This blog is about college life as a fraternity member. Last winter during my freshmen year i recently became an active member of an asian interest fraternity. I decided to pledge having no real incentive, i fell prey to the peer pressure of rushing and ultimately decided that i would stick through pledging because of my stubbornness. Throughout pledging i had many reasons to quit, such as the fraternity being unrecognizably by the school. Pledging was not easy, however it was very memorable and I believe I came out as a stronger person. Unfortunately I only have one pledge bro, but he is one of the kindest and most caring people that I have ever met. Because our fraternity is unrecognized by the school we have very few members left in the fraternity.
I am currently living within the fraternity house. The condition of the house is terrible. The bathrooms are comparable to those at asian restaurants, the kitchen and refrigerators are both dying from insanely high levels of mold and mildew, and parties constantly contribute to the deterioration of the house. Me and my pledge bro are the only members in the house that clean up on a daily basis while the other bro’s reap the benefits of our labor.
Since we are a fraternity house, its only obvious that there are parties at our house all the time. However this also means people staying over until 2-3 am on the weekends and occasionally on the weekdays as well. This quarter i am signed up for 8 am classes 4/5 days of the week. Lately i’ve been trying to get to bed at 11 oclock since it takes me almost 2 hours to fall asleep with our tower sized speakers blasting music. The good side of all of this is that during our parties i am able to meet a lot people. However when i first chose to come to this college i was hoping that i would be able to meet a lot of people of different races and ethnicity. Being in an Asian fraternity has severely hindered my chances of meeting other people, since almost all the people that come to our parties are asian.
Drinking is obviously a huge thing revolving around fraternity life. Ironically I dislike drinking. A lot of the bro’s respect the fact that i don’t drink, however sororities often challenge my choice and pressure me to drink. I never thought peer pressure was very serious until i started college. There’s nothing worse than being bitched out by sororities girls. They won’t stop. However i’m pretty stubborn and adamant about my no drinking policy. The downside to that is sororities girls often consider me being douchey or unfriendly because i don’t want to drink with them. In reality i consider myself a decently generous person that will sacrifice anything for my friends.
The main reason i’m writing this blog is because of the bros. I’ll say it right now, but i hope it changes in the future, i don’t like many of the bros in our house. A lot of them are very cocky. Truth be told, many of them are really old and need to graduate, skinny, fat, or dweeby. I having nothing wrong with people with those characteristics, however it’s the fact that they are always talking shit about other people saying that so and so is a fag and a loser that pisses me off. Me and my pbro discuss this all the time, and in reality a lot of the bros in the house are simply put… not that cool. I’m not saying im the coolest guy on the planet, but i am not exactly proud of my bros. Me and my pbro are always worried that they are going to embarrass us in front of our friends. Today my bros were talking about the rushees and were calling them all “faggots.” Later in the day i saw my pbro and he looked really upset. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he was tired of the bros in the house trying to act like they were better than everybody else. It’s the unfortunate truth of my fraternity, but it’s something that i have to learn to deal with. The majority of my friends in college are not people i met through greek life. The friends I treasure and hang out with are actually friends I just met in class or through other people. And they also agree that my bro’s are… not that cool. When i say cool i don’t mean popular, good looking or anything. What i mean by cool is people that are chill to hang out with and people that others would want to be associated with.
(I don’t want to make the impression that i HATE my bros. It’s true that i dislike many of their qualities and i simply don’t find them to be very chill. However that are also a handful of bros in the house that are alright, just not that many.)
Someday I hope to see this fraternity grow into something different. It’s my goal to do what I can to change the future of the house. While the parties may never go away, I hope the environment becomes less competitive and more about bonding. Hopefully rush this year will bring in a new pool of actives that put the fraternity before themselves and work together to create a true brotherhood of men. As of now I will have to deal with what I have. This is just my opinion now, it may change for the better, or it may worsen, only time can tell. This blog is how my life is living among the brothers of my fraternity, lions.
