American Fraternity Man

by Nathan Holic

  And yes, everyone around me had a story. Everyone around me sparkled with passion. They were born ready for this.

  “Just what we need, right?” said the young man beside me, Southwestern cattle rancher’s accent layering the words with down-home joviality.

  I jumped, didn’t realize he was there.

  He looked familiar: the military-sharp blonde crewcut, the thick eyebrows and fist-sized Adam’s apple. Maybe I’d met him already? Some other conference? Some other event? But he didn’t seem to recognize me, seemed instead like he was the sort who was accustomed to striking up conversations with strangers, making them feel like they’d already been chatting for an hour. “Our first meeting is in an auditorium,” he said, pointing at the doors. “We drive all weekend, and then we sit our asses right back down.” He extended his hand so we could shake. “Brock London. From Central Texas University.” And he had the sort of knuckle-cracking handshake that I should have expected from someone built like a tractor. I tried to match its energy.

  “I’m Charles!” I said. “Edison University! Nice to meet you!”

  “Whew. No need to shout, buddy,” Brock said. “I’m right here.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just…loud. All around us.”

  “No biggie. Have a long drive?”

  “Eighteen hours. All the way from Fort Myers, Florida.”

  “About the same for me. Guess we’d better get used to it. Part of the job.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Part of our job.” And it felt good to say this, the first moment that morning that hadn’t felt forced, because yes, this is what I did have in common with all the graduates gathered there: we came from everywhere. Florida and Texas, California and New York, Chicago and Seattle, each of us from different fraternities, different sororities—there are 29 national fraternities and sororities headquartered in Indianapolis, most of them represented in that gravel parking lot (“I’m with Zeta Tau Alpha sorority,” one girl was saying in front of me, while behind me another said “Heather, from Alpha Xi Delta,” and there were ten more introductions happening all around me, Theta Chi and Delta Delta Delta and Sigma Nu. When a name wasn’t paired with an alma mater, it was paired with Greek letters.). Hundreds of gallons of gas for all of us to get there, hundreds of hours driving in our Altimas and Explorers and Corollas, some cars built for the travel and others in the lot clearly winded from the effort. Hundreds of gas station stops, bags of Cheetos and Chex Mix and 44-ounce Diet Cokes; dozens of hotel stays, bad coffee in styrofoam cups before hitting the road. We’d left behind vastly different campuses: Albright College, West Virginia Tech, LSU, Kansas. We’d left behind vastly different chapter houses, some of them four-bedroom homes in neighborhoods outside campus, some of them four-story mansions with eighty beds, boardrooms, libraries. We’d left behind friends, girlfriends/ boyfriends, fiancés. Or, like Jenn back at EU, someone we were hoping would become our fiancé if we could get through this year. We’d turned down offers for better jobs, better money. (Well. Not me. But most of them.). We’d argued and argued with our parents, with our professors, with everyone who told us that it was a foolish choice to spend the next full year employed by a national fraternity or sorority.

  But we knew that we’d live from our cars, from airplanes, from suitcases, from the Starbucks and Panera cafes at which we’d soon type our reports, and we knew that our paychecks would be tight, that we were here together in a collective orientation because each national fraternity and sorority is a not-for-profit that operates from student dues, and a group orientation saves money, and as our web sites and brochures tout, “No matter the letter, we’re all Greek together!” We knew it. We’d all signed up for this because…well, because we care about something greater than a “pay-off.”

  “I packed lots of CDs,” I said. “But I should have subscribed to XM.”

  “Sure. Good for the long drives,” Brock said. “So what’s your letters, chief?”

  “Nu Kappa Epsilon,” I said. “I’m a Nike.”

  “Hey hey!” He slapped my back with one hard-as-a-board hand, like he was not a stranger but instead my older brother, and this rough-house exchange was an established part of our relationship. I fell forward a few steps. “Me too! Looks like we’re gonna be working together!”

