01/22/2026
The Road to Omicron.
In spite of the fact that my two older brothers were both Greek (Sigma Nu, Theta Chi) when I walked on to campus, I regarded the whole Greek system as outdated, elitist, insular, expensive and more than a bit racist. Frats were a relic of a time when only white, affluent suburban boys “like us” joined fraternities.
Aside from white, I was none of the above, no golden retriever, no station wagon, mom didn’t vacuum in pearls and dad didn’t go to work with a briefcase.
The chip on my shoulder might have had something to do what that. Between the time my great grandfather got off the boat in 1889, my brothers and I were the first generation to go to college. Prior to that, whole generations of my family had worked in the mill in a Victorian smokestack town outside of Philadelphia. My Dad graduated from high school. His Dad left school in the 6th grade.
I was an off campus scholarship student working 40+ hours, nights and weekends. There were no weekends; no Summer, Spring or Christmas breaks. Breaks were my opportunity to pick up more hours, since I was paying for college myself. Plus I was REALLY good at what I did, and still do, sales.
But I had already fallen for all of the stereotypes.
I didn't have to "pay for my friends," because as a local, I already had an off-campus social life that didn't revolve around amateur-hour drunks in Clifton bars. Where I came from, you learned “how to drink like a man” in high school, and the bars that would serve me were local dives. Burgundy’s was for pu**ys.
I also wasn’t one of those ride-or-die brawlers. While there’s always room for late night drunken bro’y behavior, "fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life.”
I didn't come to UC to party; I came to study at one of the 10 best colleges in the nation that offered my degree.
The admission process for my college, CCM, is brutal. Beyond test scores and class rank, there’s an audition, an interview, an essay, and two letters of reference from your music teacher(s)…because by the time they get to college, most of them have been at this since they were seven.
The acceptance rate is 24% and our completion are all private schools. CCM really is one of the “big boys” in spite of being a public school in one of the fly-over states.
When I got in, my parents choked because as public high school graduates, who went into the service, or got married right after graduation, they knew that a degree, no matter what in, was my ticket to a future that didn’t involve a name tag, a union, hair net or time clock. And just like my dad used his VA benefits to keep from getting sucked into the gravitational pull of the mill, I was going to use my degree to go father.
CCM is the college with the highest su***de rate on campus, a grim statistic. It’s like a snow globe from the outside, where talent, above all, is valued and respected. And when you shake it, everything looks pretty.
But a Conservatory degree is a ruthless pressure cooker that will make your soul leave your body. It's where they shoot the wounded, because it’s great training for a career in performing arts.
Differential Equations may bring you to tears, but five credit hour Music Theory at 7:30 will bring you to your knees. and make you doubt every decision that led you here. There’s a whole lot of crying that goes on behind the scenes at CCM, and the egos of those involved just cranks everything up a notch.
If we didn't have to fulfill our A&S requirements, we'd never leave Emery Hall. CCM even has its own separate libraries nobody knows about, The Gorno and the Ziv are full floor in Blegen, which conveniently backs right up to CCM.
Aside from classes in McMick or Zimmer, our leashes rarely extended beyond 100 yards from the front door to Emery. You could literally go all 4 years and not get to know anybody well outside of CCM besides your roommate.
So all I did was work and go to class, because my scholarship required a 3.5 to keep it. I was friendly, but not friends, with anyone outside of my degree, besides the people I worked with “in the real world.”
I had becomes yet another of the hot-house flowers that CCM cultivates; super smart, highly competitive, achievement-oriented, but not a lot of social skills.
Because till then, all I ever had to do to get through life was “be talented.”
While I was doing well, I had this nagging feeling that my expectations were not being met by my experience.
I wasn’t looking for the mythical “college experience” they talk about in glossy admission catalogues. To me that said dorms, frats, football games, beer bongs, and doing your best to get laid.
I lived off campus, Nippert was literally crumbling, cheap beer is swill, and I already had a full-time girlfriend. I didn’t participate in campus activities, go to games, eat lunch at McDonald’s or play euchre over beers in the Rhine Room.
I didn’t even know UC had a bowling ally till after I graduated.
I was absolutely not fraternity material.
