Bad Legacies: The Rice to Your Fraternity Burrito

Et tu, Brute?13 years ago

There’s nothing in the world quite like rush. It’s the closest fraternity men ever come to acting like sorority girls. Rush is a battle of two opposite yet equal forces: valuable members versus valuable numbers.

After my house leveled the outhouse I joined, our alumni built us a fat new Ritz Carlton from the ground up. It was awesome. We went from a glorified crack house to a hundred man chapter in two years. But when the house is growing that fast it’s like an underprivileged hot chick in an upscale club, the hot chick doesn’t show up to that club to maybe find someone. She HAS to find someone. And she, like a fraternity looking to fill fancy new rooms, might settle when it comes to looks and personality if they’ve got a bit of, you know, money.

Of course this isn’t what the actives want, and certainly not the rush chairmen. But to the alumni that’s all dudes are: money. They don’t care if he’s a badass former athlete who can blow vodka fireballs from his asshole and impregnate 100 Kate Uptons for sport, or a socially disabled dance major who thinks girls are gross. Each one is worth eight grand a semester. No questions asked.

This is the type of bullshit bred by recruitment quotas. Let’s say your alumni tell you that NOTHING LESS than 50 will do. For the most part the rush chairs have free reign, but occasionally the alumni will give them a name. These names usually belong to legacies who are just plain unsociable and awkward. Your rush dinner with them is no doubt the highlight of their week. They go home, fire up World of Warcraft, and tell the whole clan about the cool new guys they met.

“They want me to join their frat! Er–sorry, actually it’s respectful to call it a fraternity. They even paid for dinner! This must be what going on a date is sort of like,” he no doubt croons as raucous hoots and hollers ring in his headphones from fat kids in headsets all around the world.

As he’s pumping his skinny little fists at the thought of having friends (real, tangible, headset-less friends!), you’re on the phone with your clueless alumni advisor, pleading with him to just let this kid float away to a bottom-tier fraternity deserving of this type of desperation bid.

“We CAN’T sign this guy. We can’t. He’s a bit too far left of center.”

“Like he’s a liberal?” your clueless alumni chair asks.

“No, like he’s fucking weird. It wasn’t just that,” you continue, making no attempt to hide the judgment in your voice. “He had no social life and still only managed a 3.1 in high school because he played too many online video games or some shit.”

“Regardless,” he continues, “it doesn’t matter. Get his name on a bid card and on to the next one.”

“We were thinking our rush strategy would be more along the lines of, ‘if we want to keep trending up then we have to rush quality.’ This dude is 100 percent quantity, sir. He’s fried rice in our frat burrito.”

“Chipotle uses rice in their burritos.”

Thank you for completely missing the point asshole.

“Not this much rice, sir.”

“Don’t make me get involved.”

That’s when you cut your losses and say fuck it. The alumni bylaws allow anyone on the board to circumvent the president and go directly to the recruitment chairs when there’s money at stake. As in, their bylaws force you to rush everyone, if they feel like enforcing it. Again, when there’s money to be made, they really feel like enforcing it.

So what happens? Your house goes out and signs that piece of shit because they have to slake the alumni board’s unquenchable thirst for cash. All you can hope is that this kid’s checks fund a new house closet built specifically to lock him in.

As for that new member, you do what any good fraternity would do. Give that little fuck a pledge name indicative of his status (like Dick Shitter or Queef or Rectal Herpes) as an absolute bottom-dweller, then haze the shit out of him until he’s normal or he quits.