  Brock London: and yes, I knew the name sounded familiar. There were dozens of consultants all around, but even on my first day of training I knew that I was one of just three new consultants hired by Nu Kappa Epsilon. And yes, I remembered the name Brock London. He’d already been hired before I was even interviewed.

  “So,” he said. Looked around, lowered his voice. “You know why we’re here?”

  “Why we’re here? Like, the job responsibilities?”

  “No, no,” Brock said. “Heh. I’m a big dumb Texas boy, but I’m not that dense. I know why I’m here.” And he smiled wide and slapped me on the back again, but this time I braced myself and didn’t stumble. “I meant, why are we here? The auditorium?”

  I stood straight, grimacing. “You didn’t get a copy of the agenda?”

  “Don’t think so. I just knew that training starts today at 8 AM.”

  “And you got here early?”

  “First day, buddy. Don’t check my email too much, but I do know that you gotta make a solid first impression. You think you’d be the only one to show up early?”

  “I guess not.” But I pulled a sheet of paper from my leather portfolio, handed it to him. My first victory: fully prepared for the first day’s training sessions. “Here you go. I try to print out all of my appointments. I think I have internet on my phone, but it costs an arm and leg, and it takes forever.”

  “Heh,” Brock said. “We’ll get along just fine, you and me. I don’t even know how to send a text message. I just go with the flow.” He read from the print-out: “‘Consultant Orientation, 8 AM. The Mission of Greek Life, with W. LaFaber – H. M. Auditorium.’ Well, damn. Walter’s leading this session?” And now Brock looked all around, as if Walter LaFaber had perhaps materialized in the parking lot. “Hell of a start to the day! You’ve met him, right?”

  “I have. During my interview.”

  And yes, if it is indeed a corporate empire of national fraternities and sororities there in Indianapolis, Walter LaFaber is not just my supervisor at NKE…he is at the forefront of the entire empire. The promise of what fraternity life could and should be.

  With only a few minutes remaining before the start of the orientation, I said to Brock, “So what’s your story? Why’d you take the job?”

  “You might never heard of me,” he said, running his hand over his buzzcut, “but you know why I’m here.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “You heard the name Ashton Simon, I bet.”

  Ashton Simon. And it dawned on me that I shouldn’t have asked for his story.

  Because every fraternity man in the last decade knows the story of Ashton Simon. “The Ashton Simon Tragedy” had not just made headlines, but had become the sort of cautionary tale preached about at national conferences and in fraternity manuals. It had brought down an entire national fraternity. Everyone knew the name and the basic details, but now I was going to hear the full story.

  This is what Brock told me:

  During his freshman year at Central Texas University, a private school of about 2,500 outside of Fort Worth, Brock and his childhood best friend Ashton Simon decided to pledge different fraternities. They’d been friends their whole lives, so they figured: why not branch out, meet new people? Brock chose Nu Kappa Epsilon. “Had some problems from the start,” he told me. “Always been more of a leader than a follower,” and the chapter hazed without abandon, subjected the pledges to all sorts of subservient activities. “Had to spend a night pretending to be a coffee table,” he said. “Most humiliating night of my life.” Ashton, though, chose a fraternity called Beta Beta Alpha and had a different experience entirely. Immersed himself in the chapter during this first
semester, played intramural football, even became Pledge Class President. Never hazed, not once. Always bragged that this was fraternity the way it was supposed to be. But at the very pinnacle of the semester, just as all was going so well for him, Ashton was forced by an older brother to drink a full bottle of cheap vodka after a Big Brother-Little Brother ceremony, and afterward passed out. Asphyxiated on his own vomit.

  And Brock stood tall as he told the story, eyes locked on mine, such gravity that I felt as if my body was liquefying and sinking into the Earth.

  Without a pause or stutter, Brock told me that he’d fallen into a deep depression, had withdrawn from his classes, left campus. The two had known each other since preschool, had played Little League together. JV football. Varsity lettermen, Powder Puff cheerleaders. How could something like this have happened?