I was instead every Rush Chairman’s worst nightmare.
As one of my fraternity brothers later told me “you were the very worst kind of the very best kind of student.”
One day my advisor said "you need to get out of the house more kid, get a life, seriously. I see you in the halls way too much and you're totally overthinking this. You’re missing out on the rest of the college experience. You’re friendly, well spoken, outgoing, with good grades and actual social skills. So get out there, what you’re interested in is within your reach. Plus, you'd be a great representative of CCM, since those nerds on the 4th floor (practice rooms) can barely walk and chew gum at the same time without a metronome. Have you thought about joining a campus activity like Student Government or an Orientation?"
Orientation tries to get at least one student from each of the colleges, but DAAP (who also never leave the building) and CCM were prize pigs. Before me, it had been 7 years since they had a CCM student, and she was Music Ed, one of the less “intense” majors.
I applied and Orientation was more than happy to have me. It meant giving up one of my jobs during peak season, but I figured it was just a month.
For which I got “3 hots a cot,” You lived in the dorms for free, and they fed you (dorm food) 3 times a day. The bathrooms in Calhoun were deplorable, but it all came with the “Willy Wonka Golden Ticket;” a campus-drive pass.
My year, of the thirteen students selected, nine of them were Greeks. A lot of them already knew each other, were officers in their houses, and had significant campus profiles.
None of which kept me from cracking on them at any opportunity.
I was kind of a dick about the whole thing.
Clearly I had an “attitude problem,” which, to me, felt fully justified. Tri-Delt shoelaces? $40 sweatshirts? Seriously? What the f**k was a lavaliere, and why do you brothers tie you to a tree if you pinned your sorority girlfriend? In a tie? It all seem archaic and reductive, reeking of Sputnik, Animal house, and tail fins.
But since we were constantly on top of each other we had to work as a team to usher 1,200 freshmen, and their portents, through orientation. It was like Noah’s Ark, but with college-colored name tags.
I may not be the most observant man, but I was not entirely unaware. I started to realize we had more in common than I thought. They were smart, friendly, outgoing and achievement-oriented students just like me.
But more than anything, they were inclusive. They took my bu****it in stride, because it wasn’t the first or last time they’d heard it.
Just by listening to them chat about alien concepts like rush parties, cross cutting, black balling, legacies, and midnight rush, community service projects, social events and an emphasis on grades, I gained an insight I would never have gotten otherwise. The "big picture" idea interested me.
I realized I needed to get that stick out of my ass and look past my own bias. “Instead of slamming it” a Chi-O said “why not just go through rush, just to check it out? You’re a good guy, with good grades, you’d fit right in.”
Subtle suggestions were made. “My boyfriend is a Phi Delt” or “look for me at Sig Ep rush” and “maybe check out some of the smaller houses, like Fiji, Phi Tau or Lambda Chi, they’d be more than happy to have you.”
While not exactly flattering, it was one more waypoint on my fraternity rush GPS.
Since I was both a Sigma Nu and Theta Chi legacy, they suggested I start there.
And so I did.
Going through rush parties at big houses felt like a cattle-call of judgment, something I didn’t cotton to. I wasn’t looking for validation from some frat boy from the suburbs whose daddy owns a string of car dealerships.
The idea of paying dues so I could swallow goldfish or push a peanut across the carpet with my nose, disguised as "tradition" by guys who were supposed to be my “brothers,” felt like humiliation and tasted like hypocrisy.
And the idea of someone shining a flashlight in my face in the middle of the night during Hell Week so I could stand in the dining room in my boxers and recite the Greek alphabet was a full stop no.
If I wanted to get treated like s**t, I could just pick a fight with my girlfriend*
So after two rounds of the bathing-suit portion of the fraternity beauty contest, I was done.
I was clearly a washout at the big houses, which I expected, but was still disappointed. I attribute that to the fact that I was a virtual alien; we had nothing in common. When I told them I was in CCM, they either looked at me like I was television, or expected me to be gay because all they knew about CCM was musical theater.
I didn't feel like I belonged in a small chapter where you were expected to live in-houise. It felt like the dorms, but with more beer and less supervision.
Well, I’d given it a shot, and now I have more important things to do, so we’re done here.
