Hotboxed

I spent part of a semester in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity at Washington State University, better known as the Fiji's. I don't know what kind of house they are today, but in those days, it was considered the nerd house. It wasn't necessarily deserving of that reputation, but largely it was. Regardless of the merits of the moniker, it weighed heavily upon everyone, on me more than anyone else.

Many of the guys could have been in any other house on campus, but chose this one for personal reasons. I was convinced to visit during fraternity rush by a dorm floor-mate from my freshman year.

For those who don't know, Fraternity Rush is an event where hundreds of young men visit each Fraternity they are interested in joining. Each rusher is greeted and shown around, while the host and visitor gauge their own interest in each other. The Fraternities throw grand parties and invite those they find interesting--sometimes the parties have themes, or feature special events, like boxing between house members, big-time-type wrestling bouts, cliff-diving at the Snake River, carnival type atmosphere with a dunk-tank, etc. It's the really big show, and house members are all smiles, rays of pure sunshine, more friendly and helpful than the staff of any Four Seasons hotel in this hemisphere.

The rushers narrow their choices, and by the last day they go where they want to go and are either asked to join or are politely told to seek employment elsewhere. What really happens on that last day though, is that each Fraternity plants agents all over Frat Row who swarm their targets and shuttle them to the house and "hotbox" them into pledging. Hotboxing is the practice of surrounding the rusher in a room with four members, usually the more charismatic ones, and applying pressure.

"Guys in the house are really high on you Scott." Ken faced me with a clipboard in his hands. Chad, Biff and Larry grunted their affirmation as they stared at me like I was a blue ribbon heifer.

"That's great Ken, but I'm not ready to make that call yet."

"Listen, I'm not supposed to tell you this..." He looked at the others with a look that said, 'Should I?' The others looked worried, but decided that the situation warranted this breach of protocol. Ken's clipboard tilted towards me as he searched for my name, which I happened to see around mid-page. "You are our number one guy."

I wanted to leave and join the TKE house, right next door, but in the end, I caved to this obvious sham and said yes.

This isn't even close to being over...