Growing up, I always wanted to be in a fraternity. At age 8 I memorized the Greek alphabet and wore a toga to school. At 11 I started paying my friends to hang out with me. At 14 I took gymnastics classes at the Y because I wanted to learn how to do a keg stand.
Years later, the dream is a reality. I’m proud to call myself a brother of Sigma Chi. But now that I’m actually in a fraternity, I understand the full nature of Greek life. It’s a lot like middle school but with slightly more hooking up.
A successful fraternity needs three things to survive: A steady supply of your parents’ money, half-conscious sorority groupies and freshmen recruits who live up to the high ideals of your brotherhood. (In some cases high ideals may be substituted for basketball skills or an XBox.)
With all of the top houses competing for the same girls and recruits, it’s not surprising that there are some rivalries among houses. What most people don’t realize is that these rivalries are a constant threat to our school’s nearly stillborn social scene.
Have you ever wondered why every on-campus frat party gets broken up by University Police? Fraternities have only themselves to blame. Parties are broken up because nobody in the fraternity quads can throw one without the house next door doubting the size of its Greek penis and calling the cops.
Hypothetically, Zeta Beta Tau reports a noise violation on Theta Chi on Friday night, and then on Saturday night Theta Chi returns the favor. It happens all the time.
Panhel and the sororities aren’t any better. Sorority life is one part Desperate Housewives and two parts Kafka.
But good luck finding anyone willing to speak out against the Panhel clitocracy. Instead, houses rat each other out to Kyle Pendleton for petty crimes during winter rush. From there it only gets worse; the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life has the power to detonate a PMS chain reaction that will spread throughout the quads.
Between pun-based philanthropy events and passive-aggressive cat fighting between houses, sorority girls barely have enough time for the important business of frat parties.
Infighting plagues both sides of Greek life. It’s a sad and disappointing truth. Honestly, it blows my mind that people care so much about their standing in some imaginary fraternal pecking order. Who would even want to be the cool kids at Northwestern? That’s like winning a beauty pageant at a leper colony.
It’s time for Greeks to put aside their differences and focus on what’s really important: How much better we are than people who aren’t in Greek chapters.
What a bunch of antisocial losers. They think they are all so independent and insightful because they don’t like Dave Matthews Band, but in reality they are just angry dorks.
Tony Evans is a Weinberg sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected].
