In which I talk about my experience in my fraternity

Note: all names have been changed.


* * *


I recently remembered the phrase "disloyal to the fraternity." I cannot count the number of times that the "disloyal to the fraternity" card was played. It was used as a manipulation technique to get members to do what the officer wanted. As a new active who was a slave to anxiety, that phrase convicted me every time. I felt guilty if I didn't do exactly what they demanded. I believed them when they said I was being disloyal otherwise.

I sold my fucking soul to that fraternity. I came back to them even though they made me work so hard for membership that I literally wanted to kill myself. And yet that wasn't good enough.

So it makes sense to me when, during my second active semester when the pledges "failed" at their first sneak attempt and Mike called all the actives together and condemned how we handled the situation (by playing the disloyalty card), that Daniel had a look of utter disbelief on his face, and he shouted, "Fuck you!" to Mike multiple times before storming out of the active room.

We drove to fucking Napa to participate in sneak. What more do you want from us to prove our loyalty?

The above story was from Sunday, February 17, 2013.


* * *


Pledge court came out of nowhere.

Things were going great in the pledge process up until that point. I could tolerate the weekly events, the Monday suits, the entertainments, the pledge book, and the forced pledge duties such as answering the door. I wanted to be a part of the community; so I sucked it up and played their game. I completed my fifteenth of eighteen interviews immediately before pledge court. It was with Chris. He, and the other actives, told me that as long as I was just honest and was myself during pledge court, I would be just fine.

I was not fine. I was honest, and I faced serious consequences.

The above story was from Thursday, March 8, 2012.


* * *


I told Sean, who was the President at the time, that what I went through as a pledge was identified as "emotional abuse" by Dr. Johnson. I said it as a side comment; it wasn't even the point of the story I was telling him. I was describing how I grew as a person over the summer following my pledgeship.

He didn't say anything about my personal growth. His first and only response to my story was, "That wasn't emotional abuse." And he proceeded to tell me that I didn't know what emotional abuse was.

When he finished his monologue, I sat there silently. I was shocked that he didn't even try to listen to me. And yet, because I still did not trust my thoughts and emotions, I put more stock into what he said than into what had actually happened to me. Maybe I don't actually know what emotional abuse is, I thought. Maybe it wasn't that bad after all.

The above story was from Sunday, September 2, 2012.


* * *


They had cornered us in Mark's minivan in the Clark Kerr parking lot. In order to get out of the gridlock, we let Eric go in exchange for Kenny. They led us to believe that capturing the Vice President had value.

While in the van, Kenny overheard us talking about the rest of our plans for sneak. Without us seeing, he had dialed another active and had us on speaker phone. Once we realized that the actives were eavesdropping, we tried to take his phone from him. This led to a ten-minute wrestling match in the back seat of Mark's minivan while driving in the Oakland Hills on Highway 13.

I almost started crying. The pledge-active distinction had not been made clearer to me than in this moment. Our physical fight with Kenny was a manifestation of the relationship between the pledges and the actives. Is this what community is supposed to be about? I thought as I tried to hold Kenny's arms still.

The above story was from Monday, March 12, 2012.


* * *


The construction project that lasted through October weighed on me more than I thought it would. At a time when my relationship with the fraternity was tenuous, I didn't have a place that truly felt like home. How can you call it a home when you aren't allowed to sleep in your room, but must instead drag a mattress to the dining room floor and sleep there with everyone else? How can you call it a home when you are forced to wake up at 7 AM every morning in case the fire marshal--who had not yet approved the building for occupancy--came by? How can you call it a home when contractors are going in and out of the house all day? How can you call it a home when you don't have a kitchen, and the groceries that your lease said would be provided will not be delivered for another month? How can you call it a home when there are some days when you aren't allowed in the house?


 * * *


Corey, my pledgemaster, had been given instructions by our chapter adviser to work with me on specific points in my Statement of Faith. He never reached out to me, so I assumed that everything was fine with the document.

It wasn't.

It was the Friday before I-Week began. I was at the house for Water on the Row. I had completed all my chaplain hours, but I was just there because I wanted to be there. Mike, my big brother, pulled me aside. He told me that because of what I had written in my Statement of Faith, I was ineligible for office in the fraternity.

An email had gone out from our chapter adviser to every active member of the fraternity alerting them of this judgment earlier in the week. And I, the only one to whom this really mattered, was finding out secondhand several days later.

And even after I revised and resubmitted my Statement of Faith, and the chapter adviser had approved me for office, the actives still used my Statement of Faith as leverage against me to disqualify me from holding the entry-level office of Secretary.

That led to my second fraternity-induced suicide incident. Within the same fucking year.

The above stories were from Friday, April 20, 2012 and Monday, November 19, 2012.


* * *


I had a panic attack during our second pledge sneak attempt. I had to keep myself from collapsing by grabbing onto the counter in ADX's kitchen.

Then we went to First Pres for the evening service because that was where Eric was. About ten minutes into the service, I had to excuse myself. I sat in the courtyard outside and cried. It was not the fraternity who came to support me; it was Nina.

How many of the actives knew about that?

The above story was from Sunday, April 15, 2012.


* * *


There could not have been a worse big/little brother matching than Mike and me. Mike proved himself multiple times to be critical, unsympathetic, unsupportive, and unwilling to listen.

"I feel like I'm in a horrible nightmare, and the only way I can get out is by killing myself," I said to Mike on Tuesday night of I-Week. By that point in the night, my tear ducts were dry.

