If you’re like me, you’re so far removed from the Greek scene that the closest you ever get to it is Saturday brunch at Golden Olympic. You don’t know the lingo, can barely read the symbols and generally forget that nearly 3,000 of your fellow students are part of a whole other world.

Nevertheless, you probably have one or two good friends who signed their lives away freshman year, and so sometimes you find yourself at a frat party, the 1800 Club or some other sketchy locale.

Take my Friday night. I hadn’t seen my best Greek friend for a while, so I met up with him and three other frat guys for a BYOB dinner. I brought along a carefully selected bottle of my favorite wine from EV-1, but I discovered a Carlo Rossi Vin Rose jug bigger than my head sitting on the table when I arrived. Well, when in Rome, I thought, or should I say, When in Athens?

The evening began full of lively and impassioned conversation. But what blew me away was that the conversation consisted almost exclusively of unadulterated, juicy gossip. These are supposedly high-testosterone, straight dudes – the top of the heterosexual heap – and yet all they could think of to talk about was each other. And their fraternity brothers. And the girls their fraternity brothers had slept with. And the other dudes those girls had slept with. And certain things that had passed among them along with the bodily fluids.

It was amazing and almost inspiring, because when I gossip I feel guilty and have to preface it with, “I don’t like to gossip, but let me just say this one thing…”

These guys had no apologies, no regrets. And no qualms about judging someone entirely based on their Greek affiliation. I heard this sentence: “She’s kind of a bitch, but she’s in Kappa, so she’s not as much of a bitch as she would be if she were in Theta.” Wow! I wish I had such a handy, pre-approved rubric of other people’s character.

And I don’t think they intentionally show more respect for men, but when I could get a word in edgewise among all the scandalous talk, some of the guys seemed surprised that anyone sans penis could articulate complex ideas. (I actually was surprised, too, but only because of all the Carlo Rossi I had consumed.)

So why am I telling you all this? It doesn’t exactly fit with my first column’s resolution to write about meaningful things. But freshmen, while you’ll probably find friends and have a great Northwestern experience no matter what you choose to do, think long and hard before pledging. The one break in the conversation on Friday night happened after the boys had been discussing how over their four years as members, their frat had kind of gone to crap, and I asked them, “So why did you join?”

Blame it on Carlo if you want, but they couldn’t really remember.

Medill grad student Anna Maltby can be reached at [email protected].