JENNY YURSHANSKY/Daily Bruin  Adam
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I pity the befuddled and secluded dorm-rat, nestled high upon
the crowded hill of On-Campus Housing. With the All-Hill Formal
““ “The Dormal,” still many fortnights away, and
Episode II still in post-production, all coy dorm-dwellers have
left to do is sit at their keyboards and wonder,
“What’s the deal with fraternities and sororities? Do
they have any real purpose?”
What a great, deep question! As one lonely student who is a
member of the Greek system, I feel it is my duty to put
pre-conceived notions about Greek life to rest. Many think they are
aware of what goes on behind closed doors on Gayley, Landfair and
Strathmore. Little do they realize, their ignorance to the truth is
of monolithic proportions.
Here then, I present to you a typical day, say … a Tuesday, in
the life of a UCLA fraternity man. May all your prejudices be
shattered like a bottle over your head.
A mist of water from the lawn sprinklers comes through the
jagged hole in my window at 12:30 p.m., hits my face, and causes me
to stir. Great, another early wake-up. I sit up, covered in blood
from the six fights I was in the night before, and push the
still-Roofied girl who is lying across my legs onto the mildewed
floor. She falls in a heap, knocking over the knee-deep,
pentagram-shaped pile of beer cans that lies at the foot of the
green box spring I sleep on. Waking up in a daze, she asks me how
she got here, who I am, and if I would be able to walk her home.
Uh-oh.
Pretending I don’t speak English, my answer comes out in a
jumble of Sanskrit, Latin and American Sign Language just the way
the older guys in the house taught me to do it. Beautiful. She runs
off in a huff, as three of my friends who watched the scene take
place through a hole in my wall yell catcalls at her. Man, those
guys will do anything to objectify women. But she’ll be back.
They always come back.
I stand up, smoke a bowl, grab the closest pair of boxers I can
find, turn them inside out and put them on, don one of the seven
identical frat shirts I own, snatch a half-full beer can (wounded
soldier), pour some beer in my hair, style it, take some spray
deodorant and douse myself with the stuff. Dry shower. Ready to go
for the day.
I walk to class with a feigned limp because, hey, it looks sick.
I lift my head in recognition to every person I see, whether I know
them or not. I can’t afford to buy my books yet, but I make
thirty calls on my $300 cell phone on the way to Ackerman because,
hey, it looks sick. I try to objectify as many girls as I can.
My only class of the day started 17 minutes ago, but it’s
sunny today and I’m hung over, so Meyerhoff Park it is. Work
on the tan, smoke a few bowls, make some calls and objectify girls;
the day is turning out beautifully. I eventually decide to forgo my
class entirely based on the fact that the Sanskrit-incompetent girl
who spent the night usually sits near the front. She takes great
notes, and like I said, she’ll be back.
I saunter over to sorority row, or the
objectified-girl-depository as fraternity members like to call it,
and walk into the house of some girl who thinks we’re
“seeing each other.” An alarm goes off as I step foot
in the house, as I have accidentally triggered the electronic,
weight sensitive floor-scale which resides in the foyer of every
sorority house.
Red, neon lights flash “183 lbs.” repeatedly and the
siren continues to sound until the 94-year-old housemother enters
the secret, twelve-digit access code. My hangover now pounding in
double-time and embarrassed by the fact that I interrupted the
girls’ weekly “fat-circling” session, I hastily
leave the sorority and cross campus back to frat row. It’s
already 6:30 p.m. Tonight, there are pledges to be hazed.
We make our pledges drink until they die. We tell them it builds
character and will bring them together in ways they do not yet
understand.
If a pledge does not die from drinking, he can never be
initiated into the house. They tend to go along with it because,
like all other fraternity members, they are thoughtless clones of
each other who pay for the privilege to conform and be
accepted.
After a full night of depraved Satanic rituals and maximum
security prison-like hazing, I will go to bars in order to drink,
smoke and have conversations I can’t hear with people I
don’t know about stuff I don’t like. Maybe I’ll
run into the girl who doesn’t know Sanskrit and buy her a
drink. Better yet, I’ll get her to buy me one.
I eventually stumble home near sunrise, smoke a bowl, make seven
drunk dials, e-mail my TA explaining the illness I had which
prevented me from attending class, and pass out on my box spring. I
need my sleep. After all, tomorrow’s Wednesday which is
typically more of a party night.
“¢bull; “¢bull; “¢bull;
Let this example serve as a lesson. Individuals will tell you
about how members of the Greek system get better grades than the
majority of the school, donate time and money to various charity
and volunteer organizations, all while learning social and
leadership skills that will help them excel after their
undergraduate years.
Dorm-rats, you have been right to doubt such statements all
along.
I mean really, do you think somebody in a fraternity could ever
truly succeed in life and become, I don’t know, the President
of the United States? That would be … sick.