Welcome to The Phoenix’s weekly digest. Every week during the quarter, you can expect our writers’ takes on some campus happenings.

This week, Calvin Swedene opines on the role of fraternities at the University.

When I wander around campus, it always makes me smile seeing holiday decorations, broken tables, and crumpled cans in the yard of a house on an otherwise quotidian street. It’s a small glimpse of hope—signs that someone here is having fun in the way I half-imagined college kids did. Some kids at UChicago are still fighting to keep fun alive, flicking their hands, and letting loose, even if it doesn’t seem that way at first. 

UChicago’s fraternities have a responsibility to inspire such feelings in the student body at large, and that (usually) requires more than a disheveled lawn. Some might say they’re doing just fine by dispatching swarms of Minions to pester passersby with bananas or by supplying profuse amounts of Jungle Juice to the masses on Halloweekend. After all, there aren’t many other places where a restless undergrad can casually flirt with their peers and formally flirt with the bottle—clubs and other popular watering holes like Jimmy’s and The Pub have become increasingly expensive and hard to get into. The frats’ efforts to that end do not go unnoticed, but there is certainly more to be done.

At most schools, fraternities pride themselves on throwing extravagant tailgate parties at football games. Even if they are just excuses to party, these events forge strong ties between students and their future alma mater in ways that colloquia, study breaks, and even normal frat parties do not. Regrettably, our football games are rarely discussed and sparsely attended (who knew the Homecoming game was two weeks ago?). The point of tailgating isn’t to taste victory on a big stage, but to taste community, school spirit, and a bit of fun after an otherwise purely academic week. Surely, an organization founded to bring those things to campus (that is, a fraternity) would take advantage of any opportunity to do so? 

The phrase “Ain’t no party like a UChicago party” will likely never cross anyone’s mind, let alone their lips, and most would agree that it is for the best. Our culture is much more than that; who else has events like Night Owls or Scav, or hangout spots like Hallowed Grounds or Harper Café? That said, parties enhance, or even consummate, the quintessential college experience, and it wouldn’t hurt for there to be more of them, especially during the winter. Administration, it should be said, might agree to that, too. Some even say they turn a blind eye to serious frat-related problems in an effort to keep the fun alive, although the rumored plan to introduce a three-year campus housing requirement, which would deter much of the off-campus revelry, says otherwise.

Presumably, another part of a fraternity’s job is to provide safer outlets for drinking than unorganized dorm parties or clubbing. When this ceases to be the case, students owe it to themselves to boycott these events. The Dean of Students’ recent school-wide email about spiked drinks is a vague acknowledgement that our fraternities are not always up to the task.

There seems to be an unwritten contract between UChicago’s fraternities and the rest of the students. We give the brothers our “respect,” attention, hope, and a few hours of our weekends. They provide inebriating substances, equally nauseating music, a place to go on a Friday night, and a general feeling (even if it’s a facade) that people at this school are having fun. It seems that we students are holding up our end of the bargain. It’s about time the frats do the same.

Stay tuned for next week’s edition. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, disagreements, or words of support, we want to hear them! Write to us at thechicagophoenix@gmail.com.