so it was friday night, getting late in the evening, and i believe we were on our way to louie's, travelling down dalrymple. im driving with michele and neale in the car, and glance out of the window into the parking lot of the music building on LSU's campus. there is a four legged white figure crossing the parking lot with a guy on a bike following it. i look closer. it's a goat. "fucking shit! there is a goat over there!" we pull over to examine the situation closer. my first thought is that someone has stolen one of the goats out of the vet center, because at one point i was going to do that. it wasn't going to be a theft as much as it would be a liberation though... we get out of the car and walk towards the scene of the goat, and around that time several police come into site as they try and corral the goat. i call out to the goat and it replies. the cops tell me to stop. they encircle the goat and close in. the goat tries to ram one of them, and them makes a bolt towards chime st. the guy on the bike was travis the militant bearded vegan bicyclist, and boy is he pissed about the treatment of the goat. turns out that the goat belongs to one of the frats on campus and i guess in between keg stands it escaped to find freedom on chime st. last i saw of the goat it was cornered in a stairwell on the chime st side of the music building... one day all the goats will be free... GOAT LIBERATION NOW.
in high school i belonged to a small band of rebels known as the L.L.A, or the lobster liberation army. our mission was to free lobsters of the horrible confines of grocery store tanks and divert their life-paths away from the inevitable boiling pot. there isn't much you can do for a lobster in louisiana. the water here is far to warm for them to survive in, so the only choice we had was to painlessly euthanize them by hiding them within the realms of the frozen food section and let them comfortably fade away into that deep black ocean of death...
so did anyone see the article in the reveille last week about the young man arrested for stealing half of a sandwich on campus. he jacked someones sandwich and the person called the cops... later that day he was picked up again for banging a hammer on the ground outside of kirby smith... he just came into the store... he's a cool kid, only 18, but he's wacky... he believes the man is out to get him in the most rediculous ways possible... he was also arrested recently for calling someone who owed him $7 and telling the guy that if he didnt pay up, he would eat his eyeballs... he spent 36 hours in jail and his parents had to post a bond of $2,500 for "illegal use of a phone"... he also has several counts of possession and shoplifting under his belt, so he's splitting town... the kids these days...
Andy said at 8:34 PM 05-01-2001: God, I hate frats. I just read about a Frat that was banned for spanking this kid with bamboo sticks or something. The kid had to get a skin graft because they spanked his ass so much. That is the third frat from LSU in the last few years to be banned. The biggest one has to be the frat that got banned for making pledges fuck farm animals (including a goat). I can't believe they let this shit still go on.
Teresa said at 8:47 PM 05-01-2001: I think Evan should send the misguided lad to Josh's network of troubled boys who like to IM. This really could be your calling, Josh. Well, this or goat watching.
Gen said at 9:18 PM 05-01-2001: Frats suck. Remember when they made all the bars in BR 21 to get in because some asshole fratboy drank himself to death? I was so pissed off. Good thing it didn't last long. I wonder what greedy bar owners bribed the cops/legislature on that one...
Brian Bibbly said at 10:01 PM 05-01-2001: I love ex-louie's employees, they always talk about their affection for frat boys.....sigh, the good ol days....
evan said at 12:33 AM 05-02-2001: doh, i thought i put your name in there josh. sorry...
and andy, the other frat that got banned didnt get banned for having pledges fuck goats, they got banned b/c they had a party called a "barn party" which had a goat and some chickens for decorations. they were kicked off because A) someone was dancing with the goat and dropped it, breaking its leg and resulting in the goat being "put down", B) some partiers were involved in ripping live chickens apart by two people each grabbing a wing and pulling, and C) the point of the barn party was to invite ugly girls. the frat fellas then took several girls upstairs where they were allegedly pinned down and things such as "cow" were written on their faces...
evan said at 12:38 AM 05-02-2001: oh, and technically, that frat guy who "drank himself to death" as mary says didnt really drink himself to death. yes, he did drink a lot of alcohol, but he probably wouldnt have died if his alcohol consumption stopped when he passed out. instead, he was propped up and more alcohol (a drink called "three wise men" which i believe is thre different hard liquours mixed together and is supposed to be consumed as a shot but this frat was drinking it from pitchers)was poored down his throat after he had lost consciousness, and even after he had vomitted blood er something. blaming it on his stupidity alone is pretty narrow sighted, and is what the greek system at LSU would like everyone to do. i can't understand how the greek system is still allowed to exist on LSU's campus... oh wait... money.
