Looking Back Stories: Why Was I Rejected by the Fraternity I Wanted?
Welcome back to my Substack tales. I return refreshed and ready to reveal how I think I learned some of my biggest lessons in life. At the age of 91, I have a lot to look back on and I realize now, more than ever before, how helpful it is to pause and look back at your life to see what you can now see. It’s been a big source of learning for me and I hope this series will offer you some ideas and solutions to problems that work for you.
One of the big lessons of my early adult life was a big disappointment to me and I should have tried to learn from it. It’s a story about the fraternity I wanted to join when I started college at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Did you ever join a fraternity or sorority, or want to? Even if you didn’t, you should find my desire to belong to certain fraternity a familiar desire to be accepted by a club or organization you felt was important to you.
Fraternities and Sororities Were Important at Illinois in 1951
When I started college, I knew I wanted to join a fraternity and I knew which one - Phi Delta Theta - because my older brother, Bill, had joined Phi Delta Theta at Northwestern University 12 years earlier. The age gap meant that Bill was almost like a second father to me. He was what we called “sophisticated” back then - he knew how to talk to girls and how to dress. He even showed me how to smoke a cigarette, never letting the burning cigarette leave an ugly brown stain on my fingers. I wanted to be just like him.
What I found out was that the University of Illinois was the Greek life capital of the United States. In 1951 it had 57 fraternities and 27 Sororities on campus, I think it was the most of any U.S. college then*. But I knew very little about any of them, simply if they invited you to join, that’s where you lived, slept, and ate meals while you were going to classes.
The way you got into a fraternity, or sorority, was to select five Greek houses you wanted to visit about a week before school classes started and then spend Rush Week visiting those houses each day. At the end of the week, each Greek house would invite the students they liked to join. If you’re wondering why fraternities and sororities all had Greek letter names, usually using three but sometimes only two Greek letters, I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t care. How else were they going to come up with a name? Greek letters sound mysterious and important, I guess.
Before Rush Week started, a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity came to visit me at my home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. His name was Bob Wold and he showed up with his girlfriend to ask me to rush his fraternity. I have no idea how he decided to solicit me, but he was a great guy and I enjoyed their visit enough to promise to include them on my list for Rush Week. I, of course, still preferred my brother’s fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. As it turned out, I was glad later that Bob Wold had got me to sign up for Pi Kappa Alpha.
Rush Week Begins with Endless Smoke-filled Conversations
I remember selecting two other fraternities to rush besides Phi Delta Theta and Pi Kappa Alpha - Sigma Chi and Beta Theta Pi. Don’t ask me why I picked those, I didn’t have reasons. They were just familiar names to me.
Rush Week for me was a cacophony of blah blah blah, smoking, and sometimes eating meals without purpose. Yes, the fraternities were supposed to consider me, and I was supposed to consider them, but how? Based on what criteria? I got to see the inside of those fraternity houses but I felt like a ping pong ball going back and forth. It was obvious that the fraternities were trying to sell themselves and I was trying to look “eligible”, whatever that meant, but we were playing a game without a rule book. After I started college, I started drawing cartoons for the Daily Illini (the university’s newspaper) and tried to capture the feeling in cartoons like the following two I drew:
My Big Moments at Phi Delta Theta
I really wanted to be invited by Phi Delta Theta to join. During Rush Week I heard that it was considered one of the “top” fraternities and I thought I had a clear advantage there. After all, with my brother being a member already at Northwestern, I was what they called a legacy, wasn’t I?
The problem for me was I didn’t feel comfortable with all these “sophisticated” college men like my brother. They didn’t seem to want to talk to me like my brother did. I felt a little out of place, especially when at lunch, I tried to pick up a pear on my salad and it shot off the table onto the floor. No one said anything but I felt them looking at me. I was embarassed.
Then there was my big piano playing opportunity that didn’t happen. On the next-to-last day, somebody said, “why don’t you play the piano, Dan?” It was my big audition in front of everyone. I moved calmly toward the grand piano ready to dazzle the crowd, but then the unexpected happened. From the other side of the room, a member of the fraternity walked up sat down at the piano. I was only three feet away when I was cut off, but what could I do? He played a popular song of the time, The World is Waiting for the Sunrise, a song I often played. He wasn’t bad, but I felt I could have added a few more hot licks than he had. But I couldn’t say anything like that—not in front of all of his fraternity brothers. It was then time to leave. I didn’t play anything.
Then, on the last day of Rush Week, I had my moment of truth. After a period of polite small talk, two Phi Delts asked me to come upstairs to talk privately. Ah ha, I thought I might now be invited to join the club. When we got upstairs, they led me into an empty room with one chair in the middle. They invited me to sit down and I did, as three more Phi Delts came into the room and closed the door. Then, they started asking me questions, politely at first, but increasingly abrupt and somewhat personal as they continued. I can’t remember the questions but I certainly remember feeling the pressure. I later learned that this kind of interview is what defense attorneys warn their clients to avoid; with police; it’s called an ambush interview. Looking back now, I think they were trying to find out if I was made of the right stuff, whatever that meant to them. I felt drained. Apparently, I didn’t have the right stuff. I was not invited to join Phi Delta Theta. I obviously had failed my final interview.
I Accept an Invitation from Pi Kappa Alpha
I had always known that Pi Kappa Alpha’s invitation would be forthcoming, and now I was glad to have it. During Rush Week trauma, this was the one house I looked forward to coming to, and really felt comfortable when I was there. It was easy to be myself there but I had just taken that feeling for granted. If it weren’t for Bob coming to visit me before school started, I may not have gotten into any fraternity on campus.
Maybe Pi Kappa Alpha wasn’t a top fraternity, but it was considered above average, and who the Hell can explain how those images are developed on campus? I found a few good friends and brought my friend from high school, Don Sodaro, into this fraternity. Overall, I’d say it was a damned good fraternity to belong to. I’m glad it turned out the way it did.
Dan’s Advice to His Earlier Self
At the time it all happened, I don’t think I really learned much from my ego puncture, and I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to learn from it. Learning how and when to learn was something I had to figure out later. I now believe it’s very important to always try to figure out the “why” of any failure, even when it’s still hurting. As learning builds, looking back can be very rich source of new understanding of yourself and the world you live in.
If I could now travel back in time, keeping all of what I have learned since, here’s what I’d probably say to my younger self back in 1951 about getting rejected by the Phi Delts. “Dan, you have to ask yourself a couple of questions now. First, why did those men hotbox you, that’s the term fraternities use for such practices, and second, why did they decide you didn’t meet their requirements? I’ll give you my answers to both questions if you’re able to be tough-honest with yourself.”
I’d then provide my opinions more or less as follows:
Q1. Yes, they hotboxed you because you were a legacy. In other words, they wanted to show your brother respect, not you. They had to feel they had made every effort to test you in ways important to them.
Q2. You felt uncomfortable because they were more sophisticated and confident than you. You needed more encounters with the adult world to develop your own confidence. You just weren’t ready at the time.
Finally, consider how different life at Phi Delta Theta might have been if you didn’t find the kind of friends you did find at Pi Kappa Alpha. Think of all the accomplishments you had living there. Maybe, playing the piano at the Phi Delt house might have won you an invitation, but what about living there? Feel good about what really happened. It’s another reason to call yourself, Lucky Dan.
*My Fact-checking promise - I’m Googling items to back up my memory of long-ago events. If I’m still not sure of my facts, I’ll tell you.