rlfj: Blog

Boy, was there an outcry about hazing in frat houses! While quite a few people have written about how it brought back old memories, a number of others have been vociferous in their denunciations of the antics. Many complained about the students joining. How could they be so stupid as to go along with the abuse? Why didn’t they complain? Why didn’t they go to the cops? Why didn’t they sue? They were being yelled at constantly!

It was obvious to me that quite a few readers, who had never been in a frat, had very different views about them. It is important to remember that Greek Life has been around for well over a century and is stronger today than ever before. It obviously has an appeal to major sections of the student body, both male and female. Here’s a response I sent to one of my readers, who complained about Hell Week:

“A couple of things go on in almost any situation like this. First, these guys have been hanging around the frat house for six months by this point. They have friends among the older brothers, they eat there, they party there, they have met girlfriends there. They may well spend more time there than at the dorm. They want to be part of this group.

Second, before Hell Week even starts, their big brother will probably have confided in him, ‘Listen, it's just a week. Keep your mouth shut and go along with it. Nobody will lay a hand on you in any case. If you have a problem, find me & talk to me.’

Finally, many aspects of it are a lot of fun. The crazy projects and stunts, the camaraderie with their classmates (and the older brothers, who are there with them all the time), the drunken parties during the week - there are a lot of enjoyable aspects to it. Don't ever forget the strength of the group dynamic. You aren't the single target; you're part of a group. Many of the hazing rituals are designed to reinforce the group strength, both of the pledge class & the brotherhood as a whole.”

Finally, for all the readers who can’t understand frats and would ban their children from joining a frat or a sorority, let me give a final comment. My son went to college and didn’t join a frat. He wanted nothing to do with the fraternities on campus. Instead he joined the Drama Club. Within a very short time, much to my wife’s and my amusement, it was obvious he had joined a non-fraternity fraternity. They had their own frat house (the college theater), they roomed together, they partied together, and they even slept together. A substantial number of them were gay, and while my son was straight, he ended up sleeping with and marrying a female member of the club. Most of his wedding party was in the club. They even had hazing; they just called it auditions. But don’t ever call it a fraternity!

There are fraternities all around us, even when they don’t have silly Greek names.

PS: My son is a dreadful actor but has gonads the size of bowling balls for his bravery in going on stage!

Quite a few people wrote me about the road trip chapter, in that it brought back old memories. Personally, I never did the cross-country trip, since I was chronically broke (funny how things never really change!) and needed to work summers. However, the stunts that they got into were reported to me by reliable, if not perfectly straight and sober, individuals. In particular, the jail scene is TRUE. If anything, I toned it down, since my friend ended up sitting on a bench next to a guy charged with 2nd degree murder, and it was in Daytona during spring break. Likewise, at least one reader wrote me about catching snakes in the swamps around NOLA.

Chapter 32 sees the triumphant return of Hamilton, in all his glory. There will be more about him in the future, too. He’s sort of like syphilis, the gift that keeps on giving!

One of you commented that my announcement in Chapter 28 that all of Carl’s actions up to that point had been to get to the party to meet Marilyn was wrongly done. Since Carl is writing his thoughts, he should have announced his plan to meet Marilyn much, much earlier in the story, as soon as he thought of it. My counter-argument is that: A) this would have ruined any surprise or suspense, and B) that this is a technique I have seen a lot of real authors use in real books. How many times have you read the hero telling his subordinates, “Okay, here’s the plan…”, and then the chapter ends? You see what happens in the upcoming chapters!

I believe the complaint is that this technique is acceptable in stories written in the third person (“He did…he said…”) but not in those written in the first person (“I did…I said…”). I think that is just wrong. It can be used either place.

On a side note, many of the great authors of the past used this type of technique, the ‘cliffhanger’, in their works. Especially in the 19th Century, many writers of fiction published their works as installments in newspapers. Every few weeks or maybe once a month, a new chapter would come out, and the newspapers would advertise these events heavily. These authors included Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Alexander Dumas. In fact, the cliffhanger aspect to these stories is a major reason they are so popular. Most of these authors have never been out of print, a significant accomplishment!

