Greek Life

A lot has been made in the media as of late about fraternities and the negative lifestyles they perpetuate. There have always been stereotypes associated with rampant alcohol abuse, but a couple years ago hazing came to the forefront and when people got sick of that story “The Greek system has a rape problem.”

In the past my response to this would have been something along the lines of “fucking loser geeds are probably just jealous blah blah blah” but as this is a topic that is important to me I decided I would attempt to pen a thoughtful response with some positive counterpoints.

I grew up in Indiana. It’s a pretty cool place. $500,000 can buy you a house on the nicest lake in the state, people are nice and it’s safe. It’s about as American as it gets. That said, in my community everyone was white, Christian and upper middle class. Most people grow up to do whatever their dad does. My dad is an investment broker, he moves money around for people for a living. It’s a good job, but I never got on board with the idea with asking people to give me their money, so it was never going to work out. For a while, I kicked around the idea of being a lawyer, but upon arrival at Indiana University I had largely no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

I rushed an IU Fraternity the fall of 2005. There were 20 guys in my pledge class, 100 guys in my house. Judging from the previous paragraph one could say I grew up in a bit of a bubble, the day I joined a house that all changed. I met people from all over the country, interested in all sorts of different shit and I had to learn how to get along with all of them.

But that was just my house…next door there were a different 20 guys and they were in a different pledge class in a different house of 100 people that they had to get along with. But they also had to get along with us because over the next four years we would be literally growing up together. The same was true up the street with the sororities. Many of us had the same classes, went to the same bars, dates the same people, went on the same spring break trips. In fact by Sophomore year all that ‘my frat is better than your frat shit is over’ and what remained (at least in Bloomington) was one large Greek family.

Frat culture is not a culture of rape, it’s a culture of family.

And that was a large contributing factor in what drove the decisions I would make in college. Not only did I have a pledge class and fraternity house to keep me accountable; I had my buddies in Delt, Sigma Chi, Phi Sig, Acacia to tell me when I was being a fuckstick. But also I knew I had three layers of support any time I was remotely in trouble. If a local Bloomington resident were to get a little out of hand and hit me with a bottle out at a bar, he was dead. Every person in that bar had my back.

Similarly, everyone knew that if ANY girl was touched against her will that guy was done for.  These Sorority girls were who we had been drinking with, going to dances with, laughing and crying with for four years. They were like little sisters that you occasionally got incesty with.

As for secrets, I simply don’t see it. There is a famous phrase that goes, two may keep a secret if one is dead. In plain English that means, it is hard as fuck to keep a secret between two people, let alone something like 4,000.

If you cheated on a girlfriend/boyfriend you would be found out in about 22 minutes. If you blacked out and shit yourself everyone would know, and then it would blow over and everything would be cool. The one constant, if you were ever in serious trouble, someone would be there to pick you up, because that’s what family is for.

Sure, there were moderate squabbles over the years. A drunken brawl, the classic ATO/Acacia race day fight, the constant picking on Fiji, but isn’t that what siblings do? They fight and then grab a beer.

I remember the morning after my Senior bar crawl, myself and one of our coaches woke up on the couch together; a bootlegged copy of movie Taken was still looping in the background. We were informed that the rest of our team had been thrown in jail during said bar crawl. So we went and bailed them out and then had breakfast at the Village Deli, because that’s what you do.

There was never a question about whether or not to help a fellow Greek in trouble it was ‘what can I do?’

The college experience may inherently be flawed, but what I remember was having a lot of fun with my friends, both men and women. The narrative in the media seems to be that of frats as a he-man woman hating club that waits for unsuspecting women to come drink their booze and then they pounce like monsters.

That’s not what I remember at all. I remember eating brunch at Tri Delt on Fridays and smoking cigs in the Chi O courtyard. I remember skipping class to rent boats with Alpha Phi. I don’t remember these coordinated attacks on women. But perhaps that was just my experience.

A teacher of mine once told me that a drunk person will never do something that they “won’t” do. They will do something they wouldn’t ordinarily do, but not something they won’t do.

If you black out and hook up with a guy. Congratulations, deep down, you’re a little bi-curious and that’s ok. College is about finding yourself. But if you think you can get drunk and take advantage of a woman, you are a monster.

I’ve had bad nights. A bad night is waking up in the tank. A bad night is calling an ex-girlfriend a slut. A bad night is losing your phone. A really bad night is getting a DUI.

But all of those you can come back from, it is ok to fuck up in college.

Hitting a woman? That is not a bad night. But unless 4,000 people were able to keep this dark secret this BIG secret from me, I don’t think it was happening. I mean not to toot my own horn, but I was on the inner circle. If IU had The Skulls I would have been Paul Walker.

Again, shooting out a rival frat's window with a potato canon is a fuck-up (an awesome fuck up) you pay for the window and buy the guy a beer. You abuse a woman? You're out. Simply put. Fraternities and sororities know they live under a microscope and almost any amount of hijinks can be forgiven, not this. Zero tolerance.

By the time Spring Break came around Senior year I went on to Mexico with a group of my closest friends. Men, women, pledge brothers, peeps from B school, they just all happened to be Greek and even though we were in a sketchy part of the world, I had never felt more safe because everyone was looking out for each other.

This is not to say that there aren’t problems. It seems that when you read about alcohol abuse and possible sexual assault relating to fraternities a Freshman is involved. Maybe ban all first semester Freshman from being in any Greek house during a social function. This is not victim blaming, it is just saying maybe first semester young men and women could do well to get their college legs under them. At 18 you are immature, small, have low alcohol tolerance. Automatic one year ban for any house that violates this policy. Will it stop alcohol abuse and sexual assault?

No. I don’t know how to fix those issues.

I just know that joining a house I learned how to be the person I wanted to be. I found out there was more to the world, I could leave, I could pursue something creative…and I did. I’m still friends with a lot of the men and women I met in college, specifically through the Greek system and I’m not sure I’ve had a single conversation with anyone that wishes they could take it all back.

I suppose in closing, I would just urge people to offer real insight into any issue they address. I know it’s very easy to pile on the Greek system right now, or even my home state of Indiana. Lots of hot takes left and right. I long for a time that in order to affect change you have to do more than fire off 140 characters while taking a shit. If half as many people focused on themselves as opposed to directing faux outrage at something they know largely nothing about, the world would be a better place. To the people going through this now, there will be people rooting for you to fail, but I will always be cheering for you, the Greek system. It was one of the most positive experiences of my life.

Perhaps there are non-Greeks out there that actually believe fraternities need to go away forever…but those fucking loser geeds are probably just jealous.