He had gone swimming “in the East Cape Province on Sunday, on the country’s ‘Wild Coast,’” and has not been seen since then.

************************

Nicholas Upton has drowned.

While reading this, sing this.

… acquitted of a misdemeanor battery charge. A jury quickly agreed that he did not punch a woman as he and teammates were leaving a bar.

1.) My fraternity brothers were preparing for finals at the University of Florida…

University of Florida! Are you kidding me? That university was just ranked number one in America for most athletes arrested!… Oh whoops. Let me concentrate on the matter at hand. Fraternities. Ok. Frat boys studying for finals…? Uh… ok….

2.)

when word echoed throughout Zeta Beta Tau that we were being blamed for unthinkable behavior: harassing combat-wounded veterans.

Linda Cope, the founder of the Warrior Beach Retreat, a local charity in Panama City Beach, appeared on Fox News and other media outlets alleging that we spit on veterans and urinated on the American flag.

Panama City Beach? Are you kidding me? The rankest town in America, where three men raped an unconscious woman on the beach midday and no one did a thing… It was only discovered when the police chief reviewed video in connection with a slew of other crimes. … But ahem. Let me once again concentrate on the matter at hand. Spring break, unspeakable acts…

3.)

We went from being anonymous college students to being the most hated fraternity in America over allegations that, to us, came completely out of left field.

Completely? Says here (see response from the national chapter at the bottom of the page) that “What was not pointed out was that at the time these events occurred, the chapter was already on probation imposed by the University of Florida.”

4.)

Many of us have family members who have proudly served in the military. My grandfather fought during D-Day. I have a photograph of my grandfather sitting on the wing of a captured German fighter plane.

The focal point of our chapter house’s living room was an American flag that we proudly displayed.

That’s all great. Great. But, you know, the male bonding that you love so much … too much… “Witnessing the tears and anguish of my brothers at the moment school officials clarified that our chapter had been officially closed was indescribably painful… [Nothing can adequately convey] the heartbreak and devastation that I and my fraternity brothers feel over losing an organization that we loved so dearly. Many of my brothers feel they have lost their collegiate identity.” … plus alcohol, can make you forget how much you love Old Glory…

5.)

Due process was conveniently cast aside to mollify an angry public that deemed the allegations indisputably factual in light of the stereotypical fraternity culture portrayed in the media.

Yes, it looks as though your fraternity didn’t behave as outrageously as initial reports suggested. Maybe you’re right to be upset that the resounding response from America to this clarification of your Panama City Beach behavior is So fucking what. But you go to the University of Florida, you’re a member of a fraternity already on probation, and your guys were part of ongoing, high-profile Panama City Beach foulness. Sorry.

6.)

With no means to defend ourselves, we had no choice but to watch our execution in the court of public opinion.

Soyez tranquille! Guns are on their way. Once you’re fully weaponized, no one will be able to shut you down.

When does a bikers’ club become a gang? When does a college fraternity become a gang? When does a football team become a gang? This blog has covered the Waco shootout, the Michael Deng killing, the Vanderbilt rapes, the San Diego State fraternity drug markets, etc., etc. These activities sure look to her like organized gang activity, subject to gang-specific enhanced legal penalties.

The Penn State frat in question here (Penn State! It can really afford more sagas of sordid men.), already in trouble for all kinds of shit, is accused of

obtaining some of its funding by converting the pre-paid food plans of its pledges and confiscating and selling their prescription drugs. These funds were then used to pay for countless socials, presocials and parties at the fraternity house at which underage students were plied with alcohol and, in some cases, with drugs to facilitate sexual assault and abuse.

Yiiich.

Members’ members? Or just members?

A Northwestern University student, reflecting on the Laura Kipnis fiasco, targets groupthink. He’s absolutely right.

… Memory Lane.

Laura Kipnis (see poem) is “cleared” of “wrongdoing.”

Oh thank you, thank you, Northwestern attorneys, for exonerating Kipnis from having written something that offended someone.

Good news for your struggling profession, no? Now that we know how easy it is for American professors to get hauled up on charges, all you have to do is advertise in campus newspapers. Have you ever been offended by one of your professors? Contact us NOW.

… new friends!

The ladies of Dartmouth’s Alpha Delta fraternity like a good branding every bit as much as O did and why not? Like O, they wish to show both passion and obedience to their house overlords… It’s the way of fraternities…

And now Dartmouth has decommissioned them or whatever you call it when universities decide they’ve had enough and they want a fraternity out. Now.

Branded! Scorned as the ones who brand. What do you do when you’re branded, and you’ve no house or land?

Well, you go crying to the Hanover New Hampshire Zoning Board of Adjustment is what you do. No one wants you – Dartmouth doesn’t want you, and Hanover doesn’t want you (“the loss of college recognition means that, under town zoning ordinances, the fraternity may no longer serve as a residence”) – but you want you, with all your long history of naughty naughty ways (the branding’s just Part One).

Last month, the presence of members in the house …spurred a violation notice from Hanover Zoning Administrator Judith Brotman, who informed the fraternity brothers they were no longer allowed to live in the building. In her April 23 letter, Brotman said that “at least 18 individuals” were still on the premises and that continued occupancy would draw a daily fine of $275.

“You typically don’t want so many people living in one building in a residential neighborhood,” Brotman said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “It’s a health thing.”

As long as Dartmouth was around to clean up its vomit, as it were, Alpha Delta could continue to live in Hanover; without recognition from the school, its grand Greekdom becomes just another nameless faceless all-male cult, largely indistinguishable from the breastaurant-bred, branded boys of Waco.

In fact UD proposes that the Alpha Delta 18 join forces with the Waco 170. Once the AD 18 lose their appeal to the Zoning Board, they’re going to need protection as they hunker down in the only home they’ve ever known. The Cossacks are real well armed.

Most of our schools have built up — call it a great wall — of denial about this. Too much money involved to mess with it.

… four?

One student stabbed another and then jumped out of a window.

The stabbed student is recovering.

**************

Update: The students were acquainted:

[B]oth were from Manchester, New Hampshire, and the Daily News reports that both belonged to a conservative Yale Political Union group called Party of the Right. According to [Tyler] Carlisle’s LinkedIn, his “primary interests [included] political theory and defending a coherent and cohesive justification for Conservative politics.”

Carlisle was the attacker.

Drugs? Psychotic break? Many possibilities.

********************

9/27/2015: UPDATE: Alcohol, three-way sex, and jealousy. And, it seems, a sudden psychotic break.

The Yale Daily News coverage of the release of the police report is really two stories: The sad details of the stabbing and suicide, and the anger of some in the Yale community that its newspaper published these details.

UD has read very similar comment threads whenever a suicide – with or without violence – is covered in the press. Our human instinct seems to be homicide:public; suicide:private.

I’m not sure what this writer means by Greek life itself; Greek life on American universities today is Greek life itself. Greek life has looked better and worse at various times in its history; current Greek life is current Greek life, and if you want to see what some of it looks like at one of America’s most gilded, seemingly least depraved, cultural locations, read this.

If there is a Greek life itself, some essence of Greek life, it seems to UD (who has done more than her share of research on the subject) to have to do with the cultivation of the complex and highly advantageous hypocrisy Walter Kirn features here. The collective refinement of what Christopher Lasch called the culture of narcissism is about as good as frats seem to get.