Smelly Art Hipsters At Wesleyan University Create “Delta Lambda Pu,” The Trash Frat

Jared Borislow9 years ago

Whenever I hear there’s news coming out of Wesleyan University, I know I’m in for a treat. No, this isn’t the cool Wesleyan University (Oklahoma Wesleyan) whose president recently called out people that get easily offended for being the idiots that they are — this is just plain ol’ Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

You may remember Wesleyan best as the university that vowed to make all of their fraternities co-ed, a plan they didn’t get the chance to follow through with because the university suspended every single fraternity chapter on campus before they got a chance to integrate them. Keep in mind that this is the same university that didn’t kick off one of their co-ed social clubs, the “Eclectic Society,” after some members ingested a bad batch of molly that ended up sending 11 people to the hospital. Yeah, I think it’s safe to say Wesleyan is a pretty anti-Greek school.

That’s why it didn’t surprise me when this happened…

From The Middletown Press:

Tessa Wills, artist and participatory arts innovator, recently traveled to Connecticut this weekend to perform ‘After Paquerette’ as part of a three week ‘temporary faux frat experiment’ at Wesleyan University.

ESQUE, a Wesleyan student group, brought Wills to Connecticut as part of their mission to foster safer creative spaces for marginalized students on campus. The experiment was a timely one for Wesleyan; after receiving nationwide publicity for several drug and sexual assault related incidents at fraternity houses, Wesleyan suspended all active single-sex fraternity houses in the spring of 2014 and shut down all single-sex fraternity houses on its campus in the fall of 2015.

And drug-related incidents at, y’know, nonfraternity houses, but that doesn’t play as well to anti-Greek media’s agenda.

Trouve Ivo of ESQUE said on the matter, “Frat communities hold so much social power and often create social spaces that warrant abhorrent social practices like sexual assault and violence. With Wills’ guidance, our goal is to do something subversive with the frat structure, potentially forging a parodic way of belonging for marginalized students.

Ah yes. When I think back to my fraternity days, I’m always going to remember all the fun my brothers and I had creating social spaces that warranted abhorrent social practices. Jesus, this Ivo chick acts like we’re just a group of Jigsaws going full SAW on every “social space” we encounter.

“Hello, ladies. Do you want to play a game? It’s called find the aquarium. Hint: it’s in my room.”

The result of ESQUE’s vision of a re-imagined frat is Delta Lamda Pu, a self-identified Trash Frat that brings together students from different corners of campus to reflect on waste, pollution, and desire at the level of the body.

Just real A+ detective work involved with figuring out how to correctly spell “lambda” there. It takes guts to see a red line underneath a word when you’ve finished writing something and still hitting that “Publish” button anyways. The author of this article is stunning and brave.

In our mission statement, we wrote that we’ve ‘risen from the sewage pipes of Wesleyan’s defunct fraternities’. And the message there is that what we plan on doing as a community is not valued by your average fraternity. It isn’t even valued by our society as a whole. We’re playing with taking on the title of fraternity as one that is given value, and using it to explore what is un-valuable.”

If this group of all-star jabrones really wants to get into their theme of rising from the sewage pipes of Wesleyan’s defunct fraternities, they’re going to need to find a whole bunch of used condoms that fraternity men flushed down the toilet after being assured by their brothers (wrongfully) that latex is biodegradable.

She’s right about one thing, though. What they planned on doing – making themselves look like morons – is not valued by your average fraternity..

Unless, maybe, you’re a member of this fraternity…

[via The Middletown Press]

Image via Shutterstock