![]() ![]() While we considered ourselves tamer than fraternities at many state schools (where Greek affiliation can often take precedence over just about everything), my brothers and I still saw drunken debauchery in the chapter house as our fraternal mandate. I was a Phi Delt at Northwestern in the mid-90's - not that long ago, to be sure, but seemingly a different time entirely. As I listened to the brothers in that backyard go on about life at one of Northwestern's "alcohol free" fraternities, I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for them. "We just didn't see a way to dramatically change the fraternity culture without removing alcohol," said Bob Biggs, executive vice president of Phi Delta Theta, when we met last fall in his office at the fraternity's spotless, museumlike international headquarters in Oxford, Ohio.īut what, exactly, would a dry fraternity look like? And would anyone want to join? You'd have a better chance, I thought, of getting James Carville and Bob Novak to open "Crossfire" with five minutes of meditation. Friendships will be forged out of genuine respect, not the shared misery of hazing or the shared fog of drink. (Sororities have long banned drinking in their chapter houses.) Take away the booze, the new alcohol-free theory goes, and fraternities will be safer, on more solid economic footing (fewer lawsuits, cheaper liability insurance) and more conducive to the creation of real bonds of brotherhood. While all kinds of college students binge drink, the 2001 College Alcohol Study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that fraternity house residents are twice as likely to do so as other students.Įleven national and international fraternities, including Phi Delta Theta, now require most of their chapter houses to be alcohol-free, no matter what their university's policy is. University administrators, alarmed by the extent of binge drinking on their campuses, are cracking down on the excesses of Greek life, saying it's high time for fraternity boys to shape up and sober up. "So long, 'Animal House.' " It's doom and gloom time for many fraternity boys at Northwestern and at colleges across the country. "The good old-fashioned fraternity experience is dead," he said, pausing for dramatic effect. ![]() Peter Micali, a square-jawed Phi Delt sophomore who had wandered within earshot, chimed in, "Yeah, it was easier to party in high school."īok shook his head sadly. Basically, we can't have a party anywhere." So we try to have one off campus, and it gets broken up. We're college students trying to have a party off campus, because we can't have one in our own fraternity house, because we're not allowed to drink there. ![]() Last year, we had an off-campus party that started at 10:30, and by 11 the police came with a paddy wagon. (Bok looks like a meathead but says he scored a 1,550 out of 1,600 on the SAT.) Both Michels and Bok were marveling at the success of the day's tailgate. I wished him luck ("Keep it real!" he replied) and made my way toward the keg, where I bumped into Theo Michels, Phi Delt's likable chapter president, and Greg Bok, a big, sarcastic, deceptively smart sophomore. "Two-Shot!" I said loudly as he meandered through the crowd in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, a beer in one hand and a cheap plastic bottle of vodka in the other. Packed into a backyard near the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., were some 100 drunken college students, beer spilling from plastic cups, industrial-size ketchup bottles overturned on the grass near the grill and gaggles of hard-drinking sorority girls (including one self-described Phi Delt groupie) keeping pace with the boys.Īmid the revelry, I spotted a lanky, easygoing Phi Delt sophomore from Texas who goes by the nickname Two-Shot, because two shots is about all it takes to get him acting silly. ![]() I couldn't see them just then, but proof of their existence was everywhere. By modern fraternity standards, Phi Delta Theta's tailgate party was a real rager. ![]()
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