Realistic Expectations Of Living In A Chapter House

SkinnyFatDude10 years ago

Living in a chapter house is easily one of the best things about being in a fraternity. You have about 30 of your brothers to chill with. The chef will most likely be amazing. And you have the convenience of only having to take a few steps to get to meetings. However, living in the chapter house will definitely come back to bite you in the ass in some way.

Kiss Your Security Deposit Goodbye

It should come as no surprise that house damages can and will be a thing. When 30 dudes live together, shit gets real. And by real, I mean that people will take out literally any drunken frustration on the house. If someone gets into a fight at the bar, expect him to punch a few holes in the wall because he “totally could have gone Jean-Claude Van Damme on the dude if the bouncer didn’t break it up.” You will most likely have that one guy in the house who feels the need to get pissed off at even the most minor inconvenience. The sketchy chicken place didn’t give him enough ranch dressing for his mediocre wings? That’ll probably be enough to make him kick the door off the microwave.

A huge part of this problem is that your landlord will most likely overcharge the shit out of any minimal damage they can find. The holes in the walls from using thumbtacks to put your Taylor Swift poster up will cost $300 in the eyes of your scheming landlords. They probably won’t actually fix them either. Sure, some of the things these slumlords do would not be considered ethical, but the people in chapter houses would not really be considered model tenants.

Now the threat of losing thousands of dollars should incentivize people to maybe not throw a folding chair into a wall, but people will always think that the fraternity will cover it. Besides, if you do not get caught, no one can blame you. And I’d be lying if I said apple baseball in the kitchen wasn’t worth it.

Silence No Longer Exists

Trying to have a peaceful late-night study session for your exam tomorrow? Well, tough shit. Someone will always be blasting music in preparation for striking out at the bar. Remember those damages I mentioned earlier? They don’t exactly occur in silence. Silence is probably the last thing to occur when a bunch of drunk dudes come stumbling through the door at 2 a.m.

Live on one of the lower floors? You are going to hear the aftermath of drunken wrestling from the common room above you. Live on one of the upper floors? Expect to have at least four guys coming around, banging on doors to find people who want to post-game.

My advice would be to get used to noise or take your studies elsewhere. If you aren’t one of those guys that like to throw on his overpriced headphones and pump some weird instrumentals, then your new study domain will be the library. Just remember that the library sucks ass and is usually crowded at every hour of every day for whatever reason.

Lower Your Cleanliness Standards

Saying the house will usually be a mess will most likely be a severe understatement. To start, every trashcan will probably be overflowing at all times. Why? Because people will pile up trash until they physically cannot anymore. Everyone knows that the person who causes the tower of garbage to fall over is the unlucky soul who has to take the garbage out. And this isn’t any ordinary household garbage. These cans will be full of some of the most disgusting shit that you can imagine, such as used condoms, rotten fruits, cups of dip spit and tons upon tons of puke.

The bathrooms are probably the worst part of the dirtiness. What results from multiple men sharing the same bathroom? You guessed it: the shaving aftermath. There will be hair in the sink, toilet, and shower, so get used to it. Besides, it’s not like you’ll be eating in there.

Also, it will probably take a while for everyone to adopt the old poop-flush-wipe-flush strategy. Some people might even flush some foreign objects. This means that the toilets will clog a lot. And they will most likely leave them clogged because they are too lazy just to use a plunger. Either that or someone broke the plunger doing God knows what when they came home shit-faced at 3 a.m.

Sure, the chapter house is a legendary experience in which every fraternity man should partake, but know what to expect from this seemingly perfect living arrangement..