Out on the lash with the Frat Pack... er, no thank you
FRAT BOYS: INSIDE AMERICA’S FRATERNITIES BBC2, 9PM
THOUGH I don’t think of myself as being particularly strong on law and order, I’ve always thought that wearing a baseball cap backwards should be a punishable crime. I wouldn’t necessarily want the penalty to be excessively harsh, though... maybe 100 lashes from the cat o’ nine tails. Or at least that was the case until I watched Frat Boys, which featured a lot of young men donning baseball caps at an incorrect angle of a full 180 degrees. Now I reckon that 700 or 800 lashes would be a more suitable punishment.
Of course, the problem is that some of them would most likely enjoy the experience. Among the less unpleasant stunts shown during this hour-long documentary was one eejit drinking hard liquor from a mouldy-looking deck shoe. College fraternities date back almost 250 years and there are now around 120 of them in the US. This programme focused on Gazoni House, a society made up of students from the University of Central Florida. Would-be members have to undergo a series of humiliating initiation rituals to join. And all, it seems, for the dubious privilege of sharing accommodation and hanging out with a bunch of obnoxious morons. ‘A fraternity is a brotherhood. It’s an organisation of like-minded people who are just kinda together to meet a common goal,’ said third-year student and Gazoni member Ben. The interviewer asked whether frat boys tend to be the most successful people on campus. ‘Wow, what a stereotype,’ replied the deeply unlikeable Ben. ‘But, yeah, we are – we’re way more successful.’ Actually, make that 1,000 lashes.