Nightlight News

It is odd, in my opinion, that frat guy has become a pejorative term used to describe any young white male who fits, through mass coequality of vestment or consistency of behavior, into that predesignated and most deplorable of stereotyped social segments. Most individuals, especially those who would not self-describe using said moniker, know how to identify a frat guy - baseball hat worn a certain way, slightly saggy khaki drawers or shorts, polo or oxford shirt, it's all pretty banal and vapid fashion, but serves the purpose of allowing an easy conformity and acceptance. Even if you can't see the male in question, you can tell through sound that a frat guy is around - they talk loud at night. They differ from rednecks, not by much, but have an increased relevance for us, the residents of Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina thereof. They act dumb, funnel beer, spank each other in hazing rituals, drive too fast for short distances, have had giant SUVs bought for them, and are destined for jobs in arms sales or middle management.

More soon, but it is important to note that seemingly, the frat guy (even if he isn't actually in a fraternity, he still gets lumped into the set) usually acts like a buffoon, seems to hate gay people or doing anything that might be construed as gay or faggish, drinks in excess, follows sports with a bullish machismo and reckless fervor, hates or disdains bicyclists (in my experience), maintains poor dietary habits, and retains very little respect for his own living quarters beyond their function as a repository for empty pizza boxes, beer cartons, video game equipment, pornography, sports regalia, and mundane trash. The antagonists from the Duke lacrosse debacle could be construed as those types of guys, for their lacrosse club seemed to behave in ways that are typically fratty. Someone in the Creativeimprovisationmas parade one had a fake gun pulled on them by some "frat guys". They ridicule my bike. They may have been responsible for more than one anti-gay hate crime in this town. You know the drill - they suck, even if they are people too, and perhaps could be nice guys when isolated outside of their comfort zone (maybe).
(Note: I have deliberately avoided discussion of the frat guy's female counterpart, which I am not sure how to name, for various reasons including lack of information. If you have comment, please amend as you see fit.)

Having defined the frat guy loosely, it then follows that segmenting that part of the population clearly allows those who disapprove of the behavior of frat guys to avoid them - for if you know what they look like and how they act, and you figure out where they hang out, then you can avoid ever going there. And to be sure, for most of the non-frat set, those hang-outs overpopulated by the frat guy are abhorrent. So what's a frat guy to do? What's his recourse with society now that his homophobic, self-destructive, blunted, violent, base, moronic behavior has netted him poor social standing beyond his own set and a host of incidents that reaffirm his status as village idiot, especially in our collegiate hometown of Chapel Hill?

Eliminating the drunken and moronic nonsense that characterizes so much of the stereotypical frat guy behavior would accomplish that goal initially, but, if there is no will being auto-generated from the class, then motivating factors like a sense of diminished self-worth derived from ostracism is unlikely. Perhaps the lack of motivation is a result itself of the malaise of the affluent-to-absurdly-wealthy conservative suburban young male, honed through years of binge drinking and tasteless dude mags like Stuff and Maxim that have been their sustenance. It seems that their only recourse to a lack of cultural and experimental stimuli beyond the macho sports world and the mind-numbing video game world, the warped female exploitation world and the conservative American wormhole, is base ill-advised schmuckery. By not stopping idiotic behavior and, instead, perhaps actually displaying some originality of thought beyond those typically fratty outlets of expression (to delve in repetitive self-destruction, dulling the pain of a meaningless and vapid existence), the frat guys have alienated themselves from anything that might evanesce their typifying behavior (so they don't risk losing that support system that is predicated on stupid drunkenness, excessive lust over sports and busty women, hating gays, and general boorish nothing). And they aren't even all in fraternities, which is what makes the term itself something of a misnomer. However, it's convienent and easily understood, so we'll roll with it.

Those poor louts really need to step up and show their peers that Animal House is not their only information available for self-direction, but before they can do that, they have to care. However, the line of people ready to reach out to frat guys is not very long, and is probably populated mainly by fundamentalist Christians and military recruiters.

Until Widespread Panic plays at Nightlight, you won't be seeing them in our neck of the woods, because, well maybe, we're weird, vaguely or explicitly gay in a lot of ways, and difficult to pin down. We don't support boorish drunkenness with quite the same insipid ebullience that they do at typically fratted undergrad haunts. We don't show sports, and we don't book jam bands. This is a comfort to our patrons, who for the most part, would be nonplussed were a heavily inebriated contigent of frat guys appear in the middle of a set by say Clang Quartet or Esperanto Bat. Then again, they probably wouldn't fork over the cover, or even get beyond the head poke stage of entry.

Nevertheless, I ask our readers to consider the plight of the frat guy, for as poorly as they behave, and as disapproving our estimation of them, they are a cultural adjunct in this town, and for the sake of wholesale improvement in all late night travel past the corner of Church and Rosemary, we ought to begin seriously brainstorming ways to create a mass conciousness upheaval of this ill-advised sect.

If it were possible, I would suggest some sort of giant laser that could eliminate each drop of testosterone from their bodies, leaving them incapable of reproduction and reducing to nothing the horomonal factors that aggravate their already debilitated mental state.

In the absence of such a laser, I recommend an "adopt-a-frat-guy" program targeting those young college age men beginning to experience doubts. Just like streams and highways, frat guys need to have the litter of their mental pathways removed through diligence and public service. We could each take one under the wing, showing them the wonders of burlesque, drag shows, noise music, doodling, improv jazz, art rock, indie hideaways, and years spent slogging the sidewalks of Chapel Hill with a staple gun and show flier. Or other wholesome activites like sewing, knitting, bike repair, clothing swaps, craft nights, walking in the park, insect study, native plant identification, communal home-cooked meals, picnics, trips to the rope swing, tea time, cocktail parties, basement dance jaxx, anarchy, etc. Maybe they'd hang up their pink polo, rainbow flip-flops, team garb, and adopt the non-specific vestments and attitudes of a newly reinvented weirdo, free to puruse their inner dragons with an eliminated risk of ostracism at the hands of their peers (which is usually derived from nothing less than an ill-informed confusion over motives or actions) bought through a wholesale denial of their past life, which has been newly left behind in favor of social experimentation and unique personal expression.

Why can I say all this in confidence? Because I was too, once, a "frat guy".