Decameron: Fraternity [VI/9]
The meeting of the bros came to a quorum, and the cacophony on the Zoom died down. For the brothers of Alpha Pi Epsilon, this would be a meeting unlike any other: decide the future of the frat.
Guidance from the university had been slim, Tyler reported, with those suits in the administration more concerned with “getting classes going” and “rudimentary social services” than the future of Hellenic life. And so it was left to them to chart a path forward.
Braden had heard word from chapters to the West that recruitment was a disaster. A healthy frat could endure a down year of recruitment, but two down years meant peril, and three assured a death spiral; the brothers of Alpha Pi Epsilon, still stinging from a slow transition to TikTok based recruitment and a reputation as the dumbest men on campus, could not endure another bad year.
Boody and Alf had been pounding the pavement as best they could, trying to woo promising contenders to their order, but being rebuked left and right. One target had insulted them so badly it took them three days to unravel the insult, the gist of which was “you guys are hella dumb.”
“Brothers,” said Tyler, “Times may be hard, and recruitment may be low, and the administration may see this as the time to stamp us out finally, but be strong: this is over only when we say it’s over! Was it over when OJ got arrested? Hell no! Where’s the Epsilon I used to know? This could be the start of something incredible, and you’re just going to give up? Well? What do you say?”
A brief, splitting moment of silence ran through the Zoom call.
“Hey, Tyler, you’re muted, what was that?”
And that’s the story of the meeting where they decided to rebrand from a Fraternity to a TikTok Hype House, with only mild changes to their overall lifestyle and a considerably more genial relationship with the administration as a result.
Decameron is a newsletter recounting the 14th Century set of quarantine tales for 2020. Read the original story.
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