[PhiPsiRuss]

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Soon after pledging, I learned that I wasn't joining a chapter with the most sterling reputation. We were told that in the 1980's, our house was known for spawning ''obnoxious jerks.'' One night some brothers apparently got drunk, shouted obscenities and ''threw things'' at marchers during a Take Back the Night rally. University officials booted the fraternity off campus, but not before the brothers got drunk and trashed the place.

I was half-amused and half-horrified by this news, but soon I was too busy being hazed to care much one way or another. We had weekly ''lineups'' in the main room of the chapter house, where active members, drinking and wielding flashlights, would belittle our physiques and quiz us on arcane fraternity history. We were made to do push-ups until we couldn't anymore, and we were told to lie on our stomachs and cover our behinds, because the Betas, who lived in the chapter house next door, were coming after us. The Betas didn't seem particularly gay to me (we mostly knew them as bigger potheads than we were), but we were made to believe that they wanted nothing more than to have their way with us.

There was also a lot of forced drinking. We were told to down copious amounts of liquor, and most any effort to avoid it (an earnest explanation that alcoholism ran in the family, for example) was usually laughed off. To haze effectively, many of the active brothers had to get drunk, too. After all, hazing isn't much fun when you're sober -- a fact that isn't lost on fraternity leaders who hope that going alcohol-free will reduce hazing.

And maybe it has. The current Phi Delts at Northwestern seem to value the humiliation of freshmen a lot less than we did. ''When I was a pledge last year,'' Peter Micali told me, ''we would be at some off-campus apartment and the actives'' -- full members -''would be like, 'Here, drink this.' But if you didn't want to, they were like, 'O.K., no problem, that's cool.' So we don't do much hazing.'' One night at a bar, Micali admitted that he actually would have liked to have been hazed a little harder. ''I wanted them to be like, 'O.K., you worthless dirtbag, walk through that wall!' That would have been funny.''

As much as the actives tried to humiliate us a decade ago, we stayed cocky throughout, and we did the minimum required during our months as pledges: we fetched food, cleaned the house, took our morning Wheaties with beer instead of milk. Soon enough we were initiated and taught the secret handshake and the secret sign, both of which I promptly forgot.

We told ourselves that we were clearly the best fraternity at Northwestern, and we could drink you under the table to prove it. My senior year, though, was to be the beginning of the end. Just after I graduated and stepped awkwardly into the real world, the brothers were faced with the daunting, incomprehensible, surreal prospect of fraternal sobriety. They didn't react well. Brothers disagreed about following the alcohol-free mandate. In May 1999, the university informed the fraternity that its members needed to find a new place to live the following fall. According to The Chicago Sun-Times, the school's list of the chapter's infractions included ''a sink that was pulled from the wall and used as a urinal; a member who set off a fire alarm by smoking marijuana; throwing garbage, urine, paint and other debris.''

David Sykes, the chapter president at the time, told a skeptical reporter that Phi Delt was ''no Animal House'' and that many of the charges were overblown. The brothers sued Northwestern, but a Cook County Circuit judge dismissed the case as ''an unnecessary drain'' on the courts. Remarkably, the university let the brothers return to the fraternity house the following year. Everyone was on his best behavior. But over the last three years, the brothers haven't always agreed on how seriously to take their alcohol-free mandate.

In that way, they're not much different from some Phi Delts who came 150 years before them. The Phi Delta Theta international fraternity -- now home to 170 chapters in 44 states and six Canadian provinces -- was founded by six serious and determined students at Miami University in Ohio on a December night in 1848. Conceived as a secret literary and social society for men of intellectual vigor and upstanding character, the Miami University chapter enjoyed a brief period of fraternal harmony before all hell broke loose.

By 1850, the fraternity was ''chaotic with dissension between fraternal idealists and hedonists,'' writes Hank Nuwer in his book ''Wrongs of Passage: Fraternities, Sororities, Hazing and Binge Drinking.'' Phi Delt's members -- including a transfer student named Benjamin Harrison, who would later become the 23rd president of the United States -- disagreed about what a fraternity should be.

Was Phi Delta Theta, as its six founding fathers envisioned, about friendship, sound learning and moral rectitude? Or was it a place for boys to be boys, no matter how juvenile and tasteless that might appear to the outside world? Or could it be some ingenious combination of the two, making space for both righteousness and debauchery?

A hard-liner, Harrison quickly got himself elected fraternity president: Phi Delt was to be a place of honor and respectability. He was more than a little displeased when two fraternity members became obscenely drunk at a reception for Pierson Sayre, the last living Revolutionary War soldier. He gave the offending men a second chance after they promised to shape up, but soon enough they were back to their old ways. Harrison threw them out, upon which several other members, who backed the banished brothers, resigned.

