the states a guy in the dorm asked if I were Greek. I thought he was nuts. I said, No I’m Irish. (I mean, I look it!) We both retired in confusion. Later my suitemates explained it to me, when I told them about this crazy person, and why would he make such a ridiculous guess?
NotMax
You want some more tar for that broad brush?
redshirt
Why is it called a “Greek” system? Is it because they’re supposed to be sitting around debating the finer points of philosophy and the like? Instead of butt-chugging and date-raping?
NotMax
@Linda Featheringill
Happily, no. My own experience was with a frat chapter which got booted from the national organization in the 60s for the ‘crime’ of admitting non-whites.
The frat house continued on quite well as an independent. No living quarters – primarily a building with enough space for good old-fashioned drinking mobs.
RSA
Pretty hilarious. Yup, when I hear the words “Greek”, “tradition”, and “history”, the first thing I think of is a frat house.
ChrisNYC
They need “a safe and non judgmental place.” Hilarious.
The adoption of the liberal touchy-feely language. Their exquisite fragility and the completely made up putuponness. Maybe it all really is psychological. They just need to be held.
redshirt
@Linda Featheringill: There’s usually a hippy frat of some form, and they’re usually cool. Still with the butt-chugging and date-raping though.
And your more elite schools will have some sort of “Freak” frat where goths and the like gather. I would rate these frats the coolest (despite still being uncool).
I am also JUDGE of all things Fraternity, being a member of Phi Beta Kappa. All rulings are final.
El Cid
Yes, it’s truly surprising that private recreational and socializing clubs with memberships of selected young men and which are often the legacies of being founded as young wealthy men’s clubs generations ago exhibit traits and values more conservative than those frequently found among academic environments.
I wonder if similar things might be revealed by memberships in country clubs, or particular sporting clubs, or travel societies?
monkeyfister
How is this news?
Everyone knows the Greek System is the breeding program for Right-Wing douche-bags.
arguingwithsignposts
@Schlemizel: So you’re saying anecdote != data? Who knew?
I was in a frat in college. I was a lefty in a mostly Reagan-worshipping crew (don’t ask). Now, they’re all still douchenozzles on Facebook. Some people never grow up.
Origuy
Doug, are you trolling to bring out Cole? He’s posted several times about his frat days and how he still gets together with his bros.
cathyx
@Origuy: But that just proves his point. John Cole is a former republican.
J.D. Rhoades
@redshirt:
“Greek” is because they almost all have Greek letter for their names. And there are service fraternities like Alpha Phi Omega, that concentrate on public service projects. She Who Is Now My Wife was an APO (yes, they’re co-ed).
I was a Delta Tau Delta, myself. We weren’t exactly the “freak” or “hippy” fraternity you describe, but we were a pretty mixed bag. And I don’t recall any date-raping going on, unless you count having sex with a partner who’s totally drunk, in which case, I was date-raped a lot, too.
Smiling Mortician
“Mitt’s the tits”? Someone would wear that t-shirt? Are you fucking kidding me?
redshirt
@J.D. Rhoades: Why the Greek letters though? What’s the motivation? It’s to try and pretend to be debating societies, right?
redshirt
@Smiling Mortician: I would perhaps wear that shirt ironically, while drunk.
LittlePig
I thought the Greek part happened after some of the initiates were passed out…
merl
@Chyron HR: You beat me too it. I guess they didn’t want to brag about Panama and Grenada.
LittlePig
@Smiling Mortician: I know, right? That sounds like it was written by Tina Fey as a parody.
Anon
@Chyron HR: Even worse, Wilson hated fraternities.
Citizen_X
You people are selling the frats short. Date rape and Reagan love, sure, but where’s the appreciation of the ever-present racism?
Could be a southern thing, I guess. There, any time you pick up the student paper, it’s “Oh God, what embarassing, retrograde, neo-Confederate horseshit did the frats commit this week?”
FlipYrWhig
My college had an abrasive conservative newspaper. Many of its writers were members of a single frat. The frat’s name, was, no lie, Kappa Kappa Kappa.
gex
Instead of wetsuits and dildos, we’ll be getting alcohol enemas from our future conservative leaders.
