[BigRedBeta]

Agreed with ZZ.

MOP isn't the cause of the problems - at least not directly. My chapter (Nebraska) has a dry house, but we still party with the best of them (at least in comparison to the other chapters on our campus - maybe not in comparison to some chapters at other schools). We just didn't do it in our house. It made for a cleaner place, and kinda segregated work and play. When I finally moved out of the house a senior, there were a lot of days I wasted because the night before I'd get back from the bars or a party and start drinking more. I didn't have that problem while living in...(I just got fat b/c there was poptarts and cereal to eat whenever that I didn't have to buy).

I think where MOP has gotten colonies into trouble is just like what's been described at USC - there's a certain contingent that gets drawn to Beta because they interepret dry house to mean no alcohol at all. That's a misinterpretation on their part and one that the AO doesn't put any effort into explicitly stating one way or the other, leaving everyone unsure. Perhaps that's part of the plan - to allow the chapter to decide what it means. But of course that requires a lot of discussion/debate, and probably some bruised egos. We had one pledge who quit because he had been under the impression that no one in our house drank (despite our advertising of a BADD program), needless to say he got a rude awakening his first night in the house, and even managed to hang on for about a month before he finally had enough.

I also agree with what's been said that once a chapter is established, many of the problems and infighting goes away. Sure there are always disagreement about the exact direction a decision should go, and there are often times groups of people who end up at each other's throats constantly during chapter (in my chapter it used to fall down pledge class lines - odd years vs. even years in a lot of cases). But once chapter was over, a lot of those issues got left there, and that's one thing I'd really encourage - don't make things personal and don't carry them to outside venues.

I do think it's incredibly lame that people, pledge brothers, judge you b/c you drink. That's ridiculous and completely inappropriate. If they didn't want to associate with people that drank, they shouldn't have joined a fraternity or plan on getting any sort of job other than some religious post (although I have a great-uncle who's a priest who drinks like a fish...).