Nathan d. koenig said at 9:24 AM 05-02-2001: A man who cries for the lobsters, Evan enjoys a good cry. Here's how he or anyone can cry more: 1. Play "You still believe in me" by the Beach Boys. 2. Wait until Brian Wilson says,"I wanna cry" 3. Cry, full throttle!!!...Yes sir, emo, it's really something...
josh said at 10:48 AM 05-02-2001: That's pretty horrible about the pouring the drinks down the throat of the guy after puking blood. I didn't know that.
milky [email] said at 4:01 PM 12-19-2002: That guy ingested GHB before going to Murphy's so that it would enable him to drink to a Nick Nolte-like state...GHB gets rid of your gag reflex and the body's natural reaction to vomit.
craig said at 11:12 AM 05-02-2001: Yeah, it's really hard to die of alcohol poisoning. Your body passes out in order to prevent you from imbibing toxic levels of alcohol. It is really hard to bypass that system by yourself.
I am surprised that no one was charged in that incident. I think it was known that alcohol was forced down his throat after he passed out. I don't know what the charge would be, though.
I once passed out in the middle of the street one Mardi Gras after drinking too much vodka way too fast. This came to the attention of teh police, who were going to do something about it. Luckily, my stepsister saw me and came to the rescue. I think I was forced to vomit up lots of alcohol lest I wind up in the hospital. At least I was found by friends and not put in some detox in a hospital or, worse, jail for public drunkeness.
brandonA said at 11:35 AM 05-02-2001: no one was charged b/c the only witnesses were other frat guys. here's the thing that pisses me off:
recently a black fraternity was busted for beating the crap out of one of their pledges. They were booted from campus for five years. They really messed the guy up, leaving welts, a fractured bone, etc., but he is still alive. The SAE's mentioned above however KILLED someone (or at least facilitated his death) and they only got three years off.
josh said at 1:03 PM 05-02-2001: I guess their reasoning is that they were being stupid and drinking, they weren't beating the Wynne kid. Even if their actions were incredibly dumb, they weren't intended to be harmful... While the physical hazing was.
Not saying I agree with this statement, but I'll bet that is the University's stance.
brandonA said at 3:47 PM 05-02-2001: I like to think the university is a little more economically minded than that. How much money do you think parents of SAEers contributed, and how does that compare to the other frat?
kiche said at 4:04 PM 05-02-2001: yeah, but i think the university probably wound up loosing a lot of money over that wynne kid dying to lawsuits and such that sae couldn't make up for...
Rickollection said at 4:08 PM 05-02-2001: False! The university has not paid a single penny to anyone as a result of Wynne's death . . . as opposed to MIT which paid money to the family of the student who died in a similar incident at about the same time.
Personally, I think the university should not pay any money over the death of Mr. Wynne.
kiche said at 4:54 PM 05-02-2001: no sae shouldn't pay money either. they should be disbanded. this is the way things used to work. it's the way things work for everyone else. it's the way it should work for them.
Andy said at 10:09 PM 05-02-2001: I would love to start a campaign to end frats at LSU. I am sure that would bring on lots of ass-beatings to myself. Probably wouldn't happen that fast, especially with all the ass-beatings in between.
kiche said at 11:32 PM 05-02-2001: dude, i think frats are sort of a good thing. they seperate THOSE people from the rest of us so we don't have to put up with them. see, i think the university should allow them to be completely on the level so as there's no confusion. they should be allowed to just outright say, "we drink 'til we die, we buy our freinds, and we fuck chickens."
Gen said at 11:35 PM 05-03-2001: Evan - I've read that they poored pitchers down that fratboy's throat, but I'd never heard he was unconscious and puking blood at the time. That's sick. And Josh - I don't see any difference between beating up a pledge and pooring alcohol down a pledge's throat when that pledge is already puking blood. I think you could make "intent to cause harm" in both those cases.
mary said at 11:55 PM 05-03-2001: If you banned frats and sororities, how would well-to-do Louisiana parents send their progeny off the college to meet a suitable mate and get a job without *horror* interacting socially with blacks, foreigners and poor people? They might marry one of them instead!
Ashley said at 5:41 PM 09-15-2002: The black well-to-do dont want to interact socially with whites and poor people either. Frats/sorors allow us to exercise the right to associate freely with others like ourselves.
katie said at 12:53 AM 05-04-2001: they're what we poli sci kids call a "vocal minority".
all the non-greeks should start making cute tee shirts and scribbling nonsense in chalk on the sidewalks of the quad and holding fundraisers for local charities to make ourselves look better
and so on
amy, said at 1:46 AM 05-04-2001: How the hell is Demond? He's still in Baton Rouge? No offense to anyone else still in BTR, I am in New Mexico for god's sake.
But he's an artist which means he is honor bound to go.
amy, said at 3:08 AM 05-04-2001: There is a very different attitude here. Everyone is descendant from the Spanish crown, or so they say, as they talk about your fat ass in Spanish behind you in the checkout line in the grocery store.
