By Ezekiel Buchheit
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 30, 1998

Frats: What is and should never be

I have never dedicated an article to the fraternities. Mainly because I like myself the way I am, and I don't need any medical-school-bound fraternity boy to give me reconstructive surgery via lead pipe. But I've been sober now for several days, and this strange new feeling has made me quite fearless, or, if fearless doesn't delve deep enough into my mind, ludicrously stupid. So I am going to go where no columnist with an appropriate level of survival instinct has gone before, and, brace yourselves, poke some fun at the frats and sororities.

But before I begin and for the benefit of the Interfraternity Council, who cares so much about what I say and takes it perhaps a little too seriously, I will admit that yes, I have done absolutely no research for this article. In fact, if you pay close enough attention, you will realize that I have done no research for any of my articles. Research takes effort. Effort is bad.

Oh, and I am also aware of all the good things the fraternities do for our community. Yes, they keep our streets clean, our daughters safe, the liquor stores in business and the jails full.

Let the madness begin.

We go to college. (This fact may seem obvious, but believe me, some of us need to be reminded of that every now and again.) Ours is a rather large college, with about 40,000 students. Of those 40,000 students, there are, according to the IFC, about 1,500 fraternity members. I have talked to, maybe, eight of them. So I feel strong in my generalization of all the fraternities

My good friend Asa'd once belonged to a frat. He would come around to the dorm full of stories about his frat. He loved it. He thought that he had found some true friends. "We'd do anything for you," they used to tell him. Then one day Asa'd had a revelation, these friendships were dependent on fraternity membership. And finally when school priorities became greater than that of his chapter and he had to leave, the friends abandoned him. Outside of the house they were not his friends and inside the house they had no respect for him.

This is really all I have against fraternities. They appear on the outside to be about brotherhood, friendship and a system of aiding one through college, but in fact, and I say this with the utmost love and affection, they are controlled through the beating of a black heart, pumping its poison, infecting all its members with the impure blood of Satan. It's not their fault; nobody means to become diseased.

Brotherhood- friendship - is based on respect and trust. Respect isn't hazing. (Which of course doesn't go on now. The university and the IFC, among others, have whipped those fraternities right into shape.) And friendship and trust aren't created just by binge drinking and vomiting together. Sure that has its place, but there is so much more. When you vomit in a fraternity, you vomit. When you vomit with a friend, he's there to hold your head over the toilet. True friendship.

I have heard all the urban legends of the fraternity hazing rituals: young men peeing off the roof of their building, the whole goat in the basement thing and other such pleasant rumors. Yeah, they seem like a fairly well-rounded group of individuals. A group we all want to be a part of.

So somehow, I am missing the brotherhood aspect of fraternities. Where respect above a simian or military level comes into play is beyond me. Why anyone in any situation would ever want to be apart of such a group is also a mystery. Join the Crips, at least they don't pretend to be something they're not.

And I am sure that not all the fraternities are bad. I'm sure that some of them out there are actually promoting good, happy things, aren't peeing on each other, and have managed to find ways to entertain themselves apart from binge drinking. This fraternity, of course, is located on one of the moons orbiting Jupiter, but one good fraternity could lead to another.

Ezekiel Buchheit is a freshman who is this week majoring in psychology. His column, "I Like Biscuits," appears every other Monday.