The summer after I graduated, I briefly lived with three boys in a row house on Capitol Hill. The house itself was beautiful and old and in the most perfect location, given that I was a mere five-minute walk from my internship at the Supreme Court. The guys I lived with were friends of friends and they all worked as bartenders, and seeing as how I only needed a place to stay for the duration of my summer internship, the arrangement seemed perfect. While I’ll always cherish the memories I have from that summer, I will be the first one to say this: Living with boys sucks.
Even though my three roommates were all a few years older than me and worked at night and slept during the day (meaning I oftentimes had the house to myself during all of my waking hours) it wasn’t all great. They were messy, they were loud, and they were just really fucking gross. They were, after all, boys. When I moved out of this house and down to Florida to begin a job that actually paid, I decided then and there that save for a significant other and future children, I would never again live with a boy.
This is why I am so confused/baffled/at a loss for words as to why girls would ever, ever, ever in their right mind want to live in a fraternity house. Hell, even my SORORITY house could get kind of gross at times. Want to know why? Because of all of the boyfriends and one-night stands who would sleep over and fuck shit up the next morning. Boys are gross. They just are. So why the hell is Wesleyan trying to make fraternities coed? Seriously? WHY?
I’ll back up a bit.
Earlier this year, Wesleyan decided that in the next three years, all fraternities must become coed. Apparently, the administration came to this decision after fraternities received bad publicity — including a few allegations of sexual assault. Because what better way to combat alleged sexual assault than to force your female students to live with said assaulters? Obviously, the whole plan is just disastrous. If these guys really are going around assaulting women, then the response should be to expel and prosecute them, not force them to open up their doors to girls. If these guys are not going around assaulting women, then simply leave them the fuck be. Not EVERYTHING needs to be viewed as sexist. Just because fraternities don’t bid women, it doesn’t mean they hate them — it just means that the organization is for men only. You know, in the same way that sororities are only for women. That’s just how it goes.
Anyway, the Wesleyan chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon is pissed (for obvious reasons). Not only is Wesleyan basically going around saying they’re all a bunch of rapists, but it’s also saying that on top of that, fraternities now have to open up their doors — and rituals — to vagina holders. Pretty fucked, right? The good news is that DKE is now suing the shit out of Wesleyan, claiming that the fraternity is being discriminated against simply because they are men. As Terence Durkin, the president of DKE, stated:
“Wesleyan embraces every other person’s right to live together based on gender, race, creed or sexual affiliation, but with the coeducation mandate in the fall this seems to not apply to us… Discrimination is wrong no matter what form it takes, and the university has unfairly singled us out in order to achieve their brand of ‘diversity.’”
Will the guys be successful? Who knows. With everything being so politically correct these days, I frequently wonder if our future kids will look at fraternities and sororities in the way we look at ancient Greece: simply a thing of the past. If the case is successful for the men of DKE, this will be a win for Greeks everywhere. Once and for all, maybe the outsiders will finally understand that joining a sorority or a fraternity is a not right. It is a privilege..
[via CBS Connecticut]
Image via Wesleyan