Chapter 7
The Fraternity of Life
"College is a haze of
knowledge, much as a fraternity
is a hazing of brothers."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1922
By the time I got to college, I had already mastered the skills of smoking and drinking. Thus, I figured the best way to put these talents to use would be to join a fraternity. After applying to pretty much every university east of the Mississippi, I found myself packing my bags and hitching a ride to the University of Cincinnati. Go Bearcats! It would seem that this fine educational establishment was willing to look past my straight C minus grade point average and envision the greatness that awaited me. I arrived on campus one crisp fall day and located my dorm room. I looked around at the four walls that I thought would be my home in my final step into manhood. Then I looked at my new roommate and he promptly told me to get lost.
He was a large, burley man by the name of Scott something-or-other. I can't say I got to know him very well. I had assumed that my assigned roommate would quickly become my new best friend, but that was not to be. It would appear I had been misled by countless coming-of-age movies. You see, Scott had a different idea about what college life would be like. He imagined himself as the big man on campus, bringing college girls back to the dorm and smoking reefer in the lavatory. The piece of the puzzle that didn't fit in with his vision of the next four years was me. So I was quickly ushered right back out of the shared room and was left out in the cold with my meager belongings. I spent the first night on the floor of the dormitory hallway. When I awoke, I found that someone had thrown a pile of trash on me during the night. Among the food wrappers and beer cans was a crumpled flier proudly displaying the Greek letters Sigma Nu. It was a calling. A higher power was leading me toward my destiny. I brushed off the garbage, gathered up my things, and lit off for fraternity row.
After locating the Sigma Nu house, I put my name on the pledge list immediately. As I waited on the front lawn for someone to notice me and tell me what it would take to join their brotherhood, I heard several passersby call the house a dump. One person said it should be condemned and another said it should at least be roped off as a biohazard. Hearing these unkind words, I reexamined the house that I was hoping to call home for the next four years. It didn't look much different than the house where I had grown up. Sure, the paint was peeling and the porch was sunken in. There were broken window panes and beer cans strewn across the lawn. If that didn't scream home, then I don't know what did. I suddenly felt a sense of deep offense. I sat on the front steps and I waited. When the next person came by expressing their distaste for the house to which I was already feeling a connection, I hauled myself up and gave him the brutal uppercut he deserved. The guy hollered something about campus police and then took off down the block.
Apparently some of my future fraternity brothers had witnessed the scene. They came out of the house to congratulate me on my random display of violence and told me that punching people in the jaw was one of the pillars upon which Sigma Nu was built. While they told me I would still have to pledge, they also assured me that I was Sigma Nu material and that there most certainly would be a place for me in their house.
Pledging was quite the experience. I was put through the ringer of the rich and storied history of hazing. It was incredible how many chores were required of the pledges, considering the house didn't appear to have ever been cleaned. We freshman were assigned dish duties and laundry, scrubbing toilets and hauling the trash to the university dumpsters. Apparently the fraternity couldn't afford garbage service. Then, of course, there were the drunken shenanigans. The fraternity brothers would pour alcohol down the throats of the pledges and then force them to engage in various athletic feats or nude public displays. You may think of it as barbaric. I think of it as a bonding experience. Through these acts of compulsory humiliation, we pledged our allegiance to the brotherhood so that we might become brothers ourselves. The senior members of the fraternity made it quite clear that they were impressed by my tolerance for alcohol, both in terms of quantity and quality. Having conditioned myself in my teen years, I was able to consume copious amounts of alcohol without passing out or vomiting. The type of alcohol was not of much concern to me either. Before leaving home and setting off for the wilds of Ohio, I had learned to make due with whatever type of fire water I could get my hands on. No matter how much of that cheap tequila they set in front of me, I was able to put it away and ask for more.
I also stood out amongst the other pledges because of my willingness to do what others found embarrassing. Some of my fellow freshmen shied away from streaking through the girls' dormitories. I've had my pants pulled down in front of girls in the school yard more times than I can count. My brother once stripped me nude and locked me out of the house on Christmas Eve just as the carolers were arriving. Nudity was something I had learned, not to fear, but to embrace. It seemed to me that streaking through campus was just part of the college experience. Thus I was the first to drop trou. While my nude escapades led to my eventual suspension from classes, the respect it earned me with the Sigma Nu boys was worth it.
Unlike in the movies, I was never asked to steal a rival team's mascot and lock it in the Dean's office to wreak havoc. I was, however, called upon to use a permanent marker to adorn my face with dozens of phallic images and then attend my professors' office hours. I was also asked to sneak into one of the sorority houses and perform what they call a panty raid. Due to some unfortunate circumstances beyond my control, I ended up in a local nursing home instead of a sorority house. Not one to waste an opportunity, I performed the panty raid nonetheless and my fraternity brothers gave me points for the effort.