J.D. Rhoades
@redshirt:
A lot of them were founded in the late 1700s through the 1800s, when an educated man was expected to learn Greek and Latin. The letters often stand for the house’s motto. The letters for Phi Beta Kappa, are an acronym for their motto “Philosophy is the guide for life.”
You have to learn all this stuff when you’re a pledge. I’m sort of surprised I remember it.
Violet
There are fraternities that are primarily African American. Somehow I can’t imagine many of their members wearing a shirt that says “Mitt’s the tits”. I guess he’s not marketing to those people.
redshirt
@Citizen_X: Speaking of, I was shocked the first time I heard about the practice of African-American fraternities using literal branding. Like, what?!
Wolfdaughter
@NotMax:
Not admitting minorities was one of the reasons I did not join a sorority back in the Stone Ages (the 60s) when I did my undergrad work. Plus I just wasn’t a joiner. This was at the Univ. of AZ, where the Greeks still held sway, but they were losing their influence.
I sang in church choirs (Episcopal) and at Coffee Hour after church, in making polite conversation with women of my mother’s age, I would be asked which sorority I had pledged. I would reply GDI. They would look sort of confused (Gamma Delta Iota?). I would explain that in polite society, this stood for Gosh Darned Independent. They would then apologize to me for the fact that their children in college were all Greeks!
I didn’t really care one way of the other and didn’t feel like getting into the issue of lack of admission of minorities, so I would tell them that it was fine with me if their kids were Greeks, it just wasn’t my thing.
At least the Greeks do admit minorities now, and they do try to do some good deeds. I still wouldn’t be one, though.
jrg
@NotMax: Forget about it. A lot of this crew will say frat boys are all right-wing bigots without a hint of irony or self-awareness.
redshirt
@J.D. Rhoades: That makes sense now. Heck, back then, young chaps might have sat around in house libraries and discussed the finer points of knowledge. Then chugged some rum.
Joey Maloney
@A moocher: I think John Verson said it even better still: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkoPq5AOCOA
Suffern ACE
@redshirt: there was plenty of alcohol available at those original symposia, too. The Greeks thought being nude was one of the high points of civilization. They also thought drinking and talking all night were good things too. Had they known about it, they would have played beer pong, but the West needed to wait 2500 years for that development.
Citizen_X
@redshirt: That’s pretty expressly done as an ironic commemoration/reminder of slavery.
Nicole
My dad was blackballed at the first fraternity he pledged. He told me about it when I was a teenager and I could tell that, decades later, the memory still tore him up, even though he went on to be president of the campus fraternity he was accepted to. Any desire I ever had to pledge a sorority was effectively quashed. I’m sure a lot of them do good stuff, but to my young eyes it just looked like a way for people who hadn’t gotten over high school to maintain their cliques. The people who pledged the fraternities at my college (where Greek life was not big) did absolutely nothing to disabuse me of that notion.
That said, both of my stepbrothers were in fraternities and both had great experiences. They are wonderful, great guys, even though they both voted for Romney.
J.D. Rhoades
@FlipYrWhig:
Dartmouth, right?
Villago Delenda Est
@monkeyfister:
I give you Doug Niedermayer and Greg Marmalard.
redshirt
@jrg: How would that be ironic?
Also, I pointed out Hippy and Freak Frats, who are clearly not of a Republican mindset.
The rest though? Yeah.
redshirt
@J.D. Rhoades: I went to a Halloween party at a Dartmouth frat (don’t know which one) and they had an actual cadaver in the walk in fridge, for tours. I’m not sure if they were doing shots off it.
Woodrowfan
I was in a frat as an undergrad. But it was a small SLAC and the frats were all over the place as to types. Mine was largely pretty easy going and had a large group of stoners and aging hippies (this was still the 70s) and most of the theater department were in this frat or members of our “Little Sisters.” One of my frat bros is now a famous LW Hollywood type. Actually several of them ended up there. FWIW, we were the only house on campus that didn’t haze. I had seen my Dad’s pledge book from the 50s, read what they had to do, and promised myself I’d never, ever allow anything like that to happen to me.