The growth of Phi Delta Theta (in 1859, it became the first Greek organization at Northwestern) and other fraternities stalled during the Civil War. But Phi Delt rebounded between 1870 and 1900, as fraternities expanded west. The first reported alcohol- and hazing-related fraternity deaths also occurred during this time, Nuwer recounts. In 1873, a Kappa Alpha Society pledge at Cornell University died when he fell into a gorge after fraternity brothers left him alone in the woods. Nine years later, a blindfolded Delta Kappa Epsilon pledge at Yale pierced himself with a sharp object on a carriage while following orders from fraternity brothers to run down the street. He subsequently died from the injury.

In 1897, the South Carolina State Legislature voted to ban fraternities at the state school; in 1901, Arkansas followed suit. The president of the University of Michigan, James Angell, neatly summed up the feelings of many college presidents who disliked the lack of discipline in fraternity houses when he said, ''The great dangers to the residents of these houses are waste of time . . . a substitution of social life for hard study. If the upperclassmen are not of high moral strain, the lowering of the character of the members is inevitable.''

During the 1920's, fraternity members proved adept at procuring liquor despite Prohibition. In 1930, a commentary in The New York Times warned that colleges needed to be wary of the ''gay-dog alumnus'' who visited his old fraternity house, alcohol in tow. Hazing incidents increased in the 30's, leading officials at 14 colleges to join together to crack down on the practice, according to Nuwer.

Fraternity enrollment dropped off during World War II, but it bounced back soon after. While alcohol wasn't technically allowed on many college campuses and in fraternities until the mid-60's, fraternity members were known for ignoring the rule. In 1957, Northwestern's Interfraternity Council began conducting ''liquor checks'' in chapter houses to catch offenders.

Throughout the Vietnam-era, fraternity enrollment dropped off significantly as the Greek system came to be seen by many as an outdated symbol of establishment culture. But by the mid-1970's, fraternities were again soaring in popularity, openly celebrating mischief and mayhem, while universities did very little to stop them. At Northwestern, Sigma Chi held beer-chugging contests on its front lawn, which it advertised prominently around campus: ''Chug for Charity,'' read one Sigma Chi poster in 1976, just two years before ''Animal House'' hit movie theaters.

''Back then,'' Patrick M. Quinn, an archivist at Northwestern, said, ''they had kegs inside their frats so they could drink beer all day long. You could smell the weed all the way down to Tech'' -- referring to the technology building midway between north and south campus. ''It was a crazy time. These days, you walk by the fraternities, and everything is so quiet. It's eerily quiet.''

Appearances can, of course, be deceiving. From the outside, the brick, four-story, Ivy-covered Phi Delta Theta house at Northwestern looks like a nice place to live -- it certainly has more charm than the cookie-cutter dorm the school recently built across the way. But walk inside the chapter house and you discover an unmitigated disaster -- a job even the team from ''Queer Eye for the Straight Guy'' would surely dismiss as hopeless. As one freshman put it, ''It's shockingly nasty.''

During most of my two weeks at Northwestern this fall, the chapter's third-floor hallway was strewn with garbage, and the toilets were indescribably foul. (''I won't even go to the bathroom here,'' one brother said.) In the main room, tossed carelessly underneath a pool table littered with cups, flyers, magazines and Papa John's pizza menus, I found the fraternity's '95-'96 framed group photo. It should have been hanging prominently on the wall with the others, but the brothers had apparently run out of space and found the floor a suitable alternative.

Kyle Pendleton, Northwestern's director of fraternity and sorority life, told me that one ''effective'' way to get fraternity members to take care of their chapter house is to ask them these questions: ''What would your fraternity's founders think if they came back to life and walked into your house? Would they approve? Would they want to join?'' Either those questions hadn't been asked at Phi Delt or, more likely, the Phi Delts laughed it off. ''Most of us don't take any of this fraternity stuff too seriously,'' Will Johnson said, strumming a guitar in his room. He acknowledged that he and his brothers are most likely not what the fraternity's leadership had in mind when they went dry. ''Yeah, they were probably thinking that if we weren't drunk all the time in the house, that we would get really into being the best fraternity we could be or something. But this is just a place to live and hang out with your friends. I don't think it should be taken as much more than that. All that fraternity ritual and stuff, it's a little silly.''

The current brothers are a study in cocky, amused detachment. Their laid-back attitude extends to rush, which at Northwestern happens in the winter instead of the fall. The extra months give Northwestern freshmen ample time to be courted, although the current Phi Delts are too lazy to do much of that.

