MAYBE SIT THE NEXT COUPLE OF PLAYS OUT

Posted on | by Ed

This is long, and I'm unsure what I can add to it other than to say that this is an attitude one encounters often when dealing with college students and I never have any idea what to do about it. But you really should read it.

Oh, and I don't think this kid or many of his peers have the slightest idea what the word "satire" means. He keeps using it and appears to understand it only as the thing you claim you were doing when you get in hot water for saying or doing something awful. It's telling that this kid thought an outside audience would be sympathetic if only "their side" could be heard. It says a lot about how coddled and cloistered these kids are.

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Everyone they interact with shares their mindset and you can see how much it shocks them to be exposed to criticism from people outside the bubble. I suspect that they rationalize it with their traditional "Those people are just jealous because I'm so awesome" mantra.

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Oh alright, one more thing: this is why attorneys tell their clients never to do interviews. Seriously kid, I know you think you're helping your Bros but you're not. Maybe stop talking.

36 thoughts on “MAYBE SIT THE NEXT COUPLE OF PLAYS OUT”

  • Xynzee says:

    I'm not so much disturbed that this stuff happens, it's the uglier side of people. Frankly kids do dumb things. *Really* dumb things. Often it involved one beer bong too many and chucking your guts at best, or a trip to casualty for alcohol poisoning. It's a question of, did somebody lose an "eye"?

    It's the brazenness and attitude to put highly suspect, if not outright evidence of illegal activity out there. That's what I find disturbing.

    Did these kids ever suffer consequences for bad behaviour? Were they even taught a classical Western concept of "Right from Wrong" to begin with? Or is everything relative and open for debate? The prevalent "It's only illegal if you get caught" attitude is disturbing in practice.

  • SiubhanDuinne says:

    "It's only illegal if you get caught," indeed. Mr. Anonymous Frat Boy's most telling comments were in this exchange:

    Philly Mag: But doesn't that put a lot of trust in all 144 guys? Any of them can take a photo from the "secret" group and make it public.

    KDR member: But nobody except the one kid who snitched out this group did that … It just doesn't work that way … It is a brotherhood and nobody expects anyone to go and post stuff publicly or so forth and so on. It's a real disappointment that this kid went and did this.

  • carrstone says:

    You're right, Ed, it's not about whether the guy knows the meaning of 'satire' – it's just one among quite a few others that are, apparently, not part of the entitlement culture cocoon oh so lovingly nurtured for him by his fond family.

    Ho hum, as ye sow so shall ye reap [Gal VI].

  • Mike S. says:

    The frat-member interviewed actually compared his/his brothers' circumstances to a Salem-era witch-trial.
    LMAO

    Also
    >I was a member of the FB group wherein the photos were posted but "I'm a good guy" b/c I didn't post the photos or comment on them – to do so would have been bad.

    Oh, this is satire, unintentionally.

  • Jimcat says:

    He starts out the very first paragraph with "everybody does it and always has" and then calls it an "occasional incident". This sets the tone for the level of his logical thinking ability.

  • Well mostly says:

    Sad part, in five years this fine fellow will be deciding who to hire, who to promote and who to fire at an upstanding company that wants his connections and pedigree and cares not about his values and what goes for logic. Then, who knows, some public commission, city council? Dozens of state legislatures he would fit right into without a blink. Somewhere a high school civics teacher is cringing wondering if this guy was in his/her class and WTF happened.
    I think Bill Mahr is about right on the whole Greek campus system: send in the troops and shut them down.
    Any other questions about why so many people hate our "culture"?

  • Emerson Dameron says:

    This may be the first time I've seen Bill Clinton called in as a character witness.

    Yes, there's always more "context" than "the media" pick up on. Always. When you're a frat boy at Penn Fucking State, I'd think you might have a little whisper in the back of your mind predicting that this is exactly how something like this might be perceived by "the media" and everyone else without the needed "context" to comprehend your friends' awesomeness, on the increasingly likely chance that your stunts go public.