"Well, sitting there isn't going to solve anything," was his response.

The above story was from Tuesday, April 24, 2012.


* * *


I should not have stuck with it for as long as I did. While interviewing new pledges, whenever I got to the part about my pledgeship, I never placed the full blame on the fraternity. I indicted myself for a lot of it, placing the blame on my mental health and my brain chemistry. I think that if I had been honest in my interviews, I knew that not only would the pledge be deterred from joining, but I would not be able to justify my continued membership to myself.


* * *


Our first formal meeting of my first active semester took place in our dining room, which looked more like a hardware store after an earthquake due to the construction.

Brandon, the recently-appointed Secretary, had had to withdraw his enrollment from the university that semester, so the position of Secretary was immediately open. Sean, the President, called on the active body for nominations. I heard the other four names in my pledge class listed as nominations; I knew mine could not be said because of the judgment our chapter adviser had given.

"You know, we have another new active here," Sean said, pointing out that I was the only one left to be nominated.

For a split second, I had a glimmer of hope. Perhaps Sean's authority combined with the urgency of the situation allowed me to be nominated. But then I realized that that was a false hope. He had just forgotten, and in the process, had made me relive the humiliation of having a sub-par Statement of Faith. I made eye contact with him, and I raised my eyebrows.

"Oh." Suddenly he remembered. We moved on with the nomination process.

The above story was from Monday, August 20, 2012.


* * *


The fraternity held me back by at least a couple years. I began to discover my sexuality around the time I started pledging. The culture of the fraternity was not supportive of my attempts to allow Christianity and same-sex relationships to coexist. It took me almost two years to get to a point where I could firmly state what I believed about the issue. And even when I had a boyfriend during my senior year, I knew (and he somehow knew better than I did) that he was not welcome at the house--but my straight brothers could bring their girlfriends over and cuddle with them on the couch all they wanted.

I justified this restraint by thinking that I just wasn't one of "those" gays. How the hell could I have known that, though, since I was surrounded by a culture that discouraged me from exploring myself?


* * *


And don't even get me started on National.

Thoughts on shutting down Milo at UC Berkeley: 2/1/17

Milo Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak at a Berkeley College Republicans event today as part of his campus tour. Violent protests shut him down.

I was there, wearing heels and holding a sign that read, "NOT AT MY ALMA MATER".

Here is what happened. Peaceful protestors--primarily students--started showing up around 4 PM. Around 5, a group of 150 or so non-students with their faces masked showed up and commandeered the protest. They lit fires; they set off fireworks; they exploded Molotov cocktails; they smashed windows. By the time I arrived, shortly after 6, an enormous fire was growing on Upper Sproul Plaza. The kindling appeared to be some kind of electrical system doused in fuel. Thick, black smoke rose from the flames that burned branches of the sycamore tree above. Four or five officers in riot gear watched from the upper level of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union building. I saw one of them filming the protests on his phone. Twenty or so more officers and SWAT members waited in the lobby of MLK in case they were needed.  Shortly after my arrival, the campus cancelled the event due to the danger posed by the protests. Milo was evacuated from UC Berkeley two hours before the event began. The police announced this to a cheering crowd; then he ordered the crowd to disperse from Sproul because the chief deemed the assembly "unlawful". With the threat of police action such as arrests, tear gas, and rubber bullets, the protestors, led by the masked group, took to occupying the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph. They carried a sign that read, "BECOME UNGOVERNABLE". I witnessed some violence break out in the street. I saw one of the masked people beat two others in the crowd with the thick, wooden flagpole he carried. One of the victims skidded on the street to the bus stop; when he sat up, I could see a deep gash on the top of his head with a line of blood down his face. The second skidded on the street and remained face-down. Someone sprayed pepper spray at someone else. Upon first glance, I thought these were police officers; alas, it was protestor-on-protestor violence. Maybe the victims were Neo-Nazis. That was the point when I knew I had to leave.

Part of me thinks that I should be disappointed with how the protests turned out because they were not non-violent. But at the same time, perhaps this type of violent display showed that the ideologies legitimized by Milo and trump need to be burned. Perhaps Milo's repulsive dogma merited such a violent response. I was reminded of the Boston Tea Party; wasn't tonight in the exact same vein as that?

I know that Milo will capitalize on this instance to reinforce his point that free speech is under attack. Maybe this is what he wanted to happen all along. So maybe he won. But then again, he didn't end up giving his talk, which is what we wanted. So maybe we won. Maybe we both won. The inevitable result of both sides winning, though, is greater divergence between the two ideologies.

"Free speech is under attack," conservatives will say in response to this event. I'm not sure that it is. Words always have come with consequences since language has been invented. Milo's words have come with these consequences. How the protestors handled their anti-Milo position was their freedom of expression--and with these actions come consequences. Free speech is a protection from the government, that the government will not prosecute (most) speech. The governing institution, UC Berkeley, abode by this rule by allowing the event to happen. How private citizens responded tonight is a different story. How private citizens respond is never the responsibility of the government to maintain unless violence is involved.

This protest--in addition to the anti-trump ones on inauguration day--gave me the feeling that everything is somehow connected. This protest wasn't just about Milo; I saw signs and heard chants about trump, immigrants, the LBGTQ+ community, Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism, Black Lives Matter, police violence, public university ownership, and probably more.

BCR could have invited a whole host of others to speak--they had to choose Milo of all people. That felt like a slap in the face.