I know Jack Daniel’s isn’t bourbon, but it isn’t because it’s not from Kentucky. The strict definition of bourbon according to the feds is that bourbon must be aged in charred oak barrels. Jack Daniel’s is charcoal filtered before aging, which violates the strict definition. According to NAFTA and several other international laws, Jack Daniel’s is treated for international trade purposes as bourbon. God knows, I drank enough way back when to know it tastes like bourbon!

There were a few comments about fraternity hazing and the dangers of the polar bear swim. As to the swim, five seconds in icy water won’t kill a healthy teenager, and the rope wrapped around his wrist will ensure he gets pulled out. Cold? Hell yes! Deadly? Not hardly! People do this stupid shit all the time in the winter, and usually the local television station will send a camera down to film them.

Hazing is common in almost any male group experience. Any anthropologist can provide chapter and verse examples from around the globe. It doesn’t matter whether it is a fraternity, the military, school clubs, sports teams, or Masai hunting groups. Hazing rituals are what separate non-members from members. “You’re not one of us.” “You’re not man enough!” “We had to do it, now it’s your turn.” All groups have them. The tough part is to make sure that the hazing group, the older males, have decent internal supervision and don’t get carried away. That can be tricky when everybody is drunk.

Several readers found errors in my statement about the availability of hand-held calculators and memory in computers. Here’s both my memory & the history.

Calculators: Hand-held calculators may have been available in 1973, but they were still ludicrously expensive. Simple four function calculators cost over $100 in 1973 dollars and would have been useless at a tech school. An HP 35, with math and trig functions very useful at a school like RPI, ran $395. Considering that tuition at RPI in 1973 was about $3,500, that was over 10% of tuition! Nowadays that would be over $6,000 for a calculator! Back then, very few students had that kind of cash. Most of us waited for a couple of years before the price dropped enough we could actually afford one. My first few years I used a slide rule, and most teachers would not allow calculators during tests for another 2-3 years.

One of the major topics of conversation of the day was which was better, the Hewlett Packard calculators or the Texas Instruments models. The HP systems had a “reverse Polish notation” method compared to the normal arithmetic “infix notation” used by the TI systems. I could afford only a TI calculator (the TI 30 model became available in 1976 for only $25!) but lusted for the HP. I ended up learning Assembly language programming their descendants.

BTW, that cost of $3,500 a year for tuition (not including room, board, & books) is correct. Tuition rose to just over $4,000 my senior year and it was an absolute scandal! How times have changed!

Core memory: RPI had an IBM 360 in ‘73 and had just upgraded the memory with the core memory I described in the year before. By the time I graduated, they had upgraded the whole system to a 370 model. Such core memory was still sold as late as ’75. I even checked Wikipedia to make sure my memory wasn’t playing tricks.

I remember in high school taking classes in how to use a slide rule! We actually had a gigantic 10’ long slide rule hanging over the blackboard. I remember my father had a beautiful Keuffel & Esser duplex slide rule that I hankered for. By the time I got old enough to need it professionally, we had calculators.

So many people out there connected Mrs. Berzinski with Mrs. Robinson! I swear, when I started writing this portion of the story, I had completely forgotten the movie. She never even crossed my mind. I figured it was just an interesting way to get Carl laid. So, here’s to you, Mrs. Berzinski!

I have had several emails from fellow RPI students telling of their time at the college. Feel free to let me know.

Welcome back to the adventures of Carl Buckman! Good news for all you fans - Book Three is almost as long as the rest of the story so far.

As always, let me know when you find any errors or anachronisms. I’m not as smart as Carl, so these things can slip through. Thanks.

One comment that was made was: ‘Thank heavens you don’t have Carl going the Delta House route!’ Oh, if you only knew the truth! Delta House was mild compared to what I saw when I was in a frat! No crap, but I saw about 90% of the antics in that story.