Frats

This past winter break, I was taken aback by an uncomfortable realization. A woman I had considered to be my little sister since before she was a woman, the only one on the block with the common plight of being the baby of the family, had joined up in a sorority.

I started a massive smear offensive against this woman’s decision. I made annoying jokes about sorority girls every opportunity I could until she finally talked openly about it. I told her that, sometime in the future, she was going to remember my message and wish she had listened to me. But just then, a much stronger voice than mine, a woman of infinitely more wisdom and experience than all of us combined whose authoritative voice booms in my head every day, intruded and cross-examined.

“And what is your message, anyways?” the voice said.

As happens so many times when a mind-bogglingly simple reply slaps me across the face, I thought for a second and realized that I actually didn’t know. Fraternities induced some of my best memories in college, and four of my roommates are members of the Greek community, as they say. My first kiss of college occurred at a Fraternity party when a real woman actually liked what she saw. So how in the hell did I have the audacity to talk?

Floored by this truth, I was unable to supply an adequate answer. I realized miserably that I could never package what I wanted to say in the right kind of conversation parcel, so I just dropped the subject. But I also knew, like I know every time I fail in the object of a conversation, that I would be able to express my ideas a lot better on paper.

The first thing I remembered when I sat down to figure out my actual message was my feelings upon crossing the thresholds of all the Greek memories I had. Whenever I navigate the world of fraternities and sororities, I start my trip with the fully encoded knowledge that the real world would be a lot better without them. I know that I wouldn’t live in our society if I had to believe fully in my life to have a good time while living it. You got a problem with that you gas guzzler-driving, sweatshop product-consuming motherfuckers?

Now that we’ve cleared all that up, I’d like to describe to my young friend my understanding of the Greek community at the University of Texas at Austin. That world is an almost-indescribable utopia, but I shall do my best.

Much as they like to deny it, frat parties are not the only parties happening in the campus area. UT-Austin features its own galaxy of weekend get-togethers that feature groups who may not have already fully met. Yes, there’s sometimes more suspense about where the party will take place, but I think you will have infinitely more fun at gatherings with intriguing, unique personalities instead of a single group of fattening brothers.

You are smart enough to know the type of people I’m talking about. If you haven’t performed a conversation between a frat bro and a sorority girl, then you haven’t perceived how idiotic these people can be. Just before I wrote this, my roommate and I simulated an exchange between well-outfitted Greeks that started when a group of us brothers rolled up to a corner in the back of a pickup truck and inquired loudly and slurringly, “Do you like UT football?” The enthusiastically affirmative answer from the girls encouraged us to tell the astonishing saga of our trip to the Rose Bowl last year, and the girls soon agreed that they were all coming out to our next party.

Just rehearse that conversation in your head and see if it doesn’t make you want to grab the nearest wooden stake and jam it through the rubber conventions of our society.

Now imagine a university without such people. Very few exist, you know, but I have a truly utopian view of such a place, a world where people would create fewer protective barriers between themselves and new experiences instead of more. Nobody would fall back on the security that comes from hunkering down with people that seem cool enough to hunker down with when you’re a scared freshman. Instead, everyone would share the joyous bind of needing to find new friends. It would be a world of possibility and surprise instead of monotony and isolation.

I guess what I’m trying to suggest is that, if we all stick with it, we will reach this world. After all, I think I was actually describing the real world. The water’s fine, you should jump in.

National World War I Museum

This past semester, I had the privilege of taking a class on Great War literature at the University of Texas. My professor, a genial old newspaper man by the name of Steve Isenberg, had a worldly brilliance that was only surpassed by his dedication to the spirit of the class. He introduced our small 20-person group to Remarque’s blunt assessment, Blunden’s profound pity, Graves’s facetious daggers, and Manning’s pessimistic rebuff among other works. His daily readings of the poetry of Owen, Sassoon, and Gurney were particularly moving.

The class was enhanced by the rich file cabinets of the Harry Ransom Center, a campus museum which houses a variety of famous manuscripts and papers. Thousands of miles and many years removed from the conflict itself, we examined correspondence between Owen and Sassoon, manuscripts with writers’ notes in the margins, and authentic propaganda posters. It was truly bewildering to stand in the middle of Texas of all places and handle such treasures.

I was similarly stunned when Professor Isenberg showed us a New York Times review of the new National World War One Museum in my very own hometown. Once winter break rolled around, I knew that my visit to the museum was as inevitable as the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.

The poppies are truly illuminating. The nine thousand fiery blossoms that greet visitors to the museum set the proper mood for a museum about the Great War. With each flower representing a thousand combat deaths, the glass bridge display is a solemn reminder of the sheer scale of the nine million lives lost to this war.

From start to finish, the National World War One Museum is a terrific record of the Great War. The orientation movie explains the European powder keg that exploded in 1914, and visitors to the museum benefit greatly from the sense of chronology of the place. A constant stream of informative recordings makes it almost impossible not to be overwhelmed by the various stages and theatres of the conflict.

The interactivity of the museum is another one of its strong points. I lost myself for about a half hour in one of the study stations when I sat down to make my very own propaganda poster using images from the museum’s collection. I would have e-mailed myself two or three of my placards, but typing my e-mail address was infinitely less fun than creating another poster.

The “Reflection” rooms in the same areas were my favorite part of the trip. These rooms, each one featuring a closing door and a comfortable couch, gives one the opportunity to listen to Great War prose and poetry. I can still vividly feel the words of “Dulce et Decorum Est” pounding over my brain like the adjoining room’s 60-pound artillery shells. The sensory images of the museum give new life to the words of the young poets who found themselves in the trenches of the Great War.

Without a doubt, though, the mud and trench displays of the museum were the most awe-inspiring parts of the exhibit. One peeks into small corridors and sees and hears what it was like to experience these hell-holes. These short glances soon trickle into the Horizon Theater, a massive battlefield scene in the middle of the exhibit. Every twenty minutes, a movie starts with a harrowing description of Great War service set off by distressing music, explosions, and the realization that this exhibition is a mere imitation.

Although I truly enjoyed my trip to the exhibit, I went away feeling conflicted. I’m afraid that a cloud is developing over this museum that, left unchecked, could ruin the whole place. It has to do with the version of the Great War that every one of us learns in school, a story of a meaningless conflict into which America intervened and promptly won. Though the museum is unfailingly historically accurate, it does little to discourage this chauvinistic view. I’m afraid that the National World War One museum will gradually let the narrative of America’s transition to Superpowerdom overrun the exhibit.

I have this fear mostly because the man who took my ticket at the front of the museum explained (without being asked) that there are no German flags on the Liberty Memorial site because “They’re the losers.” It was mind-boggling to think that anyone could be familiar with the Great War and still believe that wars have winners and losers.