    Also, does ANYONE (except Cosby) talk to lawyers anymore?

    I hope his buddies saved the paddle.

  • c u n d gulag says:

    I think it's about time to end Fraternities (and Sororities).

    I was invited to join one when I was in college, but I was aware that behind the patina of an organization designed to help the community, it was little more than a Frat House built to party.

    Besides, I'd had some of the guys in a few classes, and really didn't like the oaf's too much.
    And I was a commuter at a 4 year private college, so I had plenty of work friends to hang out and drink and party with.

    I tended to be a leader not matter where I was. And I just didn't think I'd like the herd mentality of being a part of a Fraternity.

    And sure, ostensibly some, if not many of them, do some good in their communities – but, it's really just a place to party hearty, and build-up connections for later on in your work life.

  • Emerson Dameron says:

    @gulag:

    I've been told that, at certain schools in the hinterlands (Dartmouth being the best known), Greek Life is about the only thing going.

    Luckily, I enrolled at a school with a cool radio station and about a million other student orgs to join that had activities more interesting than date rape and alcohol poisoning.

    The way things are going, it might help to have more than generic "business connections" who barely remember you.

  • Amarylllis says:

    " Here's a quick reality check: everyone — from Bill Clinton to your grandfather to every Greek organization in the nation does the same old stuff, just as they have been for the entirety of human history. That's where that lil' old quip, don't throw stones if you live in a glass house, comes from.
    Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/03/18/member-of-penn-states-kappa-delta-rho-defends-fraternity/#ZBCeO9Ybzywm1HWW.99"

    NO.

    No, "everyone" does not take pictures of nonconsenting women and post them for amusement. No, "everyone" does not haze their friends and do coke on the weekends.

  • Sideshow Bill says:

    Most of the big offenders at my university are now lawyers, or well placed chief of staff to Southern Fried Senators and Congressmen. One is dean of admissions at a very exclusive private school out in California now.

  • Skippper says:

    I'm going to side with the kid on this one. What the frat guys are doing is just a reflection of our society in general.

    Banksters steal hundreds of millions of dollars with shady, made-up securities. They bankrupt cities and towns, pension funds, homeowners, and they get a bonus. They tank the economy and they get bailed out, while the rest of us have to live with "austerity." Some young black guy tries to shoplift a couple of cigars and he is gunned down in the street.

    David Petraeus gives top secret material to a bimbo who was sucking his dick — and he exposed a covert agent, all for a blow job or two — and for his punishment he is made a White House adviser. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden is hiding in Russia and Chelsea Manning is being tortured in jail.

    Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were slaughtered in Iraq based on a massive pastiche of lies. The only one who was punished for lying about the Iraq war was Brian Williams. War criminals walk the streets in Washington without fear and get hundreds of thousands of dollars to make speeches.

    A politician is caught with his hand in the cookie jar — and he is allowed to resign with a full pension.

    Cops can murder people with impunity — as long as those people are black.

    When people tried to protest the injustice in US society — the Occupy movement — they were gassed and beaten by the cops, all at the behest of the White House.

    The media is totally corrupt. A recent study showed that over 60 percent of the stuff you hear on Fox is false. The best one was CNN — only 18 percent of their stuff was a lie.

    I'm not saying what the frat guys did was right. It was really wrong. But the kid was right — everybody does it. Why are we singling them out? Why should frat boys be held to a higher standard than the Pentagon, the White House, the Congress, police, the media, and Corporate America?

  • jdawg says:

    It's one thing to post pictures of someone who's passed out.

    It's quite another thing to post pictures of someone who's passed out and naked. That's a whole other story, and is essentially a form of sexual assault.

    And, no, not everyone does it, or considers it some sort of satire or shenanigans, much less joins a facebook page to partake in it.

  • Mo says:

    Ahoy, Skipper, you too have read Chris Hayes' Twilight of the Elites, eh? Make it to the top and you always pass Go for $200 and never go to Jail.

