To a guy on pins and needles expecting his first child, a fraternity house seems to be just about heaven. Walking through the Lambda Chi Alpha house and stepping over Xbox systems and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, I see empty gin bottles and DVD bootlegs of The Hangover and Nacho Libre at a time when, if you were to walk through my house, you’d see breast pumps, the Diaper Genie and at least four variations of strollers.
I’m not complaining, I explain to the frat guys wrestling on their patio, grilling hamburgers on St. George Street, just south of Bloor, and getting ready for Frosh Week at the University of Toronto. I’m just saying: “Won’t you at least consider taking me on as a pledge?”
“I understand your predicament, at least I think I do, but you have to be a student of the university to be a pledge here,” says Jonathan Zhu, the fraternity’s 21-year-old vice-president, who’s wearing a bright purple shirt with his letters and has a carefree swagger as if he hasn’t worn socks in a year.
“Come on, I’m desperate,” I plead, looking to his minions, Jake, 20, and Antonius, 18, for at least a chance to be hazed. “Didn’t you see Old School? It could be fun for you guys to have an old dude in your house.”
The University of Toronto is generally considered the Harvard of the North, but the fraternities have recently been cast as the backward local townies. Adam Vaughan, councillor of Ward 20 (Trinity-Spadina), even brought a recommendation to council this February to have fraternities re-licensed as “rooming houses,” which would increase their insurance rates, which would increase their members’ monthly rental fees, which would go a long way toward putting a nail in frat life’s social coffin. Lambda Chi Alpha, the only fraternity house located on campus, prides itself on being good boys. They tell me 10 times that they don’t haze.
From top, Kaplan feels right at home with his new Delta Kappa Epsilon friends, tries to impress his buddies with his billiard skills, and bids a fond (and fraternal) farewell
“We don’t like the term ‘pledges’; we like the term ‘associate members,’ ” says Zhu. “At some fraternities, you have people drunk outside on the front lawn — they’re rowdy, yelling, their language isn’t the most pleasant — and that’s what caught the attention of Adam Vaughan.”
I’m a 37-year-old man expecting his first child. The only thing I want from a fraternity is a place to be rowdy, use unpleasant language and get drunk outside on the front lawn.
“People who join our house looking to party usually don’t stay with our fraternity very long,” says Zhu, who shows me around his magnificent home — duct tape on the steps, mattresses on the floor, beers in a pyramid on the dining room table — while prattling on about his fraternity’s record of community service. In his living room, couches are set up around the TV like a shrine. “C’mon, man. Please?” I ask Zhu. “You’ve got to let me join.”
Zhu, however, will not budge, and I begin to think that maybe Lambda Chi Alpha’s not the right house for me. We head back outside to the barbecue, where they’re grilling cheeseburgers and punching each other, and Zhu directs me northward, away from the campus police. Up there, he seems to insinuate, the fraternity houses pack the streets.
I’m on my way to Valhalla, I think. “After the Adam Vaughan issue, we’ve had lots of press and we’ve made it house policy to say: ‘No comment,’ ” says a dork I meet at the Phi Gamma Delta house. And these kids are getting me all wrong: I don’t want to report on the underbelly of fraternity life, the hazing and the teenagers listening to rap music and drinking too much. I want to join them. I want to watch sports, drink Pabst Blue Ribbon and not think about placentas for a while.
“Sorry, man,” another geek says. “It’s too hot. You have to leave.”
I go to the Beta House, ground zero for Beta Theta Pi and immortalized in the film American Pie Presents: Beta House, and am encouraged when I hear a new sound: girls.
“My mom was worried about the hazing, but we don’t do that s**t,” says a poli-sci major who scuttles down from his balcony to chat. The kid won’t let me in his house or divulge his identity, but he appears thoughtful and bright.
“The biggest misconception is that we’re rich kids squandering our parents’ money, but most guys in the house do OSAP [Ontario Student Assistance Program],” he says. “Vaughan’s biggest concern is noise complaints, but we’re in the Annex. How many bars from here are in walking distance? Of course it’s going to be loud.”
Inside the house, I hear laughter. And then two of his brothers come outside for a smoke. “Is it a lot of fun in there?” I ask, and the guys just sort of shrug in the arrogant way that teenagers do. Surely someone in a fraternity will take pity on an old man.
“Hey, man, you want a beer?” asks an 18-year-old sitting on a lawn chair with four buddies in front of the Delta Kappa Epsilon house. Now, I’ve had many beers in my lifetime, and I expect to have many more, but the cold, tall can of Laker Premium Lager tastes just about as good as anything I’ve ever enjoyed.
I like the guys, and they invite me inside to play billiards, and even though the place smells like feet and chicken wings, I feel comfortable and at home. Eventually, I’m brought upstairs to meet the fraternity’s president, and we sit in his room, amid the empty cans and the bottles. “I want to be a pledge in your frat,” I tell him, and he smiles and offers me another cold can of beer. He puts a hard hat inscribed with his frat house letters on my head, and I become an honorary member.
“Drinking tonight?” asks a kid, peeking his head into the president’s room, and I have to bite my tongue not to say yes. I tell the guys to enjoy their time now because, when they get older, things will change.
“Like, how?” one of the guys asks me.
“You know what? They get better,” I say, and stop on my way home to bring back a Portuguese chicken for my wife.