One of the final feats we pledges were called upon to perform came in the spring of freshman year. We were asked to spend a full week in drag. We had to go to our classes, attend campus sporting events, and parade around the quad in women's clothing. Little did they know, I had been training for this moment my entire young life. Some of the other pledges tried to skate by in just a pink t-shirt or a pair of clip-on earrings. Not Bill McNeal. I threw myself into the challenge with gusto. I was able to locate some dresses at the local thrift shop that greatly resembled the frilly smocks my mother dressed me in until middle school. I managed pigtails and bows with ease. Even the undergarments I chose were fit for a lady. The senior fraternity brothers were so impressed with my enthusiasm, they named me pledge of the year and gave me the honor of a public paddling in the yard in front of the fraternity house. I'm told this is an accolade to be proud of.
Once sophomore year arrived, I shed my pledge status and became a fully-fledged Sigma Nu brother with all the rights and responsibilities awarded to our honored members. Only a few of us had made it through the initiation process and our bond was strong because of it. I continued to achieve C minuses in my classes, but in the fraternity of life, I was earning an A plus. For the first time since those early days of middle school, I felt like I had real friends. My fraternity brothers were not just my companions, but my new family. They taught me what adult friendships should be like. We binge drank together, called each other obscene names, and punched one another in the groin at regular intervals. These are the foundations on which true friendships are built. Night after night, we risked our health and sometimes our lives, all in the name of a cheap thrill.
Perhaps one of the greatest honors of achieving brother status, was that I found myself on the other side of the hazing rituals. I got to watch as our new batch of pledges were put through the same trials at which I had succeeded with such ease. I had earned the prestigious right of stripping the clothes off of hopeful freshmen and sending them out into the world the way God made them. I was among those laughing as the young men were forced to scrub toilets with their own toothbrushes. I was the one holding the funnel as alcohol was drained into the bellies of the pledges. And it was I who selected the girlish garments that these boys would wear in their final test of loyalty to our house.
Some of the boys were up for the challenge. Some simply weren't cut out for fraternity life. A couple of the fledgling pledges dropped out the first week, stating that our hazing tactics were inhumane and bordered on torture. By abandoning their pledge status, they only reinforced what we already knew: hazing works. It weeds out the weak and the fearful among the uninitiated. We were stronger as a brotherhood without them. So, we wished them good riddance by burning their belongings in a bonfire in front of the student union.
As the weeks went on and the trials became more intense, we continued to identify and expel the pledges who just weren't up to par. I recall one evening when we were testing the loyalty of a particular pledge. We got him sauced on enough alcohol to get a ship full of sailors drunk. Then we locked him in the trunk of a car and abandoned the car in a junkyard. I'm sorry to say that the young fellow did not pass the test. We never heard from him again. It would appear he wasn't Sigma Nu material. After this failure, he was at least smart enough not to show his face around the fraternity house again.
There was another young lad who nearly made it through. He had gotten past all the other challenges and had made it to the week of dressing in drag. Even after all the chores and the drunken escapades, all the public humiliation and friendly beatings, apparently this was where he drew the line. A pledge is free to quit at any point of his choosing, but this young gentleman didn't want to quit. He felt that he had done enough to earn the status of Sigma Nu brother, but did not want to participate in this one final week of public ridicule. He thought he was above the rules. Of course, it was our duty to show him that he was not. We allowed him to believe that he would be excused from this one exercise, but then, when he least expected it we clocked him over the head with a bag of sand. When he came to, he found himself fully clad in women's clothing, tied to the hood of a car, making laps around campus. When he finally loosened his restraints and managed to roll off the hood of the moving vehicle, we made sure to inform him that his time as a pledge had come to an end and he was not welcome back in the house of Sigma Nu.
Ah, to be young again. Those years spent with my fraternity brothers, bullying hopeful freshmen, were some of the best years of my life. I'm sorry to say that I didn't really keep in touch with my frat buddies after college. I often wonder where they are now. I understand Sigma Nu is inactive these days. I heard it had something to do with pending litigation. I don't really know what that's all about. It's a shame, though. There are young men in the trenches right now who could really use some Sigma Nu brothers, just as I needed them back in my day. I'm just glad I had the chance to make those brotherly bonds.
In addition to the benefits of brotherhood and camaraderie, there is another advantage to joining a fraternity: college girls. Let's explore that, shall we?