  So when Brock returned to campus the following semester, he was a man on a mission: Beta Beta Alpha National Fraternity had crumbled from its legal battle, was now defunct, but Brock re-pledged Nu Kappa Epsilon and took a leadership role, rebelling against brothers when they attempted to haze him, tackling and pinning down the soft, spoiled Dallas and Houston brats when they tried to drive drunk after parties, counseling other pledges who were coping with peer pressure and alcoholism in their first year in college. By his junior year, he was president, had expelled the chapter troublemakers, and had convinced the administration and the students at Central Texas to ban alcohol in student housing; he even traveled Texas on a lecture tour with several anti-hazing and anti-binge-drinking presenters for CampuSpeak. Appeared on morning talk shows. Became a celebrity and advocate for values-based campus organizations. “That’s how I met Walter LaFaber. He had me scouted for a long time, offered me the job after a speech I gave at Texas A&M.”

  Yes, that’s Brock London. The sort of consultant who never had to change a thing about himself. Born for this.

  “Start our summer training with a speech from Walter LaFaber,” Brock said after finishing his story, face beaming with born-again intensity. “Gonna be good. Yessir.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m excited.”

  “Are you?” Brock asked, and his eyes suddenly darkened with the same skepticism that I’d seen in Jeanna-from-Bowling-Green’s eyes. Buzz cut seeming somehow sharper, cheeks losing their jolly roundness and turning hard as elbows. And I thought that he might ask me if I had a similar story, something that compares, something dramatic and important. And if not, why the hell was I even there?

  “Yes,” I said to Brock. “Yes, of course.”

  “Show the excitement, then, buddy!” he said and slapped my back one more time, and this time I did fall forward again, knocked into someone in a suit who turned and scoffed as if I’d charged forward like a linebacker and had intentionally tried to tackle him. He brushed the back of his jacket even though it was clean and still wrinkle-free. I backed away, mouthed an apology, and meanwhile Brock was saying, “What a morning, what a morning. I’m ready to save the world, you better believe it. Let’s get it on!”

  Around us, the crowd was growing. Gravel crunching as cars parked. Doors opening, shutting. More shirts, more ties, more pantsuits and dresses, more portfolio notebooks, more introductions and handshakes and names paired with alma maters and Greek letters, more stories of leadership development and tough choices as the clock ticked closer to the start of the consultant orientation, more smiles that seemed more natural and genuine than mine, the purest of motives for every one of them because they were not hiding anything, no, they’d always been what I was seeing in front of me, their profiles always clean, lives always structured and disciplined and honest and good-hearted, and I straightened my tie again and hoped that no one was staring at me, seeing through me.

  *

  Finally, as if in fulfillment of Brock’s let’s-get-it-on declaration, the doors of the Henderson Memorial Auditorium were unlocked from the inside, and all of us—all of the freshly hired consultants on our first day of training—were ushered into the auditorium, packed together like kids at a church camp ready to sing and praise the Lord.

  We shuffled together toward the front row, knees bumping against seats as we side-walked down the tiny row. Beside me, Brock held his too-short tie against his shirt as he walked, like he was afraid that it might fall off if it kept swinging. But we barely had time to find a seat before the speakers at the front of the auditorium cackled from microphone feedback and Walter LaFaber burst onto stage, one clenched fist held out before him like a head football coach who has just watched his team execute a critical scoring drive. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he yelled, “we are on a mission!”

  We all stopped, asses still halfway out of our seats, the same awkward posture one might assume when a pastor finishes a prayer and the congregation opens its eyes and starts to re-settle…only to be forced back up when the pastor launches ahead with a new hymn.

  “We have a mission,” LaFaber said, “and that’s what they don’t understand out there.” He motioned with one massive arm, pointing at the world outside the doors of this building. “We are creating positive change in the lives of young men and women all across the country. Do you believe it?”

  We hovered, knees still bent, and I looked left, looked right to see if anyone else had sat down, if we were supposed to. But everyone else was still staring straight ahead.

  “No, I don’t think I need this,” Walter LaFaber said, regarding the microphone in his hand as if it was an expended cigarette. “You all are going to be my voice this morning.” And he placed the microphone back onto the podium, projected louder: “We are creating positive change. Do you believe it?”

