Every weekend, many students from campus vote. It’s just not in the way you expect. Students (and often their friends from out of town) meet up for a “night out” on DePauw’s campus – which often means Frat-hopping. After all, there’s nothing else to do but put on a mini-skirt and heels in January to go drink $8 vodka and $0.30/can beer in trashed party rooms while the people that live there either stare at you dancing or try to rub their crotch on you to “dance” with you without asking first. No matter what your reason for going to these parties, know two things:

1) You are providing a service. That beer, while it costs less than a pack of gum, is being earned! (Congratulations, you almost qualify as a stripper or prostitute already). It is being earned either through ego-service (by simply being there, you’re making them feel important) or sexual service (which doesn’t have to even mean you meet one of them in the back with the Jack and the jukebox) . Ego-service is being performed by adding to the number of people that attend the party you were “gracious” enough to be allowed into. (The number of guests at a party is often a “tell” for how well it went. A good party makes Frat Superstars feel like the Macho Men the Village People sang about 35 years ago). Sexual-service is being performed by wearing that skimpy clothing — by being there as a sexual object for the people that live there to look at (as surreptitiously or as obviously as they feel like making their gaze be), you’re in yet another way, earning that beer. Even if you somehow drink an entire case or a bottle of their “Premium Liqueur,” you’re earning somewhere between $2.00-$2.49/hr if you stay for all four hours of most registered fraternity parties on campus. You wise spender, you.

2) By going to these events you are Voting. By stepping across the threshold of DePauw’s fraternity houses’ doorways you inherently are saying that Every Single Thing They Do There Is Okay. Don’t like the music they play there? Doesn’t matter. Upset that they refused to give you a cup for water (because they want you to stay drunk)? Doesn’t matter. Upset about the way one of the boys there took advantage of your drunk friend last weekend? Doesn’t matter. Don’t like that they talked about women as objects of conquest in their Rush presentation? Doesn’t matter. Why do none of these matter? Because you are saying that No Matter What They Do, You Are Okay With It and Will Still Attend Their Parties: THE biggest green light for any behavior you can give.

So remember, when you go into a fraternity this weekend, you are voting with your feet: you are saying that Anything that happens there, you are okay with. ANYTHING. I hope whatever actions you are saying “OK” to are worth every ounce of that $0.30 beer you were so graciously bequeathed.