Advice for a New Fraternity House Resident, from a Four-Year Veteran

The Sixth Year12 years ago

“Yeah, woooo! Living in a frat house man, this shit is going to be awesome! Fuck yeah!”

Now, hold up a second. Before you get ready for some of the greatest years of your life, I thought I’d let you know what the future holds for you. You know the film Animal House? Over-exaggeration, right? Just Hollywood spinning a tale that is incredibly unrealistic, right? Nope, well not entirely. Of course some things in that movie are embellished, but with the things I’ve seen over my four years of living in a fraternity house, I assure you that it is a fairly accurate portrayal of what you can expect. Here are a few things that you can count on:

People will steal your shit, and you will steal theirs.

“Steal” has a new meaning when you reside in a fraternity house. Gradually, “steal” becomes “take.” As in, “Hey, who took my speakers?” whereas the normal person living in regular conditions would say, “Hey someone stole my speakers!” Stealing doesn’t exist in fraternity houses. The first time you have some food stolen, or a video game or dvd, or of course a 12 pack of beer, you will go into a short period of hating your fraternity. “How could they do this to their brother?” you will ask yourself. “Who was it? Who can I trust?” Then, you will gradually get over it, and the next Saturday when you are blacked out looking for a Y-Cable in someone’s room after some random girl ripped out the one in the stereo system, you’ll spot a half empty bottle of Maker’s and commit a little theft of your own. You don’t even know you did it, your mind was on auto-pilot, and you were drunk – bottle of Maker’s, do I want it? Yes. Take. When you wake up, you realize this “evil” is inside you too, but you, just like the person that stole from you, will not return said whiskey.

But guess what? That’s fucking fine. A bunch of shit-faced college-aged men packed into the same house isn’t going to be a nunnery or convent, or whatever those fucking things are called. Stealing happens in fraternity houses, and it’s not the end of the world. We get drunk, we see shit we want, and we are drunken idiots. Hell, I bet most guys have been blacked out alone in a brother’s room who they aren’t entirely fond of, thought “fuck this guy,” and just taken something in an alcohol-induced rage, simply to spite the guy. It’s the circle of fraternity life. Get used to it.

People will fuck with you during school nights. A lot.

This conversation will happen to you, and many more times than once:

“Hey man, we’re hitting the bars hard tonight, you in?”
“Nah, I got a big test tomorrow.”
“Pussy.”
“Yeah yeah I know, but can you try and keep it down when you come home?”
“For sure, good luck on your test.”

Six hours later, cue the door at the end of the hall opening, and the loudest voices you have ever heard in your life shouting your name continuously and calling you more variations of “pussy” than you had previously known existed. Whether your roommate/suitemate brought home a girl or not is irrelevant. He will shout obscenities at you, since you opted to stay in and he did not. You are automatically his enemy. Maybe he even struck out at the bars, in which case you’re royally fucked, as his frustrations will be taken out on the inhabitants of the house, which unfortunately includes you. They will come in and try to talk to you about the most unimportant thing but they will act like they are unraveling the mystery of life, then they’ll try to get a post-bars party going. One time I had a drunken dipshit shoot bottle rockets under my door. When you don’t have a test the next day, you will let it slide and chalk it up as an annoyance, but when you have a test, you might blow up and be the guy yelling in the hall at the drunk guy. You must let the inebriated man go comatose at his own pace. As for the test you have, you’re cheating off the guy next to you anyways so who cares if you’re tired.

As with the stealing of items, you will also be the drunken asshole during weekdays wandering the fraternity house at some point. As you and your shack for the evening drunkenly giggle and stumble through the hallways and attempt to be quiet, in the morning you will realize that Helen Keller could have heard your ridiculous attempt at silence. When you blackoutedly stagger into the fraternity house at 2 AM, your place of sanctuary, in your state of mind you assume everyone is ready to party – they aren’t. The annoyee has become the annoyer. Again, it’s a fraternity house. We drink – a shit ton. Things will happen, awesome things. Unfortunately, a 12-whiskey-coke-deep fraternity man is indifferent to your suffering, or anything for that matter, unless it starts with ‘p’ and ends with ‘ussy.’

Someone Other Than You Will Fuck/Piss/Vomit in Your Bed.

I swear to God, upon my second year moving into the house, a brother had sex in my bed before I had even slept in it. There weren’t even sheets on it yet, just a mattress. It will happen to you though, and you will do it to others. The piss/vomit one can never really be anyone’s fault, as you are intoxicated enough to involuntarily release bodily fluids, so therefore you can not be expected to realize you are not in your own bed/give a fuck. Sorosties will do this shit even more than your brothers, and some of these girls aren’t even shacking with you. Still, it sucks and it will ruin your day, but just ask the person to clean your sheets, and in the end it’s just a good story. However, the fuck in another brother’s bed is a fraternity tradition. Not “tradition” as in everyone is supposed to do it, tradition as in it just happens every year, similar to the Cubs sucking or Democrats trying to raise taxes. As you stumble through the halls with your beautiful maiden and woo her with your poetry and sonnets, you will be overcome with passion and push on literally any door that is open, even if your room is ten feet away. If someone does it in your bed, tough luck, slick.

A few other things that will inevitably happen to you in your time here:

You will put a hole in the drywall. It’s alright, take the $50 fine. Just make sure it’s worth it, like destroying a vacuum cleaner or punching a hole in the wall while 3:57 of “Still of the Night” by Whitesnake plays at 4 in the morning.

You will be pranked. You will prank others.

Vomit will sit somewhere in the house for at least a week before it’s cleaned. You might think that you will definitely clean it up before then. You won’t, trust me.

Someone will leave a huge shit in your bathroom and not flush on purpose. Fuck these guys. But I gotta admit, poop humor – funny when you’re 3, funny when you’re 23.

You will have the time of your life for as long as you live there, which if you have too much fun, could be five, even six years like some idiots I know.

Yes some of the things will suck, but the craziness is what makes living in a fraternity house unlike any experience you will ever have again, and it’s awesome because of it. There is nothing better than living in close quarters with a ton of your brothers, and getting shit hammered, shacking, and doing legitimately clinically insane acts every weekend. The weekly Sunday slow gathering of brothers in the hallways in the morning (read: 2 PM) to talk about all the debauchery that occurred over the weekend and share stories is one of the best things about living in the house.

You will curl up in a ball and cry and wonder why you ever chose to live in this eighth circle of hell. No, not really. You will come to appreciate the shenanigans that happen, and will learn to take it with a grain of salt. And when you get pissed at someone for getting a beej in your bed, or shooting fireworks in your room, or stealing half a fifth of your precious Aristocrat vodka, just remember that you’ve done the exact same things – you were just too drunk to remember them.

The fucking fraternity circle of life.