More Information, Less Rape
Higher Education is back, barely, and Greek life is picking up where it left off — in the headlines. The University of Kansas Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi is the latest Hades in the odyssey of abuse, and its tales, hardly scant, seem to offer no Eros, nor even a pledge to end them. As if our children weren’t already in harm’s way with viral loads around every lecture hall, there’s still this plethora of paddle pushers drawn to organs outside of the virus’s path, those more delicate, fragile and fraught with their future. These barbarians must be stopped, made extinct, as tranquilizers just buy time until the next attack. So what’s the issue?
Well, for one, fraternities are old, not like nursing home old, but George W. old and have been woven into the fabric and wallets of the Universities who host them since, it seems, his dad was born. They have yellow pages of alumni who have a lot of money, and as much as we convince ourselves that this sort of dodgy diplomacy can be eradicated on morals alone, cash still taps the keg.
As journalist John Hechinger points out in his 2017 book, True Gentleman, a tell all tale regarding outrageous fraternal behavior, specifically that of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon order, fraternities are famous. They have ex-presidents, current congress members and significant corporate catch alls. In short, they have clout. Just google Thom Goolsby, a former senator from North Carolina and as Hechinger points out, this Brett Kavanaugh with less baggage, salvaged the near demise of SAE’s UNC Wilmington Chapter as he enacted the SAE, well, Students and Administration Equality, Act which allowed the chapter or student(s) to hire an attorney during campus discipline reviews and thus kept the togas out of the closet.
Books nor brains and certainly not brawn have threatened the demons who frolic about campus, but if it’s not the Penn State Betas, then it’s the Iowa Fijis, and before that it was the Florida Pikes. Each’s myriad of misogyny sees another inebriated soul saddened by the state of sloppy standards and sure, not all brothers, and sisters for the sake of the council, act poorly, but by association, they are bait, and therefore embody an important piece in this piss on the floor behavior. They are the audience, the consumers, the creators of iPhones worth of content, news and information. An event does happen even if it’s not Instagram fed, or Tik Tokked around the clock, but once it reaches those mediums, it’s news, and in this case, the breaking bad kind. And as long as students continue to consume, the catastrophes can be curbed.
Maybe you just finished a few High Noons well before noon and have graduated to an even clearer drink in order to think less clearly more quickly and can’t take another typo from some journalist jerk with less testosterone and geeky glasses. Don’t worry, fraternities can still operate, in fact they can flourish! Society wants you to fall for the sophisticated Tri Delt who interns with “Red Bull” and has a full time offer from “Jäger”. She’s certainly wasting her time with such punk, but that falsity, that fantasy, is usually the end of your fun. Some of these dreams will end up as nightmares, unfortunately, as diets of alcohol, cocaine, no burrito and more alcohol are as customary as keto, but more information can only bring less rape. That is, accurate, disseminated details derived from Hechinger, Fox News even, the local beat, pledges without a paddle or really just anyone with a phone (and hopefully a functioning prefrontal cortex). The more the ’26 knows about the time that ’21 went past second on the stolen base attempt, the more apt he will be to slide head first with a lot more foresight.
College isn’t termed the “best four years” because a post pubescent is away on a four year fraternity or sorority leave, well, maybe, but it’s the dilemmas that determine their dogma. Skip class — though don’t storm in like an ass clown, sleep less and gamble more, get completely wasted and live to forget it, but stay attuned to the behavior in the dorm room behind you. Don’t be breaking news, break the bad behavior by being, being what Hechinger heralds and what these protagonists and now prisoners are NOT — true gentlemen.