But after Fall Rush was over, I saw an ad in the News Wreck that some house called Phi Kappa Theta was having “late rush.”
The only thing I knew about them was that they had a giant house way off campus that looked like a barn attached to a Motel 6.
I didn’t have anything to do Wednesday night, so what the hell, it was a short walk for free food.
The moment I walked into that house I knew this was where I was supposed to be. I immediately realized that PKT wasn’t one of “those houses” dogged by bad behavior and chained to outdated traditions. I wasn’t going to have to shape-shift to fit in.
Nice guys, mostly business or engineering wonks. No pretense, no attitude, no judgment, with one of the highest GPA on campus. I noticed the brothers all seemed to be nice Catholic boys from single-sex schools, which I thought odd, till I learned PKT was a "Catholic fraternity"
While not particularly skilled at “marketing,” we had conversations like “CCM, wow, what’s that like?” or “2 jobs? And I thought co-op was rough.”
These were not slick sales pitches, meant to pack the house with so-so dues-paying brothers just for the money. They actually seemed interested in what I could bring to chapter, which was more than I thought.
This came as a bit of a surprise to me, after being dragged by the other houses.
I felt valued. Not just for my talent, but for the nice guy I did my best to hide.
What sealed the deal for me was the chapter president, Jim Tanner, who became my Big. Normally they don’t give littles to seniors, so I was surprised when I matched with him
He was, and still is, a supportive, funny, organized, patient, kind, laid-back leader, He seemed honestly interested in me as both a student as well as potential brother.
I accepted my bid on the spot, and due to a lot of factors, was initiated on Saturday.
This conveniently eliminated the possibility of digesting live goldfish, or being blindfolded, with my pants down and my crank tied to a brick I was supposed to throw off the roof as a “sign of my brotherhood” at midnight in the middle of Hell Week. At Phi Kap, you needed to meet the brothers, learn the book and occasionally rake leaves. Proving who's boss wasn't a priority.
So when I called one of my Orientation buddies he went off on me. “ I KNEW IT! I FU***NG KNEW IT! And those guys are super super nice, you’re going to fit right in. This is how it all starts buddy.”
And so it did.
Bulls**tting in Jim’s room one day, on a couch right out of a 1970's p**n, he looked me directly in the eye, but in an off-hand way, like the thought had dust occured to him. "You’re going to run this place one day. We need guys like you. You need to run for office, how about Rush Chair?”
And so I did. A series of positions led to Chapter President, and later Advisor.
I could absolutely not have landed farther away from where I started, with a compass and a map.
I fit none of the stereotypes, yet fit in at Phi Kap.
I went from cynical to involved. I realized I could run for Homecoming, hold down two jobs, manage a “difficult” relationship, make grades and still have fun. I could run Budget Board, write for the News Wreck and still graduate summa. I could get tapped for Mortar Board, ODK and Who’s Who precisely because I’d felt empowered by my Phi Kap achievements to reach higher.
At Phi Kap I learned how to set goals and achieve them.
How to build consensus.
I learned how to motivate without being bossy.
How to be supportive without telling people how to live their lives. How to read a spreadsheet and monitor a budget.
How to hold people accountable without being a tyrant, or a Dad.
How to resolve conflict.
How to measure success and deal with failure.
How to deal with people you need to respect you, without caving.
While my career path hasn’t been exactly linear, every time I make a sales pitch, manage a team, give a speech, mentor an employee, or put my thoughts into concise language, Phi Kap was the place I began experimenting and making mistakes. My skills didn’t start there, they came together there.
But the best part of everything is that an engineering dorm rat that I bid as Rush Chair became my roommate and best friend.
One of my quirks is that I pin my Little Brother’s badge to the inside of my suit when I go to job interviews. Because as I sit in the waiting room in a shirt so starched I can barely turn my head and shoes so shiny they can be seen from space, waiting for my name to be called, I can still hear him saying “you got this.”
Let’s everyone reading this do our best to make those same opportunities, experiences and memories available to the next generation of college men.
And yeah, that’s my class ring.
Thanks for coming, don’t forget to tip your waitress on the way out.
* I rag a lot on a very nice woman who deserved better, but we are still friends
