The recent drama surrounding Binghamton University’s fraternities and sororities is certainly discussion-worthy, as Pipe Dream’s recent headlines have made obvious.
While Greek Life here may not be as hardcore as campuses in, say, the south or the midwest, where there’s literally nothing to do but get shit-housed, frat culture is definitely prominent here at Binghamton.
Maybe I’m crucifying myself, but I couldn’t give less of a shit, especially considering my upcoming graduation.
This hazing drama is HILARIOUS. Sure, a person getting seriously injured isn’t technically funny, but a person getting seriously injured or mentally abused just to be able to buy friends is shit-your-pants hysterical. The fact that this is the first cease-and-desist order of its kind is actually baffling, considering the horror stories I’ve heard that involve feces and male scrotums and drinking punch with bleach in it (oh wait, we all do that at their parties).
But now that the order is in place, I can’t help but clap my hands in childish delight, because I openly detest most, if not all, fraternities and sororities. And not the people themselves, because hating individual people based on the group they associate themselves with is most certainly stereotyping, and I’m far too liberal for that nonsense.
But I hate the entire institution of fraternities and sororities, because maybe 85 percent of them have descended into nothing more than glorified cliques that cost a lot of money and are full of self-centered douche bags and bulimic bitches.
OK, I’m getting person-specific again, but I can’t help it.
I went to the lake that’s 20 minutes away for the first time the other day, and while it was pleasant and quiet for the first few hours, around 2 p.m. an entire swarm of frat heads and their vaginal counterparts took over. The snippets of conversation I heard included “She told me my dick wasn’t big enough for her, bro,” and “This drink you made tastes like the punch they serve at APES, OHMYGAWD.”
I felt like my brain was slowly seeping out of my ears, and I fled to my car quicker than you could say “hazing.”
The people in charge of running the pledging for these institutions — where thoughts go to die — are nothing more than power-crazed sociopaths with an affinity for brightly colored Greek letters and “raging, bro.”
And the “but we do community service” argument is the most thinly-veiled claim I have ever encountered, because the ratio of community service to partying is astronomically uneven. And we all know the boys of our coolest fraternities don’t spend their free time cleaning up the streets of Binghamton in bright orange jumpers.
I’m glad that the school is evaluating Greek Life, because in my world, it wouldn’t even exist. Want community service? Start a community service club. Want camaraderie? Make friends. It’s college, there are people everywhere. The Greek institution always had the potential to become nothing more than a social ladder with people desperate to climb it, and the mere fact that people are willing to take abuse just to be cool is so baffling that it’s scary.
Where is your pride? Yeah sure, we “hazed” the shit out of the rookies on my soccer team, but the extent of our hazing included making them drag the giant bag of soccer balls to every game and making them get on the bus last. We weren’t verbally assaulting people, and I’m pretty sure the men’s team didn’t do anything that involved ball sacks. It was clean and healthy, and I firmly believe it brought us closer together as a team.
This hazing bullshit couldn’t have come at a better time, because I’d love to end my time here in Binghamton listening to these glorified high school cliques complain about the injustices against them.
“Boo hoo, mommy and daddy can’t buy my friends for me anymore.” How, like, totally sad.