Were you in a frat?

[teachercd]

Well just like it says, were you in a frat?

 

I was in Beta Theta Pi at UNL in the 90's. It was right about the time when the school cracked down hard on frats and decided that drinking and partying were no longer "okay" so basically it meant a freshmen year of fun and then after that, well, those frat basement parties that used to be 200 girls and 50 guys, turned into frat room parties with 20 guys and 5 girls.

 

SOOOO LAME

[NUpolo8]

That's about right. What was even worse was it was selected. "Some of the fraternities are partying out of control, but since I was in Fraternity X, they're still allowed"

[irieboy8]

f#*k no.....

 

but my dad was in alpha tau omega when went to UNL.... said some pretty f'd up sh#t went down and he got into lots of trouble....

 

told me he had to eat a live baby chick during his 'initiation' or whatever you call it............

[teachercd]

HAHA, I dont know if that is true or not but that is weird!

 

I have still never understood the pissing match between frats guys and non frat guys. Who cares, just have fun!

[knapplc]

I have still never understood the pissing match between frats guys and non frat guys. Who cares, just have fun!

 

It's just your basic "us vs. them" mentality. Humans are wired for this (as are other animals), so just about any arbitrary groups you put together will develop this mentality over time. You can even split the groups, mix the members and make two entirely new groups, and eventually you'll have "us vs. them" again.

 

You see this in sports fandom, in politics, in nationalism, in.... everything.

 

I pledged a really, really down-to-earth fraternity. Great guys, but no different than any guy in a dorm room. Same people, different living arrangements. That's it.

[teachercd]

I have still never understood the pissing match between frats guys and non frat guys. Who cares, just have fun!

 

It's just your basic "us vs. them" mentality. Humans are wired for this (as are other animals), so just about any arbitrary groups you put together will develop this mentality over time. You can even split the groups, mix the members and make two entirely new groups, and eventually you'll have "us vs. them" again.

 

You see this in sports fandom, in politics, in nationalism, in.... everything.

 

I pledged a really, really down-to-earth fraternity. Great guys, but no different than any guy in a dorm room. Same people, different living arrangements. That's it.

 

 

Were you at UNL? If so, what frat, if you dont mind saying?

 

 

I think lots of times people that didnt pledge dislike the easy access to parties that frats have. I mean, you are on the campus, you have the girls houses usually right down the road, you have all this space in a huge house and girls flock to the house parties, not because of the super cool guys in the house but because it is close by and you have free beer.

[knapplc]

Were you at UNL? If so, what frat, if you dont mind saying?

 

 

I think lots of times people that didnt pledge dislike the easy access to parties that frats have. I mean, you are on the campus, you have the girls houses usually right down the road, you have all this space in a huge house and girls flock to the house parties, not because of the super cool guys in the house but because it is close by and you have free beer.

 

 

Theta Chi. 626 N 16th Street, right next to Kappa Kappa Gamma.

 

They lost their charter, though. It was always a small house, and a few years after my time there it closed down. Phi Mu owns the house now.

 

We had plenty of girls at the house all the time, but not because we were so cool or because of the free beer. It was pretty laid back. I think the girls showed up because it was a pretty safe environment, unlike a lot of houses where the guys were all predators. I mean, we were predators, too. But we were nice predators.

[teachercd]

Were you at UNL? If so, what frat, if you dont mind saying?

 

 

I think lots of times people that didnt pledge dislike the easy access to parties that frats have. I mean, you are on the campus, you have the girls houses usually right down the road, you have all this space in a huge house and girls flock to the house parties, not because of the super cool guys in the house but because it is close by and you have free beer.

 

 

Theta Chi. 626 N 16th Street, right next to Kappa Kappa Gamma.

 

They lost their charter, though. It was always a small house, and a few years after my time there it closed down. Phi Mu owns the house now.

 

We had plenty of girls at the house all the time, but not because we were so cool or because of the free beer. It was pretty laid back. I think the girls showed up because it was a pretty safe environment, unlike a lot of houses where the guys were all predators. I mean, we were predators, too. But we were nice predators.

 

 

Yeah, plus wasnt that house really close to the girls houses? Man, I bet you guys could totally play up the "safe" vibe! I LOVE the nice predators line!!!