    No Consequences.

    The wicked prosper and the good perish.

    We should do something about that…anything come to mind that hasn't already been tried? Not even the guillotine or Cultural Revolution succeeded in rooting out The Oligarchy, they just keep re-growing like evil weeds.

    Time to apply some network theory and take out nodes?

  • CB says:

    "…and it's not just, shall we say, when somebody happens to be caught doing the same thing that everyone else is doing …"

    After all, who among us has NOT engaged in a little casual sexual assault, amirite? Satire!

  • Scotius says:

    If only these guys had spent more time doing their schoolwork and a little less time posting pictures of unconscious naked women, they might know the difference between satire and sexual assault. Maybe they can do a correspondence course in jail.

  • H.M.S. Blankenship says:

    Just a few growing pains, a little bump on the road to being
    fully connected via social media, 24/7/365. When the
    singularity comes, we'll all look back at this & laugh.
    Also, too: springing from the woodworks–soon to be an
    Olympic event?

  • Anonymouse says:

    My branch of the state U had about 10,000 students when I went there. The branch had been open some 20-odd years old then. My first three years, there was no Greek life whatsoever (no frats, no sororities), but there were plenty of student groups to join, from political to religious to sports (intramural pickup games) to movies (videocassettes were a thing back then) to academic (French group, Spanish group, etc.). Anyone looking for a group to join could find one. There were also any number of informal just-people-hanging-out groups; the game room just about any time to shoot pool or play videogames, the sunny hill near the pond on a warm afternoon, any one of several dining halls and cafes to hang out with like-minded people.

    My senior year, the Greeks were let loose on campus. Since there were no frat houses, they were sprinkled throughout the dorms and on-campus apartments. Shortly afterward, the number of rapes, assaults, and alcohol poisonings skyrocketed on campus, and it was no longer as safe as it had been to walk home from an evening class or the gym or indoor pool. Additionally, throughout the night there were hordes of haze-ees running through the halls barking like dogs or yelling marching ditties. Forget trying to sleep any weekend night–the music reverberated off the walls past dawn.

  • Doomed, we are says:

    But there's totally no rape culture on college campuses. I think I just sprained my eye rolling muscles

  • sluggo says:

    Sororities are awfully silent on this subject, why? i would think their members are most likely to be victimized by this.

  • mothra says:

    True confession time: I was in a sorority at a large southwestern state university where the Greek system was a fringe culture. I joined because I figured I would be more likely to make friends and have a social life than if I just went to classes. I wasn't wrong. I made some friends and did indeed have a social life, but the problem was that I had joined because I liked the seniors in the sorority. After they left, I grew out of the sorority rather quickly, but I can say that we were the only sorority on campus that confronted the frat boys for their bad behavior. So of course those frat boys went around telling everyone that we were lesbians. Very mature. We couldn't have cared less, but other sorority girls sure did. Probably still that way and that's why you don't see any of the sororities standing up to the bullshit. Sad.

  • Dang says:

    This kid sounds like a lot of the adults who have revived that old "the real oppressors are the politically correct" myth. This part could come directly from an essay by Jonathan Chait, Freddie DeBoer, Laura Kipnis, Judith Shulevitz or Michelle Goldberg: "The fire of indignant, misplaced self-righteousness that looks to ruin people's lives and unjustly ruin reputations is the abuse and violation that should be at the center of discussion, not the humorous, albeit possibly misguided, antics of a bunch of college kids."

    Translation: "The REAL ABUSERS are those who correctly point out taking nude photos of unconscious women is a crime and expect these legal adults to be held accountable – what happened to boys will be boys?"

    The things that clown says aren't really that different from the academics and pundits who act like the biggest threat to society is student "self-infantilization" oppressing teachers (sadly "self-infantilization" doesn't mean frat boys who use youthful innocence as a pretext for sexual abuse they know is wrong).