  And again, after LaFaber repeated his question, I took tentative glances at the graduates to my left and right. Beside me, Brock was nodding emphatically and clenching his fists in excitement, so when I turned my attention back to the stage, back to LaFaber, I nodded also and mouthed the word “yes.” Brock said, “I believe!” and so I said those words, too.

  “I want to really hear it,” LaFaber said. “Do you believe in what you are doing?”

  “I believe it!” Brock said, his blue eyes so clear that I could almost see the heroic consultant fantasies he was imagining. And there were other similar rumblings, too—one of the girls at the end of the row was cheerleader-clapping as she shouted, one clap for each syllable—but we still sounded disconnected.

  “I don’t know if I’m feeling you guys yet,” LaFaber said, smiling. “But we’ll work on it, we’ll work on it. We’ve got all morning. Heck, we’ve got all summer.”

  He returned to the podium, flipped through a stack of notes.

  LaFaber, who was once again pacing and summoning his energy, is not just the Director of Chapter Operations at Nu Kappa Epsilon National Fraternity Headquarters, but is a tremendous draw as a motivational speaker (even for a Monday morning group orientation in Indianapolis): though the front rows were occupied only by the newly hired consultants, the auditorium behind us appeared to be filling with the most important faces in all of fraternity and sorority life, twenty or thirty Greek Life staffers who’d crowded into the room to hear LaFaber and to meet this year’s class of consultants, forty of them, fifty: there were National Fraternity CEOs back there, Foundation presidents, Alumni Board directors, rows upon rows filled with gray-haired men of sixty, their lapels graced with side-by-side Lambda Chi Alpha and American flag pins; there were rows of sorority administrators and volunteers, women with short dark hair and perfect ladylike posture; there were bespectacled motivational speakers, former consultants from years past who now—like LaFaber—were making commendable salaries for weekend speaking engagements, and they had their sleeves rolled up as if they’d just come from a stage; there were sorority and fraternity volunteers of every age, interns from DePauw or IUPUI younger than me, next to men and women so old that they likely remembered a time before this auditorium was built, before there even was a National Fraternity Row of headquarters buildings in Indianapolis.

/>   “You know, the media loves to feast on Greek Life,” LaFaber said, no longer smiling, but still walking back and forth across the stage slowly, his eyes meeting each of ours. He has a long and perfectly straight scar descending from his widow’s peak, an old football injury that every magazine profile about his life seems to explore in-depth, as if the hard hit made him a prophet or gave him superhuman powers; when the light strikes this scar dead-on, as it did in this moment, his entire face glows, becomes electric. “Newspapers are always quick to point out the bad stuff,” he said. “It’s sexier, sells more copies when they find a way to make fraternity guys into a collection of binge drinkers and womanizers, or when they can find a story that makes our sorority women seem as if they all have eating disorders, or they’re all—pardon the language—a bunch of sluts. Sorostitutes. These are the words we hear.”

  I nodded politely—fraternity stereotype—but beside me Brock’s face had gone red, as though he was not just intense but angry. I held my breath and clenched my teeth, wondered what it would take to look the same way, vein popping out on my forehead.

  “Hell, just google the word ‘fraternity’ and see what happens,” LaFaber said, and he held the stack of papers high in front of him. “Here are three of the top results that came up this morning: ‘Freshman student stuffed into freezer for three hours,’ ‘Two students forced to wear women’s panties,’ ‘Orlando youth loses nose in freak hazing accident.’”

  “Disgusting,” Brock said. “Absolutely disgusting, some of these punks.”

  “And that’s just the headlines!” LaFaber shouted to the room. “What about the YouTube videos of drunk men performing explicit dances on-stage to the song ‘My Dingaling?’ During university talent shows! Or the hundreds of thousands of photos from Facebook, from blog sites, photos of jell-o shots, photos of ‘Sexy CEOs and Secretaries’ parties, photos of men hanging from the windows and balconies of their houses?”