If Your House Isn’t On Some Type Of Probation, You’re Doing Something Wrong

Swoop Johnson8 years ago

Greek organizations haven’t changed much over the years, but recently universities have decided to start dishing out punishments for reasons that are as illegitimate as North Korea’s Olympic gold medal collection. And universities have no moral high ground on which to stand. These are the same institutions that will rob you blind, indoctrinate you with useless ideas (e.g. required pre reqs like sociology), and continue to bang down your door in pursuit of your hard earned cash long after your diploma has been collecting dust next to your future wife’s roller derby trophies. You can’t even declare bankruptcy on student loans for fuck’s sake. They will haunt you until your dying days, but yeah, go ahead and tell us we’re the bad guys for trying to blow off a little steam after getting bent over a barrel and mindlessly violated by you greedy bastards. College is the time for us to better ourselves, and opening up the release valve on our boyish habits before we venture out into the real world is just as important as passing some stupid capstone course, or meeting your spouse. Lord knows what society will become if we’re suppressed.

Almost two thirds of the fraternities on my campus were placed on probation last semester for things ranging from academics, to kids falling off of fire escapes. Believe it or not, this is a step up from the prior semester, as my university’s entire greek community was placed on social probation after Halloween for reasons that I’ll leave to your imagination. That’s a good example of taking things too far, but my guess is that this way of life is ubiquitous across the nation. As with prohibition, when a majority of people are breaking the rules, it probably means that the rules need changing, not the individuals, so keep it up. I’m not advocating that we all go out and commit felonies, but slacking off on grades, drinking our bodies into submission, and poking fun at new members is a tradition that’s lasted for generations.

Before I hop off this soapbox, I’d like to make a decree. The test of a fraternity’s legitimacy should be whether or not said fraternity is in good standing with their university, and/or their IFC. Not because fraternity men should be consumed by their hedonistic pursuits, but because the opportunity to set out on these pursuits is slowly being stolen out from under us. This is the land of the free, and the home of the brave. Donny Trump cheated the system for years, but look at him now. He made billions, flicked a few beans, gloated about it to Billy Bush, then became the fucking president. He’s been sued 135 times since taking office, and it hasn’t even messed with his head enough to bring his handicap up. The way to combat this is to change nothing, just as our president would. If any probations have been placed on your house, you and your brothers should consider yourselves proud fraternity men, continuing the endeavors that your founders laid before you..

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