When I went to a large state school for graduate studies, holy crap! Very different atmosphere. I visited the chapter of my fraternity twice in 4 years at the state school, and couldn’t leave fast enough either time.
I am still friends with a few of my old college frat brothers, at least the ones who stayed on the left. Two are married to each other and have been together since college.
Basically, yeah, frats attract the RW authoritarian assholes, but on some campuses they can actually provide a refuge for those who don’t fit the mold.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I did not do the Greek thing until the end of my undergrad career, at which point, like my father before me, I’m PBK.
Woodrowfan
@redshirt: I heard the same story.
FlipYrWhig
@J.D. Rhoades: yup.
Jamey
@Nylund: And closeted homosexuals.
J.D. Rhoades
@redshirt:
I know, right? A guy I worked with was a pledge at Omega Psi Phi. He came to work proudly showing off his Omega brand. He said it was totally voluntary, but they did it to show their commitment. Freaked me out. And then he told me about the light/dark skin divide between the AA frats. Yeesh.
ranchandsyrup
@J.D. Rhoades: The delts were founded at Bethany, which has some sort of relation to our grumpy absentee blawg overlord.
@arguingwithsignposts: That describes my fraternity experience as well. I was the token libtard (there were others in our house but they kept quiet about it). I’m on a ski trip with a couple of them. I’m gonna heckle one of them for having a “Clinton and gore, gone in four” bumper sticker back in the go go early nineties.
J.D. Rhoades
@redshirt:
I’m betting that was a Delt House. “Animal House” was supposedly inspired by the DTD chapter at Dartmouth.
jon
@Wolfdaughter:
Some of the sororities allow the occasional non-blonde member with a BMI over 24, but only on a conditional basis.
Punchy
OT: approx 250 dead Brazillians in a niteclub fire. 900 or so peeps in a club w/ 1 exit. Bangledesh’s garmet factories just called and said that’s redunkulous…
redshirt
@Citizen_X: I get the motivation, I’m still just shocked at it. Branding’s serious business!
FlipYrWhig
@J.D. Rhoades: I once saw the editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review, a black man, walking around campus in a t-shirt with the letters KKK. Shudder.
Villago Delenda Est
Basically, NRO is buying into, and reinforcing, the Greek system stereotype.
Which is pretty much par for the course for those dumbfucks.
Jamey
@J.D. Rhoades:
“Philosophy Be Kool?” Was “Knowledge Is Good” taken?
Villago Delenda Est
@Jamey:
Yes, by Faber College.
FlipYrWhig
@J.D. Rhoades: I heard “Animal House” was Alpha Delta, for what it’s worth.
redshirt
@J.D. Rhoades: It was many, many years ago so I forget most of the details, but I recall that being our motivation for going to that particular frat party. Sadly, it was not as fun as the movie.
J.D. Rhoades
@FlipYrWhig:
Could be. Several frats claim “the honor.”
J.D. Rhoades
Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of frats back then that fit the stereotype of right wing assholes,and probably still are. I remember going my first week to a supposedly “open” keg party at the DKE house. I’m standing there drinking beer in my long hair and my “Enlightened Rogues” T-shirt when this dude in a button-down shirt walks up and strikes up a conversation: what’s your name, where are you from, etc. Then he ask me how much money my Dad makes. I looked at him in disbelief for a second, then told him “I’ve got no fucking idea, and if I did, I wouldn’t be telling it to total goddamn strangers.” I was asked to leave soon after.
Keith
I am as left-wing as it gets, but I would pay good money for a “Mitt’s the Tits” t-shirt (or hoodie)
Elie
To me this just highlights the futility of the right… THIS is what marks evidence of incipient support for right wing policies and views among youth? Boy, really scrapping the bottom with this kind of thing.
