As you may or may not know, this past July 28 was the 30th anniversary of the seminal college film "National Lampoon's Animal House." This film more accurately portrays college and fraternity life in the 1960s than any other film ever made, and that is a fact.
I had never actually seen "Animal House" until about three days ago, and I was blown away. What the hell happened to the colleges and fraternities of this great nation? Where did the fun go? What happened to the irreverent debauchery? When did our educational system go soft?
As I sat in my sagging lounge chair thinking about Faber College compared to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I began to grow more and more disappointed with UNL. Where are those campus personalities? Where are those easily definable and distinct fraternities?
What has happened to our fraternities? If "Animal House" is as true an indicator as I am going to assume it is, fraternities used to have distinct and definable personas represented by the people in them. There were pompous frats, party frats, trash frats, smart frats, etc. In this day and age, our fraternities have been distilled down to one homogeneous, ultra-bland, consistent bore-fest that is hardly distinguishable from any other residency group on campus.
Also, what of the personalities? Along with the differences between fraternities, there should also be differences between the people within the fraternities. Like the organizations themselves, the brothers within the frats have become uniform, affable, invariable clones of each other. Cookie-cutter stereotypes that perpetuate their own falseness.
Upon watching "Animal House," it became apparent to me what has happened not only to our fraternal and educational systems over the last 30 years, but what has happened to our nation as a whole.
"Animal House" is set in 1962, in an America on the thin line between the blandness of the 1950s and the revolution of the 1960s. The dull contentedness of the '50s still held in some circles, but the boisterous rebellion of the '60s had begun to surface. America was changing, and Delta Tau Chi reflected the new face of a nation.
Since then, America and her consumerism has boiled herself back down into the same watery bland mess that she was in the '50s. Too many people, too many frat bros are content to subscribe themselves to a comfortable stereotype defined by whoever is selling their clothes. No one is willing to define their own personas anymore. No one has that kind of personal courage.
No one has the poetic virtue to be the kind of drunken idiot that Bluto was. No one has the Otter's sheer cajones to pick up the dean's drunk wife at a supermarket. No one has D-Day's rebellious spirit. Today's fraternal organizations and their members have become what America so long ago tried to forget it ever was, a commercially manipulated, self-isolated, culturally stagnant cesspool of sameness.
Modern fraternal organizations have returned us to a low point in our national development.
I'm issuing this manifesto to the fraternal organizations not only of UNL, but of the nation. Please take us back to the days of "Animal House." Take this university back to the days when fraternities were cool. Return us to the days of mischief and trouble making. I want some personality from my school's fraternities. I want a reason to care about the greek system. Restore my hope in my own generation. Restore my hope in the American way of life. Make college like "Animal House" again.
Do you understand?!?
CASEYWELSCH@DAILYNEBRASKAN.COM
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