    While there has always been a subset of students who are childishly strident in their activism, each "political correctness" panic pretends these kids are the biggest problem. Not how the administration, the media and legislators all blame teachers for a broken, exploitative system. Not how colleges increasingly package themselves as product while treating the workers like crap, not how reactionary groups use the PC myth to attack education, not an economy which pressures kids into debt for degrees they need just to have a chance at a decent wage, even if college isn't really good for them. Nah, the real problem are those damn kids, almost interchangeable customers who rarely have power to do more than annoy except occasionally when they manage to sue.

    These pundits and teachers end up writing equally juvenile rants with overblown generalizations, half-true anecdotes and the undergraduate, freshman year error of conflating criticism with oppression (i.e. the students protested the essay by Kipnis did not say she should be fired or retract her comments, they asked the university to reaffirm their policies).

    I'm sure these pundits do not expect their "trigger warnings are the real threat" essays to end up being recycled by rapey frat boys, but given they are academics they should recognize how when you expend much energy attacking the easy target (rather than the most necessary one) it can end up teaching the wrong thing.

  • mothra says:

    Not to mention that being a lesbian is only an insult to Neanderthal sorority and fraternity types still living as if it were 1955….

  • waspuppet says:

    "It is shameful to see the self-righteousness that has sprung from the woodworks in response to the alleged Penn State fraternity "scandal." Here's a quick reality check: …"

    Oh, please do go on. I learn so much from reality checks from college undergraduates, particularly frat members.

  • quixote says:

    Hmmm. Interesting interview with that student.

    I'm beginning to think we need the Joke Police™. Every bigot on the planet these days, when caught speaking the unspeakable, groans that he was being funny, ironic, satirical, for god's sake, get a life.

    Then the Joke Police would stride in, take a look, rate it on a humor scale from 0 to 10. Stuff like this that registers at about -25 would have the guys dragged off by the ear.

    (Mmmmm. I wonder if the planet where that happens is taking immigrants?)

  • Scout says:

    Why are we singling them out? Because these are the self same fucktards that go on to become the Banksters, the Petraeus's, the Politicians, the racist Cops. Nip it in the bud, Make it not OK from the get go and maybe we stand a chance that there will be fewer "satirists" ruining our society.

  • Xynzee says:

    I'm not sure if it's more of what I said above or just a special kind of stupid:
    http://mobile.news.com.au/world/new-zealand-police-criticised-for-not-pursuing-boys-who-got-girls-drunk-sexually-assaulted-them-then-boasted-about-it-on-facebook/story-fndir2ev-1226752658477

    Yeah there's always been this kind of attitude amongst men, bragging about their "exploits". I don't know about where you live, but nothing fills a dance floor like Grease's "Summer Nights". "…Tell me more did she put up a fight?" Has always left me thinking, "Hmmm".

    But to put your activities out on Facebook, ""

  • Skipper says:

    @Scout. So let's really nip it in the bud. Bring the hammer down on the guys at the top. Go after the banksters, the Pentagon, the Congress, the media. Send a clear message to the kids that it isn't OK. Otherwise we're like parents shooting up heroin and punishing kids for smoking dope. That's just ass backwards.

  • Talisker says:

    @Anonymouse: Yes. In UK universities there are plenty of sports clubs, societies, and the like, but no fraternities or sororities. It is hard to overstate just how weird and cult-like the Greek system looks to an outsider.

    A related tale from the UK: A few years back, some students at Oxford photographed themselves taking part in pranks. (Not the kind better described as "sexual assault", I'm talking about TP'ing hallowed statues and the like.) They posted the photos to an Oxford student group on Facebook, and were surprised when the university authorities viewed the photos and wanted to talk to them.

    The requirement for joining this particular Facebook group was to have a valid Oxford University email address. It had to be explained to the students that the university admin staff probably have such a thing. Truly, it's amazing that kids at a supposedly elite university can be so dumb.

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