About men; about cold beer, willing women, hazing, conformity - about fraternities

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1988 by Jason DeParle

Perhaps the Hinge Awards and Umgawa chants did their job too well. They forged a collective identity but lessened the chance of individual divergence from it. Fraternity traditions ensure continuity. They make sure this year's pledge class learns to act like last year's. The college swirl of new people, ideas, behavior-of change-becomes a threat. Black date at a party? No way. Political rally on the quad? No way. Draft registration? Naaiii-ro-biii!!

Willie Morris's description of his fraternity 30 years ago holds true as well for mine: "Some excellent men were involved in this debilitating preoccupation . . . .they were far better as individuals than the organization to which they gave their allegiance. . . .At its worst this system could be cruel and despicably smug; at its best it was merely an easy substitute for more intelligent and mature forms of energy."

Whenever three or more brothers gathered, conversation turned to liquor, drugs, women, or sports. Lots of dining-table talk focused on grades; hardly any focused on classes. The ideal was to ace a test without going to class, without swdying-without learning. A few Delts had the kind of personalities that allowed them to dabble in fraternity life as one identity among many. One spent his junior year organizing a bioethics conference; for him, the Delts were just one part of a campus experience, and they didn't arrest other interests. But for most people, group pressures were too strong to resist, and group identity took hold. Brotherhood became a restrictive force, setting limits on what could be thought, challenged, or dared on campus. It was finally a form of impoverishment.

These Delta Tau Deltas are the kind that poobahs at the national headquarters point to with pride. They are doctors, lawyers, bond traders, and stock brokers. A few wound up as engineers in Saudi Arabia. The Challenge owns a factory in the Caribbean and imports computer components. (One of the few not in business, medicine, or law became, of all things, an opera singer.) I called a few of them recently, wondering how the experience appeared in retrospect. All had fond memories of the camaraderie, but, interestingly, most acknowledged the limits it had set. "It had a tendency to be a little isolationistic," said one. "I'm constantly amazed when I look over Duke alumni material," said another. "Ninety-seven percent of the people from my class, I've never heard of. That's how insular it was '"

The Challenge, too, regretted the clannishness. He also regretted the Challenge. "It's kind of a useless tradition," he said. "If I had it to do again, I probably wouldn't join a fraternity."