''The whole rush thing is really pretty gay,'' said Matthew Rosenthal, a goofy, curly-haired Phi Delt junior who was nursing a hangover one weekday afternoon in his large room, which is decorated with Frank Zappa and Grateful Dead posters. ''Sometimes it feels like we're trying to get them to sleep with us, you know?''

Phi Delts acknowledge their dry policy initially gives the recruiting advantage to Chi Psi (better known as the Lodge) and Delta Tau Delta, their two biggest competitors, both of which are wet. ''There really is no way to positively spin not being able to drink in your chapter house, even when you're 21,'' said Michels, the chapter president.

When I visited in October, though, both Delta Tau Delta and the Lodge were on probation and were temporarily dry. The former home of David Schwimmer, one of the stars of ''Friends,'' Delt had been in trouble since last spring, following an incident in its chapter room. A freshman girl and a Delt pledge were apparently cavorting privately when other fraternity members -- some under-age and drunk -- burst in and started taking pictures. The girl told her story to The Daily Northwestern, claiming that she heard the stunt was a Delt ''tradition,'' and before long local television crews were parked outside the fraternity, eagerly reporting on this salacious fraternity sex scandal.

The Lodge has had no similar public relations disasters, but the Phi Delts find plenty of reasons to make fun of it too. Like an aggressive politician going right at an opponent's strength, Phi Delts like to mock the Lodge's notorious -- and in some freshmen circles, deeply revered -- ''floor parties,'' which are usually packed with sweaty freshmen drunkenly hitting on each other. At mostly dry Northwestern, the floor parties are about as close to ''Animal House'' as anyone is going to get (and it's still pretty far). ''The parties are fun when you're a freshman,'' admitted Matthew Rosenthal, ''but freshmen are happy with whatever as long as they're drunk.''

Still, many Phi Delts confessed that as freshmen they considered pledging the Lodge. ''Joining a wet house is definitely tempting for most guys,'' Rosenthal said. But Rosenthal eventually chose Phi Delt, mostly, he said, because of the colorful personalities of the guys in the house. I heard the same from other brothers. ''A lot of fraternities have guys who look, talk and act the same,'' said Alex Wu, an engaging Phi Delt junior known for his rapping skills. ''We have such a cast of characters, and that meant more to me than being able to drink in the house.''

The same was true of the fraternity a decade ago. We had football players, swimmers, nerds, preppies, writers, artists, liberals and right-wingers. We were an eclectic bunch, unpredictable in our perspectives on life. The chapter became a little more unpredictable when I came out my junior year. After a plethora of drunken attempts to convince myself that I liked girls ''in that way,'' I finally accepted what part of me had known since I was 12: I was gay. Once I accepted it, I really wasn't interested in lying about it, and I told my family and some of my friends. But I was living in the fraternity house that year -- was I going to tell my brothers too? If I did, would they disown me -- or, worse yet, keep me around as a courtesy but mock me behind my back? My fraternity was diverse, all right, but it wasn't that diverse. There wasn't anyone in the chapter who was openly gay, and some brothers were clearly homophobic. My freshman year, one brother told me, ''Thank God we don't have any fags in this house.''

The current Phi Delts at Northwestern don't have an openly gay member and also like to throw the words ''gay'' and ''fag'' around a lot (they assumed I was straight), but I'm not convinced the words actually mean much to them. I watched in surprise as two brothers who only hours earlier jokingly labeled Lodge members as ''a bunch of pretty-boy fags from Long Island'' ridiculed a freshman who walked out of a room when he saw two guys kissing on television. ''Dude, what are you, homophobic or something?'' one brother asked him. ''Grow up, man.''

I would have loved to have heard something like that a decade ago. Instead, I drank and drank and became very good at changing pronouns (my boyfriend became a girlfriend, although she was always too busy to come by the house). I didn't like lying, and I tried desperately to build up the courage to tell my brothers. I suspected that my closest friends in the house would be fine with it. As for the others, I was really hoping that brotherhood actually meant something. Would they have my back?

When I finally told my close friends in the house, they promptly told their girlfriends, who then told the whole school. Most important, though, most of my brothers surprised me by accepting me completely. For many of them, I was the first gay guy they'd really known -- and some of them claimed to be heartbroken when I told them that, no, I didn't find them attractive. ''If I can't even get gay guys into me,'' one drunken brother asked me, ''how am I supposed to get girls?''

Kyle Pendleton, Northwestern's director of fraternity and sorority life, kept urging me to visit Sigma Chi. It is, he told me, ''the model fraternity in many ways.''

I could see immediately why Pendleton liked the place so much. The house is spotless and majestic. (Frankly, it looks and feels a lot like a sorority.) But more than that, Sigma Chi takes its mission as a new and redesigned fraternity very seriously, and it is, according to most fraternity guys on campus, the driest of the dry fraternities.