I feel doomed to live in the bottom ten forever. I just feel compelled towards these places. I think I have an inferiority complex and need to make sure I don't move anywhere where more than half the population is smarter than I am.
josh said at 4:13 AM 05-04-2001: "And Josh - I don't see any difference between beating up a pledge and pooring alcohol down a pledge's throat when that pledge is already puking blood"
The difference is in one case, there is definite evidence of what happened. You can't claim the guy beat his own ass with a paddle. In the other, it's harder to prove what REALLY happened, and every person involved probably had a different story.
Again, I'm just saying what the University/lawyers/etc probably said (see my original disclaimer: "Not saying I agree with this statement, but I'll bet that is the University's stance.").
Personally, I think they should have disbanded 90% of the Frats at LSU a long time ago for offenses such as these.
Teresa said at 10:18 AM 05-04-2001: Did you know that a year or two after the MIT incident (the one that stronghly resembled Ben Wynne's case), the president of the fraternity had his degree revoked. The case was still going on after he graduated and it was determined that since he was president of the fraternity he should have been responsible enough to recognize the problem and stop the behavior. The president was not the one forcing alcohol into the victim in this case. He was just the leader and the one to blame. So he graduates gets a job and MIT tells him his degree is no longer valid. He already had a fairly well to do job in Philadelphia when the decision was announced, though.
josh said at 10:51 AM 05-04-2001: That's pretty crazy. It seems like they should have taken care of it at the time. Does it really take two years to resolve something like that? You'd think MIT would handle their business on the quick.
kiche said at 2:56 PM 05-04-2001: yes, demond is still in baton rouge. i still see him every now and then.
if universities really gave a fuck about what fraternities do they would disband and ban them whenever any of this shit happened.
oh, you beat a pledge so bad he had to go to the hospital? well your frat is no longer allowed on campus. (i reallize they ban them for like 2 or 4 years; why not ban them for 10 or 15?)
same thing goes for any other activities that lead to death or the hospital or what have you.
the reason this doesn't happen is that you have a kid who's dad was in a fraternity (such as sae) they want their kid to be in that fraternity. say sae kills someone. the university tries to ban the fraternity for as short a period of time, while hopefully getting as many of the people who killed the kid out of the frat before they lose to many kids whose dad's were in sae. man, frat boys NEVER grow up...
y'know just scapegoating the frat president is probably the wave of the future.
josh said at 3:41 PM 05-04-2001: Yeah, they really aren't that big of a percentage, but 2000-3000 people in one group is a lot of people, compared to the size of other organized groups at LSU. Plus they have their own "newspaper".
mary said at 4:02 PM 05-04-2001: Which guy? One of those guys went to high school with me. He randomly stuck his hand up my skirt at a party once. He's on my "list."
amy said at 4:23 PM 05-04-2001: Frats and sororities spend lots of money on lots of crap. They support tons of businesses. Not only the obvious bars, but the kinkos, the plastic cup and marker people, the LSU paraphenalia people, the other crap paraphenalia people that write strange symbols on everything. LSU gets a cut of their dues. The stadiums must be filled. They are the college zealots. Every college needs them, and if there is no reason to love your college for intellectual reasons, a college needs the Greeks. Who would care about LSU if they were not here? Who would support Party Pics?
amy said at 4:27 PM 05-04-2001: I don't believe in banning anything. I don't believe in locking people up before they do the crime.
I think the authorities get confused sometimes with punishment. It is like they have no concept of time or reality as we know it. Something happens and it is brushed under the rug because they don't want to seem like bad parents to the rest to the next bunch.
Another source of revenue for LSU, all those applications submitted by people too intellectually debilitated to get in probably applied in the hopes of getting a frat. LSU gets to keep the 27.00.
anotherben said at 4:29 PM 05-04-2001: wayne..something or other was kingjackass of tiger weekly. his partner in the venture was charlie. charlie and mary were both at a party at my apartment one time.
anotherben said at 4:35 PM 05-04-2001: charlie works for dubya now...im sure as a result of his name coming up you will run into him in the dc metro now mary.
amy said at 4:44 PM 05-04-2001: OOPs!
I thought you were talking about Steve.
Are you sure your skirt wasn't too tight and you weren't giving him that I said no but I meant yes vibe and are you sure you slapped him hard enough, because it all just have been a misunderstanding.
Speaking of which, and I like to tell this story randomly and often out of context...