That said, not too surprising since they are totally boxed in on their “policy agenda”, such as it is. They remain firmly fixed to the extreme right because they know if they moved even slightly to the center, their entire reason for being would completely evaporate. There is no there there that they can move to without seeming to say “me too” to Obama’s agenda. They are left with screeching ever more hysterical and extreme positions (or stupid conclusions like this), ever louder and more insistently. With the “fiscal cliff” and “debt ceiling”, they capitulated but tried to sneak it past the MSM like they hadn’t. This is a party rapidly moving to more and more irrelevance and self destruction. All the crazy behavior is the thrashing of that you see when someone is in death throes and still trying to fight for oxygen…
Kristin
This is just NRO saying, “look at us! We’re not totally extinct!” Pathetic.
My sorority was actually really religiously-based, which of course you don’t find out until you get initiated. In addition, it was so expensive and I was, by far, the least wealthy member. I only lasted about a semester or so before I dropped out. So, despite my comment above, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Greek system were a haven for conservatives.
PeakVT
@Punchy: Horrible. An entirely preventable tragedy.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elie:
And I am enjoying every second of it. I only wish I had the option that Dean Wormer had in “Animal House” of informing their draft boards that they’re now eligible for military service.
JGabriel
Frat Boy: Doctor. ever since I admitted to myself that I’m a … a conservative male … I’ve just felt … I don’t know … alienated and separate from everyone around me. Like they’re all looking at me and silently thinking racist or gay-basher or asshole. I just need a place where I can feel like, I don’t know, maybe safe? And unjudged? Do you thihk maybe I should join a fraternity?
[Pause.}
Therapist: Get the fuck outta here, you rapey douchebag.
.
handsmile
I admit to being adamantly/obstinately anti-fraternity. (I did decline two invitations to pledge fraternities while an undergraduate in the ’70s.) My subsequent personal and professional encounters with fraternity members have largely borne out that bias (the nature of people who seek out that type of social/living situation during that time in life; the kinds of experiences there they recount), but I can be as epistemically closed as the next person.
The two most recent anecdotes (and ones closest to my heart) in this regard are my nephew serving as an officer at a UVermont fraternity shuttered less than two years ago for a disgusting incident; the son of my closest friend pledged a Miami University frat last year: that entire Greek system is being closely monitored by university officials for chronic alcohol and sexual abuse incidents.
Reading through these comments, I infer that most here are relating their experience with Greek life from a couple/several decades ago. Does anyone know if fraternity membership in US colleges is increasing or declining? A perfunctory Google search before writing this comment did not yield recent (less than 10 years) data.
Citizen Alan
@Villago Delenda Est:
This thread has made me realize that the whole “Animal House” movie was the GOP in microcosm. On one side, you have the “bad guy’ frat which was consisted of the violently militaristic, the sexually repressed, the bigots, the plutocrats, and the toadies to authority. On the other, you had the “good guy” frat, which was full of drunkards, sexual predators, draft dodgers and historically ignorant morons. It’s like the whole movie is somehow an allegory for the 2012 Republican primary race, with the role of Sen. and Mrs. Blutarsky being played by Newt and Callista Gingrich.
Roy G.
“Fat, Drunk and Republican is no way to go through life, son.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen Alan:
“Animal House” has a very special place in my heart, mainly because it was filmed on my campus (the University of Oregon) when I was an undergraduate there. I watch the filming of scenes (one of which never made the movie…John Belushi doing two takes, one for an R rating, and one for a PG rating). My ROTC unit was contacted about providing cadets (who already knew how to march, etc) for those scenes…but our Professor of Military Science, initially very enthusiastic about our participation, withdrew his support after reading the script and seeing the “killed by his own troops” epitaph for Doug Niedermayer.
The scenes set in Dean Wormer’s office used the actual office of the President of the University of Oregon. If you’ve been to the UofO, you’d recognize many of the settings. The trial scene was in a lecture hall where I took American History 202, for example.
That it went on to make a ton of money when no one expected it would only endears it more.
TR
So rich, entitled drunken assholes with low intelligence, knee-jerk racism and a homophobia that masks their own confused sexual tendencies tend to be conservative?
