PKT25: Mike Tyson & Formal Breakfast
So after I went to an explicit rush party, clearly I must have at least known that rush was going on, right? Apparently not. I didn't attend any of the other events on the rush calendar for Phi Kappa Theta until the very end. I did, however, inadvertently attend a rush event for Phi Delta Theta.
As mentioned, I played football at Case my freshman year. Case was a D3 school, which means that nobody was getting athletic scholarships and the roster was full of guys who'd decided they wanted to keep playing football past high school but who in the vast majority of cases weren't good enough to play at a higher level. I definitely fell into this bucket myself (well, maybe not the smart part). Case did not have a good football team at the time (we went 5-5 and were co-champs of one of the two conferences we belonged to, which was the best record the team had posted in a decade). Between that ineptitude and the high academics standards supposedly required to attend CWRU, the roster wasn't that much larger than the roster of my rural high school team. Quite a few of the guys on the football team were in fraternities, and most of the ones who were were members of the local chapter of Phi Delta Theta, including one of the seniors on our small crew of defensive linemen.
Naturally, I didn't put 2 and 2 together when he invited most of the freshman from the football team to a party to watch one of the Mike Tyson comeback fights at an off-campus apartment of one of their alumni. Rush is a dry event officially (I could write many posts about the problems of fraternities and alcohol), but this particularly party had a keg, which was one of the very few I actually saw in college. Kegs, by the way, were prohibited even when it wasn't rush. It wasn't a ridiculous drunk party so much as a bunch of people having a few beers before watching an incredibly short boxing match, but still, it was definitely against the spirit of the rules. Anyway, I don't want to disparage the rush techniques of Phi Delta Theta circa 1996, but I must observe that every freshman football who opted not to drink beer from that keg failed to get a bid from Phi Delta Theta, and all of the ones who did imbibe got a bid. The list of ones who didn't was myself and Steve A., who if I remember correctly was a wide receiver and also the only African-American freshman football player. I'd like to claim some moral high ground for myself, but honestly it was shitty beer and I just wasn't interested.
The guys who did get bids from PDT mostly didn't accept them, for what it's worth. I don't know if they went to other rush events and were unimpressed or just not interested in Greek life, but they went another route. Despite playing a full season of football with them and lifting weights with them for another semester, I was never really friends with a single one of them. I can rattle off a few names I remember from that group of freshman (Kurt O., Justin A., Theo F., Scott M.) but I couldn't tell you if most of them graduated from CWRU. I rarely saw them around campus for the next several years and didn't interact with them more than as a passing nod. The only exception is Steve A., who did graduate from CWRU. I've actually seen him around Cleveland occasionally in the years since although it's never been clear to me if he actually recognizes me from football.
The senior who invited me to the party was Matt F., but even that took substantial effort on my part to remember, which is really odd given that I backed him up on the line all season and practiced against him. I also don't remember the name of the defensive line coach, even though I got yelled at by him (and cajoled and everything else a coach does) most every day for a semester. Memory is weird, right?
Anyway, the Detour party and the Tyson fight were the only two rush events that I went to, but then I got an invite for the Phi Kappa Theta formal breakfast on the last Sunday of rush. The formal meant "wear formal attire." There were two problems. The first was that I had football practice that Sunday morning. The second problem was that I don't really do formal attire. It seems like I missed some memo because every other guy on campus seemed to have at least a sport coat if not a suit, and quite a few of the musicians had tuxedos. I had one button down shirt and a pair of black Levi's dockers, which I had used for concert band performances in in high school and brought just in case. I didn't even own a tie, let alone wear one.
Given the overlap of football practice and the breakfast, I assumed that I wasn't going to make it and didn't RSVP one way or the other. I don't actually remember how I ended up at the breakfast, to be honest. Maybe I got back from practice early, maybe I was just not willing to stomach the terrible cafeteria food for breakfast when better options were on tap, maybe I was just being polite. I certainly didn't bother dressing up, instead going with my standard blue jeans and a blue t-shirt look.
I was late enough that most everybody had already eaten, but there was still some left to feed me. I remember meeting and getting into a minor fight with both Glick and Dave early on in the conversation, although about what I couldn't recall. At the time, "Mom jokes" were very much in vogue at the house, and people were always trying to get the first name of your mother for joke purposes. Davis (well, I assume it was Davis) tried that on me and I somehow managed to avoid it with a snappy sarcastic comment despite not having any idea what he was trying to do. I should note that these Mom jokes weren't even particularly clever "dozens" style Mom jokes. In most cases, they were pretty much "that's what she said" but less funny.