There was a guy in several of my sociology classes that firmly beleieved if his wife was passed out cold from illness, drink, whatever, it was his right as her husband to be able to roll her over and stick his penus in her whenever he wanted.
katie said at 5:59 PM 05-04-2001: is she going to be through with exams by the time you get here? or do we have to leave her alone while she polishes off Semester One?
shelly said at 6:07 PM 05-04-2001: i remember that wayne guy. i used to go to the dating game he hosted regularly at rotolos. i'd charm my way n stage then disrupt the whole proceeding. then i usually won and got free pizza and movie coupons. bendependent participated one time with one of those british guys. they kept feeling each other up instead of answerin gthe retarded questions that were supposed to be but weren't even double entendres which were given to the girl trying to choos a bachelor.
anotherben said at 6:43 PM 05-04-2001: wayne got severely pissed off at ben&gary98 when he was trying to interview us for his stinky paper. hes got the sense of humor of a dead turtle.
Teresa said at 7:10 PM 05-04-2001: Not to digress from the fascinating discussion of this Jane chick and her look or her exam schedule and the dating habits of Wayne Lewis, I am steering this back to the fraternity question.
I THINK that the national chapters of fraternities/sororities are involved in determining the length of disbandment from a university. And, I think before bashing the whole fraternity system as a whole, people should realize that the big southern schools (LSU, Ole Miss, Bama) present a COMPLETELY different image of sororities/fraternities. One that is much more focused on money and social status as well as social functions, and less on academics and service (which is what many of the organizations' original goals were).
I didn't participate in the sorority thing, I never wanted to do nor do I have any regrets about my decision. But I have known a lot of people who have and while many do fit the annoying stereotype, just as many don't. When you look at the national chapters many are respectable organizations...or maybe they just look that way on paper.
The whole system has it's flaws, no doubt. In the case of Phi Kappa Psi (the one that just got booted beating a pledge) the fraternity accepted full responsibilty of the incident, which did conveniently eliminated the University as a whole from blame. It is quite possible that it was a situation similar to that of a plea bargain. But I can't say that for certain. I do know that the University did not know how the fraternity would react until they had a meeting with LSU officials, national chapter reps, local advisers and the LSU chapter. LSU was prepared to handle the situation either way though.
I really feel bad for the pledge. He left LSU, and will probably not return to campus ever. How can he. Not only does everyone know that he had to get two (yes two, and possibly a third) skin grafts on his ass (after the dead tissue was removed, the wound was 7 inches wide), but there are several people who still view him as the reason that they can not publicly recognize their brotherhood anymore. It's so sad to me that they could possibly punish this guy even further for seeking medical help and to right a crime which had been committed.
As horrendous as the actions of this chapter were (or the SAE chapter), why should future generations not be given the opportunity to do better. If the whole organization is destroyed, how can it improve?
And, when chapters are reestablished, they are done so under a probation period. Believe it or not, LSU does have a pretty strict guidelines by which these orgs are measured. So, the University IS doing something about it. Sadly, it just takes time. But I will admit that perhaps their actions will not generate ideal results as quickly as possible.
Anyway, that's it for my rant. 4 years at of writing news about the same University and look at what I have learned.
Oh, and this is not meant to be a pro-Greek plea. I just don't think the destruction of what has the potential to benefit others solves any problems. But rampant abuse should not be tolerated either.
amy said at 7:35 PM 05-04-2001: Yeah, that is what I tried to say earlier. Or that may have been another post about something completely different bu I was alos against banning things. All for resposibility for your own fuck ups I am. Kudos for Teresa for explaining my position much better.
kiche said at 7:31 PM 05-06-2001: look, i'm not saying get rid of the greek system or punish the whole greek system for the actions of a single fraternity. i am saying punish the offending fraternity.
suspending them for two or four years for killing someone or putting them in the hospital isn't enough. by the time the suspension wears off some of the people who participated in the incident may still come back to the frat.
i don't think frats shouldn't party. i don't think frats need any other reason to exist than that they want to party. but, we've all had our wild and crazy days, so how many of your freinds did you kill?
that's pretty extreme. both of those situations. if you were involved in such a situation you would expect some sort of legal recourse and possible jail time. if this incident was part of a social function for an organization you had been a part of you would expect that organization to be disbanded. in their case they get suspended.
amy, said at 8:19 PM 05-06-2001: the miltary kills lots of its own people in times of peace.
lots of grad students commit suicide because their advisors are assholes and will never let them finish.
i agree with you though, kiche, it is too lenient, somebody is afraid, somebody is blind, somebody wishes it would all just go away.
And eventually everyone stops talking about it, except of course, the small group of non greeks.
evan [email] said at 9:49 PM 04-20-2007: haha bump
i also just remembered that the sandwich dude wrote a check when he was in the CD store and the check of course bounced and brad called the kids parents and they paid with aa credit card.
