April 5, 2002 - StudentCAMP

LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth

Student CAMP: Geek and Greek

To the happiness of those readers who are my girlfriend and parents, I am back in the United States. France was perpetually amusing, but I have to say that it's nice to be back in this wonderfully flawed country. Being greeted by pictures of John Ashcroft and George W. Bush at the gates of Philadelphia was something I could have done without, but at least I didn't get hassled by customs, whose new motto seems to be "you can do what you like as long as you are white." (For those of you who are planning to travel in the near future, you too can play the racial profiling game and figure out well in advance who airport security will pull over. It's jolly fun!) This quarter is bringing a lot of changes in my life, the first being that I am not actually taking classes. I am instead a full time employee at one of the school libraries. I have learned more about the workings of academia in two weeks at Feldburg than I did my entire freshman year, and it all has to do with how work is delegated and just how many steps it takes to finish said work.

To make sense of it all you have to understand that the time of professors is the most valuable time in the world. One can only wonder how they can tear themselves away from valuable research to do things like comb their hair in the morning. To assist them with their work (and possibly their hair combingone never knows about these things) many professors have assistants. The professor will look up articles or look at a table of contents to a journal that the library has provided for them and then note necessary ones. This will then be handed to the assistant, who will e-mail the library. The e-mail will, after being handed to about two other people, be passed on to me. I have become the "Spot"I play fetch for the professors, pulling out, locating online, or otherwise obtaining copies of everything that they should desire. It's very restfulthere's something about working with things called The Journal of Inverse and Ill-Posed Problems and The Journal of Irreproducible Results that makes existence all the more bearable. (It also helps me forget about my perpetual speculation on how photocopiers might cause all sorts of dire illnesses.)

I have discovered that as far as any profession can be categorized, you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger bunch of left-wing queer-minded anarchists than librarians. Foolish me had visions of meek women in horn rims, and the reality is a bit like learning that one's grandmother has obscene tattoos. Perhaps you secretly expected it, but the reality is still a jolt. But upon reflection, why wouldn't they be? Libraries are the last bastions of free information for public distribution, and their fights over censorship and the first amendment are legendary. Consider librarians, even the blue-haired ones that used to scare you as a young child, as the freedom fighters who provide gay romance novels to the closeted children of fundamentalists. It's a noble profession.

The second change in my life is that I am living in a frat house. It goes without saying that my mother is appalled. The film Animal House was based on my college, although I'm not in that particular frat. I'm in a co-ed that is as open-minded as a group of Unitarians, so life is homophobia-free if a bit lacking in hygiene. This makes it an oddity among Greek housesmost of them attract only those of a closeted variety who then stay that way for the sake of conformity. There is uncomfortable hostility surrounding closeted Greeks that is often directed towards those who are outmany times an openly gay person will date someone who refuses to admit that they are dating, which generally nails the coffin before they even get around to kissing. And when alcohol grants bravery, the action is excused by blaming the two beers. It's not healthy by any stretch, and the out vs. closeted camps dance around each other in hopes that maybe yet another panel discussion will change campus and make the world a better place.

The essential question is really "what defines a member of (pick a letter) house?" Well, they are members of said house, but there's more to it. They all have a unifying characteristic. If, as in the case of many houses, the characteristic is "everyone is about the same" then closets become bigger than the sticky-floored basements. (And make no mistake about the extent of being the samemost Greek houses are impressively monoracial.) The only solution that comes to mind is to start gay and lesbian Greek houses whose letters make obscene phrases and infiltrate the status quo. A few "Zeta Eta Pi" houses would surely change colleges across America.

There are actually several national gay and lesbian Greek organizations. They have chapters in colleges all over the country and have met with relative success. The question becomes, then, if gay frats are just another manifestation of everyone being the same. The Big Rainbow Frat may serve those legions of closeted sorority girls by virtue of existing, but its presence on campus will not necessarily make other houses straight, nor will it improve homophobia in those places. Change must therefore come from within these organizationsone can only hope that the right combination of bravery and tolerance of individual members can serve as a catalyst for the house at large.

And then we can talk about the real problem in frat houses, which is just how to clean those damn floors.

Kristen Minor, a member of the class of 2004 at Dartmouth College, is researching the effect of constant photocopier exposure on mental health. She can be reached at kristen@youth-guard.org.

LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 12, No. 03, April 5, 2002.