 

We had that huge deck at Beta on the top of our house, of course, we could not party up there because UNL decided it hated fun starting in 1995

[knapplc]

That house is maybe 15 feet from Kappa Kappa Gamma, a large sorority. The best-looking girl from my high school was a KKG when I was at UNL.

[krill]

I was in Theta Chi at Wesleyan. Same deal there, we had (well still have) a huge dance floor in the basement with an adjacent bar room that could hold huge parties, but with kegs banned and other liabilities we never came close to capacity. Lots of room / hallway parties. We also had a few joint parties with UNL fraternities since they are of course dry and it worked out pretty good. Can't remember the name of the house at Wesleyan that's now the parking lot south of Plainsman Hall...they we basically the last insane party house, which they destroyed in response to probation lol.

 

Had a lot of fun though and don't really care what people think of the Greek system. Some houses are lame as hell with hazing and other BS (ours had none), but so are a lot of the people who want to live in the luxurious suite style dorms every campus has now, then destroy other people's houses partying on the weekend. There we so many asshats from the dorms and off campus that would come to our parties and get completely out of control. That was always the thing that bothered me the most.

[teachercd]

Sometimes I wish I would have been in college back in the 80's I had heard stories from friends older brothers about kegs all over, the lack of "fear" from the school over drinking. Man, that must have been sweet!

 

I could only imagine what it must have been like to be sitting on the big deck or in the front yard, with a drink and not worrying about getting "busted". Or having the doors wide open on gameday when alums come in and out of the house and grab a drink or two.

 

I know there are some places that still embrace that, some of the Big 10 schools are still like that and lots of the schools in the south.

[GSG]

I think a lot of the "anti-frat" vibe comes from what people see in movies or read in the news with regards to hazing and guys just being a-holes. I can't even really think of a movie that portrays fraternities in a positive light. I think a lot of that is way overblown. I think there is probably more hazing in sports than there is in the Greek system. I've even heard of hazing for things like marching band and other "clubs."

 

The school I went to doesn't have nationally affiliated Greek chapters, but from what I've seen at other places, it's pretty much the same. We had roughly 30% of the students in a Greek organization and those 30% did over 90% of all the service hours done by the entire school every year. Thing is, you'll NEVER hear about any good stuff like that unless you pick the school paper. Even then, it's on the back page with a single paragraph blurb. Meh. It's not about the recognition anyway. We used to throw open parties to raise funds for charity - Hurricane Katrina, a local girl who couldn't afford a heart transplant, etc etc.

 

I'm just rambling now, but I also had a lot of friends that weren't affiliated. They were often the first ones I would invite to events because I knew they didn't see me and my friends as "douchey frat guys." I'll stop now cuz I think I lost my point a long time ago.

[GSG]

And as far as the 80s being way cooler, that is a definite yes. We had a group of alums that would always tell us the story of how they knocked a "doorway" between two dorm rooms so they could host bigger parties (we aren't allowed to have house due to some fires being set) and they were only kicked off campus for the remainder of the semester!

[teachercd]

If you ever saw a short lived tv show called Glory Daze, that one kind of showed frat life in the 80s and didnt make it look all about crazy hazing. It was actually kind of a fun show.

 

You mentioned the philanthropy part and you are right, the greek system does most of that on campus.

 

I always disliked the old "you have to pay for your friends" no you dont, there were guys in my house that I could not stand and honestly never really even knew more then their last names, other guys have become life long friends. It is like a dorm room, you might have 3 roommmates and two of them you never talk to after the first year.

 

Honestly, my frat hazed, it was things like this

 

Drink a shot (Ummm okay!)

Clean the bathrooms

Stand there facing a wall and get yelled at

[Lyons in the Sea of Red.]

I have still never understood the pissing match between frats guys and non frat guys. Who cares, just have fun!

 

It's just your basic "us vs. them" mentality. Humans are wired for this (as are other animals), so just about any arbitrary groups you put together will develop this mentality over time. You can even split the groups, mix the members and make two entirely new groups, and eventually you'll have "us vs. them" again.

 

You see this in sports fandom, in politics, in nationalism, in.... everything.

 

I pledged a really, really down-to-earth fraternity. Great guys, but no different than any guy in a dorm room. Same people, different living arrangements. That's it.

Damn you got lucky. I would be hard pressed to point out a frat that has that mentality at UNL present day.