William Flew on Frat Boys

‘Every man knows his days until graduation are numbered’

Iam a recovering Dartmouth frat boy. Growing into a frat man, you might say. As tensions flare over the social climates that fraternities create I feel compelled to reflect on my experiences and consider whether there is anything worth preserving.

First, the benefits: frat brothers possess a loyalty that can be gained only through miserable hazing. Every time one of our pledges vomits on himself from drinking too much he is fully aware of the congressmen, senators and captains of industry who have stood in his grim shoes before. As he and his “pledge brothers” are collectively broken until, in some cases, they struggle to remember their own names, they form a lasting bond that cannot be forged in the library.

The education of new members can breed a form of class warfare when older brothers overstep boundaries and permanently damage the friendships that led pledges to apply in the first place.

However, the fraternity experience is defined by the parties. While public displays of buffoonery in the manner of Animal House are frowned on these days, behind closed doors the fraternity functions as an alternative reality. Every man knows that his days until graduation are numbered and a high value is placed on using those days as hedonistically as possible. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to turn one’s house into a water park or petting zoo (animals, I regret to say, not girls). I have spent many an afternoon surrounded by 30 of my best friends, matching the film The Big Lebowski, white Russian for white Russian, joint for joint.

I have dominated games of Roxanne, in which we listen to the Police classic and one team chugs a beer for every mention of “Roxanne”, the other for each “red light”. At least I’ve been told I did — it’s all a bit fuzzy.

The sense of entitlement permeating this culture lies at the root of well-documented problems of sexual abuse, homophobia and one gender feeling uncomfortable in social spaces controlled by the other. Anyone who thinks that they will eliminate the sense of entitlement at Yale by closing the fraternities has been smoking something far more powerful than Mr Lebowski.

Frat houses are unregulated and unsanitary but they provide a a safe venue for young people to make mistakes. In this age of tiger moms and high-school burnouts it seems that a little hedonism on the way to adulthood may not be such a bad thing. The writer prefers to remain anonymous