SHOCKING.
ruemara
I was never much of a joiner and I have to admit when I saw sorority chicks, none of them looked like me (not just race but whole demeanor). However, I’ve always wished I had, it seems to be about connections and probably would help the old career. That being said, I went to NYU and the frats all seemed to be the stupidest collection of idiot conservatives you could find. No wonder I took a pass at greek life.
am
Someone mentioned epistemic closure, and that seems apt for the comments here. I was a GDI with numerous friends in the fraternities and sororities where I went to school, and with rare exceptions they were no better/douchier than my non-‘Greek’ friends. A big difference is that they were compelled to do community service by the national organizations, so they ended up reluctantly doing more good than the average student.
What we have here is a link to a website geared towards misogynistic young idiots, a population which is not limited to fraternities.
This is nothing more than a pathetic attempt by movement conservatives to parasitically attach to a group they view as ‘cooler’ based on their stunted emotional development.
Cheryl from Maryland
@redshirt: Hello fellow frat member. Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Chapter!
Sororities are the real breeding grounds of neo-conservatism. I’m not certain if conservatives don’t think about them because of prejudice or because everyone knows those places are evil. Entitled bitches who leave hair and makeup everywhere and don’t clean the shared bathrooms (yes, I still carry a grudge).
CaseyL
Frats and sororities are for kids who want a ready-made social group of sympatico peers. I went through rush week, or whatever it was, in the dim dark distant past of my frosh year. Mostly out of curiosity, since I was even more of an anti-establishment type then.
I think the thing that stood out the most was the House Mothers. To me, the whole point of Going Away to college was to get away from home, to be more autonomous. The idea of going out of one’s way to acquire not only a few dozen surrogate siblings, but also a surrogate parental figure, struck me as daft. I was like, “If you still need Mommy to track your comings and goings, why not just pick a university near your house and keep living at home?”
The obvious caste system between sororities rankled, too. Racial, economic, who-was-popular, who-was-pretty…actually, it horrified me. Because, again, I had an idealistic view that college was about expanding your horizons, not cementing them.
Some of my dorm-mates pledged and joined sororities whose main claim to fame was being “sister organizations” of the more popular frats. Turns out being a “sister” meant being sexually available for the frat brothers. I was gobsmacked when I found that out.
So, yeah, that the Greek System is a haven and incubator for the Right Wing subculture comes as no surprise.
Lurking Canadian
I’m not sure it necessarily proves one conservative if one thinks defeating Hitler was a good idea. Even the liberal (TM) Joe Stalin thought beating Hitler was a good idea.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lurking Canadian:
Contrast with Pat Buchanan who thinks we fought on the wrong side in WWII.
Tbone
I’ll readily admit that 99% of the dudes in my frat were total douches. The gay guy was cool, and one buddy in my pledge class whom I’m still great friends with to the day. Thankfully after 2 semesters I realized how stupid everything was, and took about half my pledge class with me – those of us united in Pi Omega Tau, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
redshirt
@Cheryl from Maryland: Does PBK count? I hope not! I never pledged anything or wore Greek letters or lived in some mansion turned to shit. It’s an “academic fraternity” I was told!
TR
So the frats are conservative because they sell “Back to Back World War Champs” t-shirts? I thought conservatives believed those were “Democrat Wars”?
Julia Grey
Historically ignorant, FILTHY (“That boy is a P-I-G, pig!”) morons. Say what you will about that tale-spinning dickwad looking to get laid, at least he took a bath.
Hate that movie. Hate it with a passion. That poor horse…I love horses, I shouldn’t laugh at something like that. Yet that’s the scene that always makes me fall down laughing. BANG! And I’m on the floor.
You also see that I can quote it verbatim.
It’s a horrible movie. No one should ever watch it.
mtraven
@El Cid: MIT had a wide gamut of frat houses, from traditional douchbags to hippies. I was in what used to be a hippy frat but by the time I got there had dropped the frat label and was a cooperative house and a center for leftish politics. But two doors down was one of the most “normal”. It was amazing how little we had to do with each other…eventually they managed to kill a freshman with alcohol poisoning and was shut down.
Persia
These guys look pretty conservative to me.
That’s about the only good thing I have to say about frat boys, but I do love that video.
