Catholic Universities tend to have clickish fraternity’s especially when it comes to letting a Jew pledge. I was lonelier than the Maytag repairman.
However there was one fraternity that invited me to pledge. Naturally it was the Nerd Fraternity Alpha Upsilon. And it wasn’t because I was a nerd that I was invited to join. They invited me to join for totally selfish reasons.
AU as they were called was on the verge of bankruptcy. The dean of the university told them that if they didn’t straighten out their financial issues within the next 6 weeks Alpha Upsilon would be thrown off campus!
So why did they ask me to join their fraternity? 1. I hate to perpetuate stereotypes but I was JEWISH, 2. I was an ACCOUNTING major (at that time), 3. I already had a reputation for being a good negotiator.
Knowing that pledging was normally a 6 week process and that AU only had 6 weeks to get their financial affairs in order I negotiated the pledge period from 6 weeks to 6 days. Now my Mother didn’t raise any idiot’s (except for maybe my younger brother, Jay) and I knew that even 6 days of “hazing” would be hell especially on a minority. AU was approximately 70% Italian Catholic and 30% Irish Catholic. My first negotiation was to get other “minorities” into my 6 day pledge group. I was successful in recruiting a Puerto Rican, an African American, and a Gay guy to pledge with me.
The final day of hazing ended with a “HELL NIGHT”. There was a strict rule that there was to be no physical hazing, however mental anguish was OK. However in my case when the “mental” stuff got to be too much I would just threaten to quit and they’d back off. On the other hand I was crazier than any of them so the “mental” hazing really didn’t bother me too much.
At the end of “HELL NIGHT” after my induction into the fraternity an emergency board meeting was held and I was immediately voted TREASURER of Alpha Upsilon.
Like I said I hate to perpetuate stereotypes but within 90 days of being made Treasurer of AU we went from being nearly bankrupt to being one of the richest frats on campus.
I had a three stage plan to save the fraternity:
1. Location, location, location! I moved our frat house to a second story loft in a building just outside the entrance to the subway station. On the ground floor there was a Chinese restaurant called Joy Hung, great food! We had the second floor loft. Above us on the third floor was a “massage” parlor call “Hung Joy”. One month when we couldn’t make our rent, the massage parlor paid it for us. The said it was a thank you for all the business they got on Friday nights from the guys that didn’t go home with women from the frat parties.
2. AU was the first to come up with the idea for “video rentals”. I was aware that all the frat houses had porn movies and they would run the same ones every week. Our frat bought them all up and then rented them back to the frats and they were more than happy to pay the rental fee so they could get a different movie every week.
3. We ran ski trips up to the Catskill Mountains with other fraternities and sororities. We would all share equally in the profits and the losses. Our frat would provide “administration” and “security” as well as “logistics” for each ski trip for which AU would receive an additional fee. All fees had to be paid prior to the profits (if there were any, wink, wink) being distributed. Somehow we never made a profit but somehow managed to break even each trip.
The dean and I had many meetings where we discussed ethics, morals, fraud, and legality. I learned a lot!