And that was my freshman rush experience: one party that I didn't realize was a rush event until after the fact, one off-campus party that was not dissimilar from the stereotype of drunken fraternity rush, and one formal breakfast. It doesn't seem like much because it's not, so you can imagine my surprise when I actually got a bid. I'll talk about that in my next post.
As mentioned, I played football at Case my freshman year. Case was a D3 school, which means that nobody was getting athletic scholarships and the roster was full of guys who'd decided they wanted to keep playing football past high school but who in the vast majority of cases weren't good enough to play at a higher level. I definitely fell into this bucket myself (well, maybe not the smart part). Case did not have a good football team at the time (we went 5-5 and were co-champs of one of the two conferences we belonged to, which was the best record the team had posted in a decade). Between that ineptitude and the high academics standards supposedly required to attend CWRU, the roster wasn't that much larger than the roster of my rural high school team. Quite a few of the guys on the football team were in fraternities, and most of the ones who were were members of the local chapter of Phi Delta Theta, including one of the seniors on our small crew of defensive linemen.
Naturally, I didn't put 2 and 2 together when he invited most of the freshman from the football team to a party to watch one of the Mike Tyson comeback fights at an off-campus apartment of one of their alumni. Rush is a dry event officially (I could write many posts about the problems of fraternities and alcohol), but this particularly party had a keg, which was one of the very few I actually saw in college. Kegs, by the way, were prohibited even when it wasn't rush. It wasn't a ridiculous drunk party so much as a bunch of people having a few beers before watching an incredibly short boxing match, but still, it was definitely against the spirit of the rules. Anyway, I don't want to disparage the rush techniques of Phi Delta Theta circa 1996, but I must observe that every freshman football who opted not to drink beer from that keg failed to get a bid from Phi Delta Theta, and all of the ones who did imbibe got a bid. The list of ones who didn't was myself and Steve A., who if I remember correctly was a wide receiver and also the only African-American freshman football player. I'd like to claim some moral high ground for myself, but honestly it was shitty beer and I just wasn't interested.
The guys who did get bids from PDT mostly didn't accept them, for what it's worth. I don't know if they went to other rush events and were unimpressed or just not interested in Greek life, but they went another route. Despite playing a full season of football with them and lifting weights with them for another semester, I was never really friends with a single one of them. I can rattle off a few names I remember from that group of freshman (Kurt O., Justin A., Theo F., Scott M.) but I couldn't tell you if most of them graduated from CWRU. I rarely saw them around campus for the next several years and didn't interact with them more than as a passing nod. The only exception is Steve A., who did graduate from CWRU. I've actually seen him around Cleveland occasionally in the years since although it's never been clear to me if he actually recognizes me from football.
The senior who invited me to the party was Matt F., but even that took substantial effort on my part to remember, which is really odd given that I backed him up on the line all season and practiced against him. I also don't remember the name of the defensive line coach, even though I got yelled at by him (and cajoled and everything else a coach does) most every day for a semester. Memory is weird, right?
Anyway, the Detour party and the Tyson fight were the only two rush events that I went to, but then I got an invite for the Phi Kappa Theta formal breakfast on the last Sunday of rush. The formal meant "wear formal attire." There were two problems. The first was that I had football practice that Sunday morning. The second problem was that I don't really do formal attire. It seems like I missed some memo because every other guy on campus seemed to have at least a sport coat if not a suit, and quite a few of the musicians had tuxedos. I had one button down shirt and a pair of black Levi's dockers, which I had used for concert band performances in in high school and brought just in case. I didn't even own a tie, let alone wear one.
Given the overlap of football practice and the breakfast, I assumed that I wasn't going to make it and didn't RSVP one way or the other. I don't actually remember how I ended up at the breakfast, to be honest. Maybe I got back from practice early, maybe I was just not willing to stomach the terrible cafeteria food for breakfast when better options were on tap, maybe I was just being polite. I certainly didn't bother dressing up, instead going with my standard blue jeans and a blue t-shirt look.
I was late enough that most everybody had already eaten, but there was still some left to feed me. I remember meeting and getting into a minor fight with both Glick and Dave early on in the conversation, although about what I couldn't recall. At the time, "Mom jokes" were very much in vogue at the house, and people were always trying to get the first name of your mother for joke purposes. Davis (well, I assume it was Davis) tried that on me and I somehow managed to avoid it with a snappy sarcastic comment despite not having any idea what he was trying to do. I should note that these Mom jokes weren't even particularly clever "dozens" style Mom jokes. In most cases, they were pretty much "that's what she said" but less funny.
And that was my freshman rush experience: one party that I didn't realize was a rush event until after the fact, one off-campus party that was not dissimilar from the stereotype of drunken fraternity rush, and one formal breakfast. It doesn't seem like much because it's not, so you can imagine my surprise when I actually got a bid. I'll talk about that in my next post.