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On Wednesday the fraternity that I call home, Theta Delta Chi, was featured on the front page of The Dartmouth. The headline said, "Theta Delt Faces Hazing Charges." I read the whole article and it was accurate, factual, objective, well-researched and unbiased and The Dartmouth should be applauded for its exclusive investigation into the matter.
Simply put, the article embarrassed me. In fact, I'm so embarrassed that I decided to come clean about my fraternity. Because The Dartmouth's article on Wednesday was really only the tip of the iceberg. So here, at the risk of being booted out of Theta Delt for my traitorous ways, is a list of all the OTHER deplorable things that we, or some of our brothers, do:
Sure, Theta Delt won the Inclusivity Award last year, ostensibly for "including" people, but we're not THAT inclusive. For example, we don't have any brothers from the Ukraine. And we're trying to get rid of our Canadians. We're also trying to get rid of the brother who is from one of those countries near Mexico that is either in Central America or Latin America. Unfortunately, we can't make him de-pledge and leave the country until we figure out the difference between "Central" and "Latin." We also need to know if Mexico is in fact part of North America because if it is, we're surprised. Plus, "inclusivity" isn't even a word.
Theta Delt is not handicap accessible. Sure, we say that we're "working on it" and that we're going to "put in a special bedroom and bathroom" for a "hypothetical future handicapped brother" but everyone knows that we just don't like people in wheelchairs. We also don't like ugly people. That's why we're all so good looking. But deep down, we know it's wrong to judge solely on how pretty a pledge is. That's something sororities do.
Theta Delts sometimes act really frat, embracing a lifestyle of tanning beds, Lacoste shirts, "lifting for spring break," and monosyllabic vocabularies but it can be very hard to determine whether or not they're doing all this with a sense of irony, so one is left with the question: do they actually enjoy behaving like idiots or are they just using real-life satire to poke fun at a way of life that is shallow and cruel? I'm not sure that anyone could actually bring charges against us for this one. I just wanted you to know that I understand why you might be confused.
Some of our brothers have been accused of bad boyfriendry. I know - it's disgusting. Like, one girlfriend of a brother sent me an email and said that her boyfriend was "smothering" her. He "never wanted to hang out with his friends." He only "wanted to watch Sex and the City DVDs on her couch" and "talk about important things like family and God." That's borderline stalking, and I think the Dartmouth community (and the world) has a right to know about it.
Some of the brothers are bad dog owners. One of our brothers has an ugly little puppy named Winston who is allowed to poop wherever he wants, whenever he wants. Specifically, he likes to poop directly outside my room and he likes to do it twice a day. Winston has also discovered that he can urinate on the other side of the door and gravity will encourage the gathering pool to leak into my room. This frequently occurs while I'm sitting at my desk working on a column. If I see the pee early enough, I can fling the door open in time to catch him in the act. Then we have the following exchange:
Me: Winston. Stop.
Winston:
Me: No. I'm serious this time. I mean, you need to learn to pee and poop outside like the other dogs.
Winston:
Me: The door IS propped open. You're just making stuff up now.
Winston:
Me: Well, that's probably true. I guess I blame your owner more than I blame you.
Winston:
Me: What?
Winston:
Me: Yes, right again. It's really the fraternity's fault. Somebody should write an article about this.
Winston:
Me: I agree. They should DEFINITELY put it on the front page.
And there's even more evidence of bad dog ownership. Sometimes the brothers dress up Jackson, our oldest house dog, in a ballerina costume made especially for dogs. The costume has a pink tutu, a tiara, and little pink booties. Jackson loves it. He walks into every room and shows it off and wags his tail in delight. But then some alum (who says he used to own Jackson but nobody can remember that far back) comes into the basement and rips the ballerina costume off. Nobody knows why he does this but it hurts Jackson. Physically and emotionally. If Jackson could talk he would probably say that he finally found his true identity in the ballerina costume and then it was taken away from him. It's a lot like Princess Fiona in Shrek 2 when she's happy being an ogre but then her parents want her to be human again.
Wow. I feel a lot better now. Everything's finally out in the open. Plus, I think I'll finally get one of my articles on the front page, which has never happened before. Hopefully there will be a nice picture of the house and you'll be able to see my room and the headline will be something like "Theta Delt Accused of Worshipping Satan."
D Editor: We're not going to put this on the front page.
Me: Why not?
D Editor: Because.
Me: Because why?
D Editor: Just because.
What more do you want? Do you want me to make up stuff?
Fine. One of our brothers has several overdue library books on his coffee table. A different one put gum on the bottom of his chair in a class once. We have a nuclear waste dump under our front lawn. We're mean to senior citizens. We use magnifying glasses to kill ants.
Good enough yet?
D Editor: We're still not going to put your column on the front page because you're making light of a serious issue and that is not news.
Me: I'm not making light of anything.
D Editor: It seems like you're trivializing the incident with Tri-Delt.
Me: But that's not my intention at all. I was just encouraging my readers to read the news with a degree of skepticism.
D Editor: Isn't it a bit hypocritical to take that stance in a column in which you fabricate a conversation with your editor?
Me: No. Maybe. Whatever. Listen. I just wanted to get my name on the front page.
This isn't on the front page, is it?
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