I Pledge Allegiance to the Frat!

So the steak-heads at the Old Dominion chapter of the Sigma Nu frat went and hung some rather bowdy signs. Pretty typical stuff, really, and c'mon, the sign on the right is funny.

I was in a frat, Alpha Chi Rho, Wesley College, 1993-1995. AXP! Like everyone else who ever pledged a frat between 1980 and whenever, I did it because I saw Animal House at an impressionable age and wanted to be just like the guys at Delta House. I always had a thing for D-Day. Heck, my pledge class even had a guy named Flounder. I was Flushman. Don't ask. To this day the best party I've ever been to was the one we had the night I pledged. It was pretty much like this:

I still remember everyone thrusting their beer high in the air, like Arthur's knights before the round table, and singing along to Pearl Jam's 'I'm Still Alive!' Best. Party. Ever.

In AXP I learned how to drink and smoke pot and boot and rally (again, don't ask). Many of you probably didn't know this, but there is absolutely no reason why three men cannot urinate in the same toilet at once. 'Don't cross the streams!' I chugged beer to a chorus of 'Here's to brother Will, brother Will, brother Will, here's to brother Will whose with us tonight...Drink Mother-F******! Drink Mother-F******! I can still down 12 ounces in three seconds. On Saturday night I would call the frat up and ask, 'When you getting the keg? 8:00? Be there at 8:15.' As the frat president, Buddha once said, 'Will, you used to be the first one there and the last to leave!' And I was. For a decade I absentmindedly drank only from my left hand. It was a thing we did. I don't know why. One semester, ahhhh Fall '93, I was drunk four nights a week and high the other three. I have something close to a photographic memory, that's the one time in my life when things seem a bit blurry. I had a 3.0. I just sat in the corner at those parties and drank. I was the frat weirdo. Which was fine with everyone else.  I was kidnapped and dumped in a field in Port Mahon, DE. I was one called into the college president's office and given a good dressing down. And oh god did we ever have toga parties.

I still remember the national headquarters address, 109 Oxford Way, Neptune, NJ. I can still sing the Greek alphabet to a catchy memorization song and still know the words to the semi-official mixer song:

Oh what a night
AXP and Delta Phi Sigma
Drinking beer and having lots of fun
What a mixer what a night...

Deep stuff. Sadly the D Phi Sig girls never seemed to interested in me. Like I said, I was the frat weirdo.

And I still know the words to our official song:

Amisci uske ad aras
Deep graven on each heart
shall be found unwavering true
when we from life shall part

After we got busted kidnapping pledges we were even put on double probation.

But enough about the Glory Days.

Sometime during my pledge period ['A Pledge Pin!'] I learned about the founders of AXP and their principles. AXP was founded in 1893 by a bunch of young men in jackets, ties, and formal haircuts. They extolled the principles of brotherhood, education and service. They meant it. At some point between the 100 years AXP's founding and my pledging, the fraternities' core mission changed.

Its stayed the same ever since.

Those guys at Sigma Nu are interested in beer and girls. No doubt they blast music (hip-hop god help us) and puke off their balcony and shout lewd things at girls unfortunate enough to be walking past the frat house at 2 AM. Though it was made in the 70's Animal House takes place in the early 60's. That's the middle-brow culture of post war man and woman. They'd look at Delta House and think all they needed was a good talking to:

Or maybe they could send Joe Friday. He'd set those kids right.

That culture is gone, of course. The same people fainting over Sigma Nu have spent the last 50 years systematically obliterating the middle-brow culture of the man in the gray flannel suit and the woman in sensible housecoat. Gone are notions of public comportment, restraint and subtlety. Do what you want, that as the point of Woodstock, right? The feminists worried about Sigma Nu's 'rape culture' no doubt love Hillary!, herself married to an admitted adulterer and accused rapist who never saw a woman he didn't view merely as a repository for his lust. Sigma Nu's world was made by the new left.

I joined AXP to party. Apparently it was founded by young men who wanted more.