''We don't want to be a house that thinks the only way to have fun is to be drunk, stupid and belligerent,'' Diego Berdakin, a sophomore and Sigma Chi's president, told me one afternoon as he gave me a tour of the house, with its beautiful woodwork and king-size beds (both thanks to big-spending alumni). ''We're looking to live up to the ideals that the fraternity was founded on. At the same time, we're trying to build our own legacy, a whole new model of what a fraternity can be. We're not interested in being anything like 'Animal House.'

''If you look at this chapter five or six years ago,'' Berdakin continued, ''we were considered one of the top fraternities on campus, but I don't think the brothers back then really respected the fraternity. You could spend two straight days just trying to think up everything a fraternity could do wrong, and I'm sure they did it all.''

In 2000, this chapter of Sigma Chi was shut down by its national headquarters for being too unruly, a far cry from what it is today. Last spring, as part of its New Chapter Initiative, the fraternity's leadership recruited about 45 Northwestern students to start the chapter again. Some never expected to join a fraternity but were intrigued by the idea of starting one from scratch. Others, like Berdakin, are engaging and likable students who wanted to join a chapter that wasn't about partying and hazing. And some joined because, as members of several other fraternities told me, ''no other chapter would take them.''

While it's difficult to take issue with Sigma Chi's focus on things that actually matter (Berdakin spoke often about wanting to have a house ''with integrity''), something about the place spooked me. It struck me as too clean, too perfect. At one point, I had to use the bathroom and found myself staring at a sign above the sink that read: ''Wash your hands. Dirty hands spread disease.'' Was this the redesigned American fraternity?

Pendleton also spoke highly of Sigma Phi Epsilon, saying that while the chapter is wet, its focus isn't on drinking. The house was hard to miss, with a moose head and strobe light protruding from its top window.

Most Sig Ep chapters, including Northwestern's, have adopted the Balanced Man Program, which Sig Ep's national leadership developed in the early 90's to combat what the fraternity's national spokesman, Scott Thompson, called ''a fraternity culture of boozing, drugging and hazing.'' The program doesn't restrict drinking in the chapter house, but it does something nearly as radical and arguably more meaningful: it has done away with the ''pledge system,'' meaning that new members who join the fraternity have nearly all the rights and responsibilities of active members.

''New members don't pledge for a certain period of time, get hazed, get initiated and then show up for parties until they graduate,'' Thompson said. ''In the Balanced Man Program, men join, and they are developed from the time they join until the time they graduate. Part of that development focuses on building a sound mind and sound body, a simple philosophy that we took from the ancient Greeks.''

Thompson supports Sig Ep chapters that choose to go dry on their own (a dozen have), but he says the fraternity doesn't force the issue. ''We believe that if we recruit smart men and put them in an environment where they respect each other, they're going to make smart decisions,'' he said. I heard similar reasoning from Nick Johnson and Jordan Cerf, Sig Ep seniors who spoke fondly of the Balanced Man philosophy and clearly valued their fraternity experience. They pride themselves on being a well-liked chapter where girls ''feel safe'' and know ''the door will be held open for them.''

But Johnson and Cerf also talked a lot about having a good time. They were visibly giddy at the news that Kappa Alpha Theta, considered one of Northwestern's top sororities, had chosen to do Homecoming with them. ''That would have never happened 10 years ago,'' Cerf said.

When I asked them why, they struggled to put it delicately. ''I wouldn't want to use the word cooler, exactly, to describe us versus the guys from back then,'' Cerf said. ''But, you know, those guys were just starting out and weren't really known on campus.''

Johnson assured me, ''They were all-around nice guys, but maybe, in terms of social presence, they weren't quite there.''


Before spending time with the Sig Eps, I was skeptical of the Balanced Man Program. Fraternities often coin new initiatives that, in practice, mean very little. But I left feeling thoroughly impressed. More than any fraternity boys I visited at Northwestern, the Sig Eps seem to be, well, balanced men. And they're proof that a wet fraternity doesn't necessarily mean an unruly one.

They're also proof that there are other ways, besides outlawing liquor, to redesign the American fraternity. Going dry may be a necessary step for some chapters, but the more I hung around Northwestern's fraternity boys, the less I saw regulating alcohol as particularly relevant to the health and personality of fraternities. For me, the ideal fraternity would somehow combine the strengths of Northwestern's Sigma Chi, Sig Ep and Phi Delt chapters. It would stress integrity, character and leadership. But it would also be a place where fraternity boys are allowed to be fraternity boys, however unseemly and absurd their choices may appear to the rest of us. Without that, the redesigned American fraternity may be no more balanced than the one that was scrapped in the first place.


Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a contributing writer. His cover article on teen sex appeared last May.