I hate to suggest a thread on Frats but this is just to terrible not too. A Georgia Tech fraternity will likely face discipline after one of its top members sent out a chapter-wide email advising brother on how to lure "rapebait" at parties. The subject of his email is “Luring your Rapebait,” and it reads as a “How-to” guide on talking to girls at parties, getting them drunk, aggressively dancing with them, then finally, closing the deal. And although he urges his brothers, “NO RAPING,” this is the rapiest tangent I’ve ever seen. Full story here <a class="postlink" href="http://gawker.com/frat-house-panics-after-bro-sends-out-guidelines-on-lu-1442143270?utm_source=recirculation&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=tuesdayAM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://gawker.com/frat-house-panics-aft ... =tuesdayAM</a> Focus: What are your fraternity experiences, bad and good? What do you want people to know about frats that they might not already? What are the dangers?
Re: Thread Suggestion Thread Was President of my fraternity, so here goes: I joined because I was a transfer student and since the campus was overburdened with admissions and didnt have enough housing, I was put into a graduate dormitory. I didnt have a roommate, and I made zero friends that semester aside from my high school buddies who were already on campus. Based on that, I joined rushed a few frats to check them out, and eventually joined one. Overall, the experience was great. I made some of the best friends of my life there, dated some wonderful girls, and wouldnt have traded the experience for anything. There were about 90 guys in it when I was president and about 5 of us ran the entire show. We kept the younger members in line and kept drugs out of our on-campus house as we would have surely been booted off if they were ever found. We also had some of the best parties on campus that even the star athletes would come to, had really successful charity events, and overall I personally ran a great PR campaign. That being said, there was also a dark underbelly that the public never knew about. With 90+ members youre going to have a handful that will be complete fuck ups. One member was trying to hook up with a girl, couldnt, and to punish her by jizzing in her purse. She pressed charges, we kicked him out. Another member was selling meth out of the house, he got kicked out. That kind of stuff happened more frequently than even I probably remember, and it sucked to have to deal with such bullshit. But its unavoidable when you have that many (immature) people from a variety of backgrounds. I instructed two members of my Executive Committee to personally beat the shit of one particular member because he had threatened some girl in a fraternity. He never got out of line again. As for overall dangers, it really depends. Every frat is very, very different even if on the surface they seem all the same and indistinguishable. The attitude, mantra, and actions of the members are driven by the overall environment and in large part by their leadership, and even this can vary in the same frat generationally (every 4 years). Have a president who likes to haze? Count on that frat getting kicked off campus when assault charges are pressed. The senior members like to blow coke and rough up hookers (which happened in another frat)? Guess what the underclassmen are going to turn out like. Some frats like to haze, some are philosophically opposed to it. We fell somewhere in the middle. We hazed by the legal definition of the word, but never made anyone drink to excess, harmed anyone, or put anyone in any sort of danger. But again, legally we would be fucked if it ever came out. We did some great things and most of the time things went splendidly. Im meeting up with all of them at our homecoming tailgate this weekend and I cant wait. A few side facts: -The member dues goes to insurance and social events. Parties gotta get paid for somehow, and member dues is how it works. It also goes to our formal event at the end of each semester where we rent out a nice restaurant with an open bar and school buses for transport. Every penny members contribute is documented in an accounting ledger and real bank accounts. Nothing gets skimmed. -Some of the stuff in Animal House/Old School isnt far from reality. -Frats get the bad PR, but sororities are 10 times worse in every area.
I feel like this topic gets brought up, at least tangentially, ad nauseum. Since Juice did a good job talking about the financial aspect of it, can we please skip all the bullshit "I don't have to pay for my friends" piety that pops up in these threads? FOCUS: Went to a greek-heavy school, wasn't in a frat because of a variety of factors my freshman year of college, kind of jealous I didn't due to some of the social benefits and the alumni network as far as professional opportunities. It was way easier to date/bang/fingerblast hot sorority girls when you were in a frat, partially because of the credibility and social currency certain frats had, but largely due to accessibility and facetime through parties, events, and volunteer work. I hooked up with a few that I met through class and whatnot, but it would have been far higher if I had a party or event with a pack of attractive girls in a closed setting every weekend. Most of the other benefits I received through a business organization that I was in, so I have a close group of friends from college that would have been similar if I was in a frat. Alot of the negative connotations from frats come out of the collective group think of a pack of 20 something aged guys. Same things happens with sports teams. You have one or two questionable idiots, they are inspired by a few like minded fools, and boom, stupid shit occurs. I don't think its the fault of the frats, but rather its just a location where such events occur. They would have found trouble anyways, its just an easier and higher profile spot to find mischief. And it absolutely starts at the top and sets a theme for a house. My god sororities are a horror show. I've never had more interactions with girls that I thought were friends only to find out they despised each other but compartmentalized it in honor of "sisterhood". And the psychological beatdowns that go on are far worse than drinking half a case and puking on yourself.
