Column:

Frat Pit is a powder keg

By Dan Friesen

Published Oct. 16, 2007

Despite frequent requests for me to weigh in on FratPitGate, I resisted, recognizing that this issue was a powder keg. The explosive nature of the issue is enough to scare away a far more intrepid journalist than I.

Quite frankly, I didn't see how the closure of the pit related to my life. How am I connected to the place where underage frat guys go to get sloppy drunk and piss in public before home football games? What am I missing?

These questions at first seemed moot, being as I didn't even know "Frat Pit" existed until it was closed and the Greek community proved themselves unwilling to just drink and piss elsewhere. As the issue refused to go away, these questions grew ever larger until I had to find some answers for myself.

My research took me to innumerable blogs, The Maneater articles and Facebook.com groups, but I still wasn't getting the picture.

That is, until I stumbled upon this illuminating quote from Delta Upsilon fraternity freshman Forest Nenninger:

"'Frat Pit' is a common ground where the Greek community can set aside stereotypes and get together to celebrate, socialize and cheer on our football team."

That's the key. That's what I was missing. "Frat Pit" is a place where fratty dudes and sorority chicks can "set aside stereotypes."

The Greek community is frequently criticized for being bigoted, closed-minded and judgmental, and perhaps fairly so.

But how can we judge when we condemn them, then turn around and take away the only place they had where stereotypes could be "set aside?"

Normal people don't understand; there is a lot of peer pressure in the Greek community. If you're a Greek and you don't perpetuate the stereotypes your house is committed to upholding, you could face serious disciplinary action.

The Greek community always talks about "traditions." They always say that that is what makes them the "heart of this campus" (as Nenninger put it): that they uphold traditions.

They talk a lot about these traditions but rarely elaborate on what they are exactly. Such secrets are rarely revealed to outsiders, but it was revealed to me that each fraternity is charged with upholding one specific stereotype, and doing so is their primary function.

For instance, one fraternity is sworn to maintain the myth that black men have larger penises than white men.

Another fraternity is charged with upholding the stereotype that Jews are all greedy bankers. Some fraternity members in a third fraternity are sworn to maintain the crass, insulting stereotype that Hispanic blood is three quarters picante sauce.

This is what made "Frat Pit" so important. It served as an essential ritual space of Greek culture, a place where normal cultural standards and priorities could be set aside and Greeks could just act like normal people.

I have learned a lot this week. Not that Greeks serve to perpetuate harmful stereotypes (that's common knowledge), but that they do it to maintain traditions, and, as we all know, traditions are sacred and never wrong.

And I learned a lot about myself, too, specifically that I am a far more intrepid reporter than I give myself credit for.

df5d2@mizzou.edu