COLUMN: "Fight the Power"

From George Allen, Jr.'s "Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn," Spring '92.From George Allen, Jr.'s "Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn," Spring '92.· I always assumed a fraternity was a place brothers owned, where they could sit around in an oak paneled room with leather chairs and a fireplace. In this house o' fun, they would smoke cigars and drink napoleon brandy out of large snifters while planning wacky high jinks. Unfortunately, fraternities are starting to lose that Eurocentric, white male, bourgeois, elitist, really insensitive, and generally-not-nice oppressor mentality. They are becoming well-behaved and stating to accept the rule of Penn's "community." When people start attacking themselves because they suddenly think having fun is wrong, something is definitely screwed up. Sure, some of the fraternities' "fun" isn't considered socially responsible by the Pennsgemeinschaft (Nazi for "Penn community"), but is it so bad? Back in the 1920s, some fraternity members overturned a trolley car and set it on fire. Okay, that is not acceptable behavior. They destroyed property and generally acted like Winnie Mandela's soccer club. I agree the fraternity members should have been arrested and Dad should have had to pay for the damage. Individuals who commit crimes against property should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and, if applicable, the fraternity should also be punished. That's why, to police themselves, the fraternities created the Interfraternity Council. A few years ago, Zeta Beta Tau hosted an exhibition in homoerotic dance based on the feminist-vegetarian critique, otherwise known as a strip show. Unfortunately, they forgot to get a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Although the artistic event was done in the privacy of their own fraternity, the whiny good behavior fascists got them kicked out of their house. Just two years ago, some pledges from the Castle, formerly known as Psi Upsilon, pulled a wacky, albeit stupid prank on a brother from St. Anthony's. They attempted to take him to a diversity seminar, otherwise known as kidnapping him. Although only a few members were involved, the result was the Castle being given to some community do-gooder group. Lately, the brothers of Tau Epsilon Phi and Acacia have faced the ham-fisted rule of Penn for hazing and drinking too much, and for appreciating the human body as art, respectively. If good behavior was fun, all of us would have wanted to become a hall-monitor in high school, and coke would still be the name for a soft drink. Good behavior is boring. Look at the U.S.S.R., everyone was well-behaved there, or at least that's what we were told. By whining, setting up workshops on gender issues, and shooting a lot of people, supposedly Lenin made the generally insensitive Russian into the new well-behaved, sensitive, "Soviet Man." In actuality, they had underground fun-loving misbehavior groups within something called civil society. Civil society -- that part of society that is not part of the state -- is also known as liberty, freedom, or fun. Civil society includes bunches of fun groups like eco-freaks, fascists, long-haired protestors, guys named Fred, and fraternities. Here in the United States, we used to have a suspicion of government power messing up our fun. Now every tree hugger and government bureaucrat in the U.S. wants to contol all the fun stuff. We used to be able to keep these sociopaths away by yelling, "Hey you kids get off my lawn!" No such luck now. The University, using high property taxes as a motivator, convinced fraternities they should sell their land and/or houses to the University. The U.S.S.R., on the other hand, told the gullible kulaks that collective farming actually works, Siberia is quite temperate, and starvation is just another word for Nutri-System. The guns helped convince them, too. Since most fraternities don't own their own houses, if nothing is done, the University can and will succeed in destroying the fraternity system in the name of sensitivity, diversity and social responsibility. As a paltry replacement, the University has encouraged the growth of the Social Planning and Events Committee. Anything with the phrase "social planning" scares me. This group promises to provide gleichschaltung (Nazi for "coordination") of our social lives. Hence fun at Penn, like Soviet agriculture, won't work. · George Allen, Jr. is a senior Intellectual History and Political Science major from Alderwood Manor, Washington. Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn appears alternate Wednesdays.

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