Animal House

I watched a 90-minute (minus commercials) show on the History Channel called "Frat Boys" tonight, and it brought back a lot of memories. I could probably start a separate blog just on my high school and college years, just to amuse myself (as to what I remember). Such an epistle would be better than my memoirs, which would only sell 4 copies.

My father was a member of the Freemasons, but I don't recall him attending any meetings. He was a craftsman, and I dimly remember that he received one of their newsletters, and I remember the Masonic logo, but I never associated it with college fraternities. The History Channel show says that frats evolved out of Freemasonry and secret societies such as the Flat Hat Society (named after the mortarboard?). The show didn't say it, but the FHS evolved into Phi Beta Kappa (the first American frat). The early frats mostly had 2 letters; my distant ancestors usually had only two names (ala George Washington). It wasn't until later until it became common to have a middle name (ala Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and I suspect frats evolved the same way. I wonder if future frats will have 4 Greek symbols, now that George Herbert Walker Bush (a member of Skull and Bones, by the way) has been President? Hmmm ...

I didn't join (or even pledge) a frat in college; the university where I went was caustically referred to as a suitcase college, where most everyone went back to their hometown after Friday afternoon classes, and returned late Sunday. The only exception to this rule was (curiously) on Homecoming Weekend when a few alumni allegedly came to town.

I have no idea how many were in my university graduation (there were 330 in my high school class); I remember college graduation was held at the football stadium on a Saturday afternoon. My father died the year before, so one of my uncles drove down with my mother to watch the event. I stood with a few of my friends as the ceremony happened, and we threw our mortorboards into the air afterward (although I may still have mine tucked away somewhere). After the ceremony, I met my relatives at a prearranged spot on campus, and we went somewhere to eat lunch. I was starting a new job soon, and I suspect we parted ways after eating .. those are details I do not remember.

When I went to college, the fraternities and sororities were commonly thought of (by those of us who were independents) as little more than an excuse to hold parties and get drunk, under university pseudo-approval. I graduated before I turned 21, and I don't recall if the drinking age was 18 or 21 back in those days. I made friends quickly at the dorm(itory), but doubt I would've pledged a frat at that time of my life. My first roommate (an accounting major from Vermont) attended some of the parties and came "home" drunk a few times, but he wasn't much of a social butterfly .. he was just cheap and probably went for the free booze.

Even though the Independents didn't have a formal structure likes the Greeks, we occasionally referred to ourselves as members of Gamma Delta Iota (GDI : Gol Darn Independents). The student government was heavily Greek, and the few of us Independents quietly referred to it as Alpha Sigma Gamma (ASG was the Associated Student Government). Turns out that most colleges' student governments were Student Government Association (Sigma Gamma Alpha ?) but we had to be different (actually, we never thought about it until we formed a statewide Student Government Association, but that's another story).

In hindsight, if I'd known more about frats in those days (this was 25 years ago, before the History Channel), I probably would have pledged. Then again, this was a few months before National Lampoon's Animal House was released, but that's a subject for another blog entry, later ...