KWC Part 3: The Pledge

After the mixers, parties, hangovers, and a couple of weeks of normal freshman life on a small college campus, Fraternity Rush was finally winding down, with bids extended and decisions made.

I got bids from Sigma Nu and Sigma Phi Epsilon, and I had to make my decision before leaving Dean of Students Gorell’s office.

I chose the Sig Eps, and, looking back, I think it was for a few reasons: the Snakes reminded me A LOT of the Omega Theta Pi fraternity in Animal House, and their vibe felt cold and snobbish. I’m sure my shameful performance at Miller’s Lake was on my mind as well. The Sig Eps were more welcoming, and visiting their chapter room—where the atmosphere felt more like a family than a binge-drinking contest—made me feel at ease.

Of course, there was a party that night—actually, two. One in the chapter room with music and dancing, and another in an empty room by the stairs, where I learned how to use a bong. There were five or six of us: Joe (without his bat, but it might have been his bong), Pete L, me, and I can’t remember who else. I had never smoked pot before, so I coughed a lot, then I laughed a lot. After some weirdly uncountable time, I floated to the main party and joined the dancing. It was a good night.

I was assigned a room next to the chapter room, which at the time had a busted-out transom window, a bed, and no key. When I finally decided to call it a night, my options were to go downstairs and roust the Resident Manager, Bobby—which would have been a disaster, considering that he was a Sigma Nu and the Sig Ep party was still raging—or get creative. So, I did what any industrious half-stoned lad would do and used the doorknob as a step and hoisted myself through the transom. Thank goodness for sturdy early-60’s construction! There were no sheets, no pillow, but I fell asleep instantly.

Sure, I could’ve just walked over to Kendall Hall and slept in my own bed, but pot doesn’t just stretch time—it also makes you stupid.

***

After I moved my stuff from Kendall Hall to FMD, I settled into life as a Sig Ep pledge. I had a new roommate, Everett, from Columbia, Kentucky. We got along great, and at some point, he ended up giving me my fraternity nickname—Pecker. I’m still not sure if it was an accidental mispronunciation or a Freudian slip (I was a bit of a jerk back then; maybe still am), but it stuck.

After bid day, we had some time to get to know the active members so we could choose someone we vibed with to be our Big Brother—the one who would show us the ropes during pledging. One of them was Weasel, named by another frat brother, Taz, for his wild, cackling laugh and a then-popular Garden Weasel TV commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwLxN8IKy3s

The rules were simple: pledges answered to the whims of the actives, always behaved like gentlemen—especially around women—and always carried change for a dollar, matches or a lighter, and a roll of breath mints, ready to use at any moment.

Despite all the bad press about fraternities and hazing, I didn’t see much of that from my brothers. We had to learn the Greek alphabet and some Sig Ep history—national and local—a few songs from the pledge manual (no one knew the tune since they were 100 years old, so we hive-minded our own versions), and one legendary song about brother Vaughn P who, in the mid-70s, hid the chapter’s charter when the national Sig Ep office came to repossess it and shut the chapter down. Most hazing was stuff like “bring me a Coke” (hence the change for a dollar), “recite the Greek alphabet before this match burns out”, and “whistle this song with a mouthful of crackers.” Punishment was usually “drop and give me 20” pushups. No paddling, no waterboarding, no forced drinking. If you acted like an asshole, you did more of it. I may have been a jerk, but I was (rarely) an outright asshole.

A few weeks after the official rush ended, fraternities were allowed to add more pledges, and that’s when Anthony joined and moved from Kendall Hall to FMD.

FMD had the same basic rules as Kendall Hall—keep the noise down, don’t break things, don’t fight, and no women in the rooms; women were allowed only in the common areas from noon to midnight. Of course, rules are made to be broken, and often were. For the first few weeks I was in FMD, though, I was a boy scout. I remember many nights sitting on the floor in the doorway of my room, playing cards with Annette sitting in the hallway, and Bobby smirking as he walked by on his rare rounds. Over time, the rules loosened—or we loosened them—and we mostly stayed out of trouble.

***

I blame the first time I ran afoul of Bobby on Sigma Nu. Back then, they hosted a week of events built around Sadie Hawkins, a character from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip. I’m not sure if it continued past fall ’81, but it definitely wouldn’t fly today. I don’t remember all of the details, but basically, women chased the man of their choice, and once she tagged him, he was expected to go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with her—and she’d reward him for agreeing.

Somehow, I found out that Allison H was going to be chasing me. I was game—and naïve enough to think I was supposed to be chased, not immediately caught. So when I ran and hid, she got frustrated. “I thought you wanted me to catch you!” Catch me? I don’t know you! So I stopped and got caught.

When Allison asked what I wanted to drink that night, my first thought was rum. I don’t know why, but she showed up with a fifth of rum—a fifth! For the two of us!—and we went to the dance, which was pretty lame, but we stuck around anyway.

Dancing in the huge college cafeteria felt strange, with only about fifty people scattered across the middle of it. And anytime we wanted a drink, we had to slip outside to where we’d hidden our bottle. Still, we enjoyed ourselves, and the evening with Allison had been fun.

At the end of the dance, we kissed and agreed to meet a little later in my room. The problem was, I’d forgotten that the watchman locked the dorm doors at midnight, so Allison couldn’t get in. She had that handled, though. She walked around the building and stood under my window on the second floor—which happened to be right outside Bobby’s room—and yelled “Open the goddam door!” Thank you, rum.

Bobby, being Bobby, waited until I’d gone downstairs, let Allison in, and brought her up to my room before he came up and knocked. Busted. Dammit.

But the night wasn’t quite over. When Bobby told Allison to leave, he made the mistake of not walking her out of the building beyond the locked door, which was one flight down from the door back to his rooms. So she just hid until he was back on his level, then slipped right back to my room. We made out for a bit, but just as I started to unbutton her blouse, she passed out. Not that it would have gone much further, anyway—but still. Crap.

Monday morning, I was summoned to Dean Gorell’s office. He was a real asset to KWC—patient, fair, and willing to put up with a lot from all of us students, good, bad, or ugly. I only saw him truly angry once, in my senior year. I ended up in his office about once a year for something stupid I’d done, and he was always even-handed and seemed almost apologetic about having to punish anyone for something they had clearly done.

In this case, I was sentenced to two hours of raking leaves in the courtyard behind the admin building. I took the punishment willingly, of course. Blisters aside, it wasn’t that bad—two hours, outside on a cool, cloudy, October day. The steady wind didn’t help, but that wasn’t really the point. It was a “take this time to consider the error of your ways” kind of punishment. And I did.

And it stuck, for a while.

© 2026 Brian G Parker