We salute you Mr. Fraternity Boy. You sit high atop your grubby couch throne in front of your fraternity house drunk with power deciding who is worthy of the illustrious title, Fratstar. Bastion of spirit, tradition and exuberance, you provide an invaluable service to the University such that we can’t imagine it without you.
Easy to spot around Grounds, you rival ROTC in their adherence to a strict uniform. You’ll be seen in any combination of Sperry shoes, Rainbow flip-flops, khaki shorts in any variety of pastel and flamboyant colors, Polo or Oxford shirts (collar preferably popped), sunglasses sure to not fly off because of your Croakies and a backwards baseball cap. On the occasion that you dress down, you wear a T-shirt emblazoned with your favorite Greek letters. At the end of the day, you make Ralph Lauren and René Lacoste proud.
You are great educators and ambassadors of all things Hellenistic. You teach the University the alphas, betas, gammas of greek life including of course the Greek alphabet in easily digestible two- and three-letter combinations. Fraternity boys everywhere also maintain the Greek polytheistic religion. Your many gods include John Belushi, Dave Matthews and Dean Allen Groves. You even maintain the great Ancient Greek tradition of toga parties started all the way back in 1978 with “Animal House” (Note: Togas are actually Roman, not Greek, but that is neither here nor there.) Really I can think of no one better to maintain the great Greek tradition of fraternities started in the American South in the mid-19th century.
Fraternity boys, you are also great social networkers connecting like-minded individuals not only here at the University but around the country. The choices among fraternities are simply astonishing. There’s the athletic fraternity, the smart fraternity, the good-looking fraternity, the fratty fraternity, the dry fraternity, the wet fraternity, the chill fraternity and the rich fraternity, just to name a few. The options are enticing enough to drive anyone mad — or at least to Mad Bowl. The mixers, date functions and philanthropies are so attractive that every year guys are rushing back for more. And all that is just at Mr. Jefferson’s little University, lest we forget that for every fraternity here, there are thousands more just like it from coast to coast in college towns everywhere. While the financial system might be on the verge of collapse, the fundamentals of the national network of fraternities is strong to say the least. The other thing to remember is that all their secret rituals and occult practices makes fraternity membership for life, and as they leave this place, fraternity boys become fraternity men, which means the fraternity population is ever growing in the real world too. It boggles the mind thinking about it.
Lastly, we can’t overlook the great service fraternities provide for our first-year students. What would happen on weekend nights without fraternities? First-years would aimlessly roam the empty streets with nothing to do but get into trouble. Thankfully, fraternities are there to open their doors and welcome first-year students into a nurturing environment. Fraternities also take significant steps to ensure a positive experience. They are crusaders against the growing epidemic of underage drinking and renowned enforcers of the drinking age. They just take a Greek or perhaps European interpretation of the drinking age. They can’t help themselves. Boys will be boys. Fraternity boys everywhere are also protectors of the fire code, making sure that their houses don’t become suffocatingly packed, but merely close or intimate. After all, it’s all about the love. Accordingly, they teach first-years the value of patience as they make them orderly line up outside in order to get inside. Fraternity boys are also at heart liberal-minded feminists as they kindly think of the ladies and allow them to go ahead of the boys in line to reverse years and years of discrimination. Finally, Fraternity boys may on occasion be confused with Under Armour spokesmen in their steadfast determination to protect their house, but in the process teach first-years life lessons about property rights and trespassing.
So we raise a red Solo cup to toast you, Mr. Fraternity Boy. And to the rest of you we humbly ask, can you party like a fratstar?
John Gregory’s column runs biweekly Mondays. He can be reached at j.gregory@cavalierdaily.com.
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