SAE Oklahoma packing up after getting kicked off campus for racist chants

Sure, I'll bite.

I took a couple years off between high school and college, and some of the friends I hung around with during that time were upper classmen or alumni from the same fraternity. When I finally decided to get my ass into gear and go to college, I looked up their fraternity and rushed. As it happens, there were a ton of geeks in the fraternity, and I spent a couple weekend afternoons at the house playing Tekken and yapping about the soon-to-be-released 3rd edition of D&D (yikes I'm old). So yeah, I joined.

As a freshman, they matched me up with an upper-classman in my major who could help me pick good classes and had dirt on the professors (that guy gives a ton of homework, she's cool but plays favorites, this one teaches straight to the book, etc). A lot of the more popular majors had regular study sessions, where like all of the EE majors would get together at the same time and study for whatever classes they were taking. So that way, if someone had a question, maybe someone else in the group had taken that class and could help out.

Parties were handled pretty well. We offered sober rides to and from the house. A couple brothers worked the door, checking IDs (for real, underage drinking isn't something to fuck around with) and generally keeping an eye on things outside. We had a couple of guys roam the house, making sure everyone was okay and nothing shady was going on. Brothers on shift were expected to be sober, but we had enough people that you only had a shift every two or three parties. No drug use in the house (including pot). At 2am, we turned everyone out, got people set up with rides home, and then usually got wasted by ourselves and with our guests/friends. We had ZERO tolerance for dudes being creepy or touchy... a lot of the girls who came to our parties were our friends, and we wanted them to STAY our friends so we looked out for them.

Yeah, there were some brothers who liked to get drunk and act like jackasses. Shit got broken. Fights broke out. Every now and then someone fucked someone's girlfriend (oops). We did philanthropy, but you're exactly right, that's not the reason any one of us joined. But it was nice... when I was feeling like shit because a girl dumped me or I was failing a class, I had a place to go where people would help me out. When I was getting ready to graduate, a few alumni asked what kind of job I was looking for, and helped put my resume out. I don't see those guys much anymore, but we're on Facebook and we get together now and then. It was a tremendously positive part of my time at college.

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