Now, now, now. My sorority didn't haze. Couldn't even say that with a straight face. The semester I pledged we were not hazed, since they were on probation. Once Panhellenic looked the other way... I'm in two thought processes about my sorority. The sisters I've kept in contact with I adore, my big, grandbig, members of my "family," and so on. The rest of them I'm friendly, more so than others. There are very few I openly dislike. However, our philanthropy is domestic violence and when it became increasingly, glaringly obvious my ex-boyfriend was getting physical with me, the chapter advisor buried her head in the sand and told me to leave the house because I was making the chapter look bad. She is one of the sisters I openly dislike. We lost our charter this year due to dwindling numbers. I was genuinely saddened by this. I had a lot of good times at that house. As for the fraternities on campus, let's just say I enjoyed drinking and whoring up and down Frat Row way, way, too much.
This tells me that all the charity is just bullshit used to gain popularity and to just look better to the public. Not to actually help chicks getting their eyes blackened and their teeth knocked out. My Greek experience was rather negative but I think it has a lot to do with the group I selected. The sororities on my campus were full of shit as were the rest of the groups. Hazing was minimal but since I was with a bunch of pussies, they made it seem like they were being beaten daily and ass-raped with a baseball bat. I bet if we had more meaningful and unifying experiences, we would have had a better bond. Instead, there was so much infighting, the bickering bled into our social activities. Therefore, we never had fun. Girls didn't wanna hang out with us. On top of it all, we were just a bunch of little Jewish trolls. Ladies...
That dude is a fucking creep. However, my bigger concern with that email is that it was made public in the first place. What happens in chapter discussions/on the listserv stays within the chapter. Always. You never discussed house business anywhere outsiders could overhear. You certainly didn't put shit up on the internet for all to see. Fuck those guys. They deserve what they get for not keeping their dirty laundry in house and dealing with the retard quietly. Sounds like a creepy dude in a shitty chapter.
Agreed on the listserv/chapter point, but I almost feel like this dude is kidding and "fratting it up" on purpose. We used to say this kind of shit too, maybe not to this degree, but similar douchey things just to mock the stereotype. It might have just gotten out of context.
So some guy writes an email to his chapter with some bro language, e-tough social confidence wizardry, ends it with a hyper-controversial term, throw in some tongue-in-cheek stereotyping and includes the word rape. Some probably-fresh-guy decides to prove it to himself he's different from the stereotype because he's morally opposed to directions on how to pick up easy girls and sends it to the internet. I don't see how this is any different than how 70% of people in college try to pick up chicks. Small talk, get a drink, dance, gauge interest, make a move. I went to a school where people (probably myself included) got to college and literally needed this type of instruction (Which is pretty similar to GT I hear). My guess is that even after reading this email, even if it was sent to a dozen fraternities, zero people even followed these steps once. The whole controversy is a bit stupid, but I could at least agree if it advocated pushing drinks on to girls they didn't want. It just states ask, and if they don't want a drink, ask about something else. If they're boring and/or you don't hook up, get shitfaced. I'm pretty sure this was my college protocol.
I was also President of my fraternity, but we were only the smaller side. We had roughly 30-40 members before the new guys were counted. During my time in the fraternity I was an officer from the time I was initiated and served on the executive committee for 3.5 years. During this time I had to deal with the shitheads that did drugs, sold drugs, dui, and other stupid shit guys in college end up doing. I expelled 5-7 members that fell within these parameters. It was always better to have some consequence for the guys in house than to look the other way. We always told the university greek advisor what happened and what action we took to correct the problems. I joined the fraternity because a friend of mine that I met in college was in one. I never expected to join, but after seeing what they were about I decided to give it a shot. I'm very grateful for the experiences I was able to have within the organization because I have been able to use what I've learned (leadership, how to run effective meetings, how to set goals, etc) in my job (high school teacher). The friends I have made through the organization as well as connections made to older alum has been great. Some of my best friends are guys I went through with and a few of the guys that came after me. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask away.