Faux News
@A moocher: Spot on but you forgot “Gay bashing closet homosexuals” and VERY racist too. Google “vomelet and Dartmouth”
Faux News
@TR: TR you win the internets for the day.
Ben
The most frat-and-proud-of-it person I know is a very flamboyant gay Mexican-American who comes from a wealthy family.
He voted for Obama, which kind of shows you the GOP’s problem with youth nowadays…
Tehanu
The common clay of the new West. You know. Morons.
My college roommate got kicked out of her sorority for making a harmless joke about the senior “sister”, a woman in her 50’s who was the national group’s official overseer of the house. Talk about having a broomstick up one’s ass. To be fair, I did know a couple of other sorority girls who were very nice and not at all either snobbish or selfish. The frat boys, though … even after 45 years: yuck!!
Wat
@ChrisNYC:
By “safe and non-judgemental”, I presume NR means “someplace they can spend all afternoon engaged in ritualistic group ass-play and then all evening calling anybody they don’t like a ‘fag’ without anybody calling them on the irony”.
JoyfulA
I went to the first community college opened in Pennsylvania. The administration decided that fraternities and sororities were bad; therefore, the community college wouldn’t have any. So we did start our own Greeks, but they were integrated and loosely organized and open to anyone who was interested. We were all commuters and had no “houses” or parties. Mostly, they were because we were told we couldn’t.
But when I visited friends at four-year schools, the Greek system was repellant: the sororities were all divvied up by race, religion, and other ways I don’t remember; the fraternities just drank themselves sick and considered that a party. My impromptu community college sorority year was the beginning and the end.
RobNYNY1957
I grew up in a small college town in the Midwest. It was in many ways an ideal childhood. My father was a farmer, my mother a school teacher, and I was the eighth chair cellist in the university orchestra for no better reason than I was the eighth best cellist in a town of 8000 people.
The town was full of fraternities. Some of them were just full of drunken louts, but others did serious community service. I was assigned to a Big Brother in a Big Brother service program, and he was very sweet. When he found out that I had been to the Met Museum in NYC and the Art Institute in Chicago, he bought me a paint-by-numbers set of the Mona Lisa for Christmas. Sweet, clueless, and if it had happened today, postmodern.
When I applied to colleges, I made very sure that I applied only to colleges with no Greek system.
henqiguai
@Woodrowfan (#59): The African American fraternity with the branding thing is the Omegas (Omega Psi Phi). Yes, many of them get a small omega brand, and I assume it’s ironic. I have also always maintained that it’s stupid, but I’m not a joiner and always disliked fraternities, so I’m probably missing a lot of nuance…
jamick6000
@Smiling Mortician: DUDE, don’t knock it till u try it. my “Mitt’s the Tits” shirt is a real panty-dropper at the massive ragers I go to every weekend with my bros.
redshirt
I’ve learned 5 fraternities secret handshakes, and thus I come and go amongst their comings and goings with ease at their places across the land.
All for the war.
Wildweasels
@J.D. Rhoades: Yeah, my college was small, the DKE’s, Sigma Nu “snakes” and I think Alpha Sigma Phi. I would agree with your DKE comment. All the white football jocks seemed to be in the “snakes”, well this was in Missouri. The third one seemed OK, heck they took my roommate who was black and really turned me on to Jimi Hendrix. In the end I went with APO, with only a 75% majority vote, someone will like me.
JustRuss
I was in a frat in the 80s, and yeah, I see a lot of anti-Obama crap on Facebook from a lot of the brothers. Missouri, go figure. On the other hand, one of my brothers spent a number of years writing for the Daily Show. ‘Course, we were both from out of state.
Paul in KY
@J.D. Rhoades: The Dah tee Dahs. Must have had some money ;-)
Pluky
@redshirt:
Yep. My father was a Q (i.e. Omega Psi Phi), and he had two Omegas branded on him — left pectoral, and right deltoid.
Pluky
@J.D. Rhoades: Delt here too, Beta Omicron. Demographics: tended conservative, ethnic catholics, mostly engineering majors, from the rust belt. I was an anomaly (black, urban, gay, liberal arts), but had a great time none the less.