September 11, 1997
DRINK TILL YOU DIE!
In the good old days, a man was a man and John Wayne was boss. Men proved that they were the real thing by drinking copious amounts of alcohol until they passed out or puked. And that was always pretty stupid.
Don’t get us wrong. Here in the smoke-filled rooms of The Outrage we still think the Manly Handbook is the best thing ever published. We’re quite willing to worship at the altar of Tyra Banks and all the other brainless icons of modern sexuality. But we’re after pleasure — not pain.
So we have a hard time understanding why fraternities have never grown up. Just like in the good old days, they still think that vomit is the price of admission to the frat life. The SAEs at Louisiana State University apparently forced their pledges to drink until they threw up, and even set up “vomiting stations” in preparation of the exciting event. That’s outrageous.
But now we’re in the bad new days, when everyone wants to blame someone else for their own stupidity. So it should come as no great surprise that one of the pledges who recently drank himself into the hospital has filed suit against the frat he was trying to join. He also sued LSU and the bar where the drinking took place.
Donald Hunt claims that his fraternity of choice forced pledges to drink until they were sick. This is no frivolous matter. Hunt’s roommate literally drank himself to death during these “festivities,” and Hunt himself ended up in intensive care.
Hunt is 21 years old; no child. We always thought that when you went away to college the point was to become an adult — to learn independence of action, self-reliance — the virtues of the good old days.
In fact, no one forced Hunt to do anything. He and his roommate voluntarily punished their bodies for the great privilege of gaining admission to the noble brotherhood of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. (Why would someone want to gain admission to a fraternity that punished their aspiring members? So that they could have the joy of inflicting the same pain on the next wave of pledges?)
Maybe colleges should hold off on the courses on western civilization, biology for poets, and advanced business management. Before entering the normal curriculum students should be required to memorize the following lines: “If something is really, really stupid and no one is holding a gun to my head, I have the option of not participating and just walking away.”
(Source: ABC News.)
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