Take your rape culture and hit the road! I was a frat boy and I've seen worse behavior than what is being advocated in that letter. People go to parties, people have fun, people drink and most of all people WANT to get laid......men and women, not just men. This is nothing more than coaxing people out of their shells, albeit in a crudely written set of instructions.
I don't know what we've covered ad nauseam the pros and cons of frats or the pros and cons of college rape culture. I am with you on this. The basic concept behind the letter seems pretty run of the mill college. Have party, provide alcohol, don't be a social retard, hook up. Because of the way it is phrased and worded it will be a huge deal to the usual crowds.
I've found frat guys to be a lot like uranium. In small groups they're fairly harmless, and have a nice glow. Put too many together and they ruin absofuckinglutely everything around them, with particularly bad consequences for the Japanese.
I don't care what anyone says, I'm learning a lot. FOCUSish: Do frats have secret handshakes? A friend of mine in university joined a frat and got really in to it. Sometimes I made fun of him for it, and one time I made a joke about them probably having secret handshakes or something. He said they actually did have one, and that it was secret, and that no he would absolutely not show it to me, so stop asking. I didn't believe him, but he kept insisting it was true.
There's one piece of context to this story that made it hilarious to me. The email apparently came from a fraternity at Georgia Tech, which is almost strictly a science and engineering school. This means it's extremely nerdy, and I imagine the majority of the guys in this frat are nerdy, and probably a bit socially awkward. As others have pointed out, this is pretty standard young guy at college m.o. for hitting on girls, and the fact that it had to be spelled out for the guys in this fraternity is pretty funny. Also, as others have pointed out I don't think the email is too bad. Poorly worded for sure, but nothing insidious.
This is limited to fraternities, though. Group think, mob mentality, whatever, plus alcohol in 18-22 year olds is going to be trouble. Especially for the Japanese. I was in a fraternity, and yes, we do have a secret handshake (or grip). I went to several leadership forums and conferences during the Summer, where all the chapters would meet together, and we had to use the handshake and say the phrase in Greek to get in to the main meetings. I'm pretty sure that if you couldn't do it, they were pretty generous in "reminding" you how to do it. That's just about the only time I've used it. We didn't use it for chapter meetings, although, I know some that do. (Actually met another brother of my fraternity in an airport about 6-8 years after I graduated. Upon hearing me say I what fraternity I was in, he said "oh hey" and kind of leaned in with kind of head nod look at my hand thing. We did the grip and said the phrase. It was kinda cool and really strange at the same time.) I've looked on the internet before, but it's actually funny that both are hard to find. And the wiki answers or those sorts of things that come up are completely wrong. My closest friends from college are all in my fraternity, but that's just because that's who I spent all my time with. I graduated from one college where I was in a fraternity. I went to another college for my next degree, and tried to hang out with the brothers in that chapter. We had nothing in common, and I dropped that pretty quickly.
This. Now that I'm a few years graduated I cannot believe the amount of "good ol' boy system" hiring that goes on because of fraternities. Half my chapter works for Deloitte upon graduation and the other half gets hired at Booze Allen or SAIC. Essentially, those companies' Washington DC offices have been run by our alumni for the last 15 years. It's impressive and scary all at the same time because these are the same kids I used to hit beer bongs with a few years ago. Also, Fiji is a lower-tier fraternity at most schools. Odds are, you wouldn't want to rush them.
And what the smaller and academic fraternities never got out of it was exposure. Nothing peaks a southern good ol' boy hiring manager like reminiscing about his frat days in the south where its 10x more serious than the northeast. The biggest ones I've seen we're: SigEp, Kappa Sigma (what I was), Sigma Chi, SAE, and Lambda Chi.
Off topic: Do frats have a dress code? As in, every single fratboy I ever saw wore the same thing. Granted this was 1997-2001, but I've still been able to spot them a mile away. Attire consists of short shorts, flops, pastel colored polo, and croakies. Also had hair that was purposely longish. This was also in the South.