2 of 13

Harm

Write now Article Tools

I was once a pizza delivery driver in a town whose population would nearly double during the school year. I try to this day not to be prejudiced against any single group of people, but it nevertheless didn't take long for me to formulate an opinion of those students who belonged to fraternities and sororities.

It was the 1980's, and the location was Dekalb, Illinois; home of Northern Illinois University. I was a student there myself for a brief time before dropping out of the Music program to pursue playing in a rock band. The band didn't make enough from jobs to totally sustain me, so I delivered pizzas to make ends meet. The place where I was employed was located right at the foot of what was known as "Greek Row."

A bar frequented by the fraternity and sorority members who had attained legal age called "The Jungle" was right next door to the restaurant. Every weekend; without fail, the lot outside was so crowded that delivery drivers had no choice but to double-park. If we happened to leave our engines running while picking up a couple of pizzas, some inebriated jerks would take the cars for joy rides. In addition, there were fights staged just about every night in front of the bar by rival frat boys trying to prove their manhood because one looked at the other's girlfriend in a flirtatious manner.

To put it bluntly, these people thought they owned the town. They were for the most part rich brats who had never worked a day in their life and got a Porsche from Daddy. They were obnoxious drunks whose mission in life was to party and get laid. It didn't matter if they scraped by with a 2.0 GPA; for they would land a job easily upon graduation with the Greek affiliation on their resumes. They were cliquey and thought of themselves as superior to "regular" students. Once the alcohol took effect, these people were quite destructive as well; jumping onto cars, breaking empty beer bottles on the concrete, and just generally trashing everything around them. One fraternity deliberately flooded their house basement with water and let it freeze so they could play hockey. Well, the foundation cracked, and they were kicked off campus. These were but a few of the antics pulled by these people. During the school months from September to May, it was if this Illinois town of some 33,000 residents became a war zone, and unfortunately, my place of employment was right in the heart of it.

It was quite pathetic to watch pledges that were forced to perform idiotic rituals in order to join a particular fraternity or sorority. I often asked myself: why would anyone willingly put him or her self through this humiliation? The scariest revelation was that these people would soon enter the workforce.

Fraternities and sororities are completely unnecessary on college campuses, and are merely an extension of the cliques that form in high school (and even middle school, for that matter). They hold no valuable place in a compassionate society. The "brothers and sisters" I observed in the 1980's are now in their mid-forties.

One can only hope that they grew up.

Learn more about this author, Patrick Sills.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Do college sororities and fraternities cause more harm or good on campus??
We want to hear your view. Write now!