Since ones do not join an organization based upon its values, what matters is not the ritual, per se, but that a pledge/candidate is willing to internalize that organization and its values indirectly and do what is required to demonstrate his/her ability to carry out those ideals. The quintessential take-away from the ritual is that one voluntarily binds him/herself to the organization and their prescribed values. Because we all join blindly, not knowing what any one organization stands for, we presume/accept/expect that a fraternity/sorority will stand for some form of scholarship, altruism, agape/brotherly love, fellowship, service, honor, or any of several other ideals. Yes, every fraternal organization has its rituals and secrets that bind them together, but that’s not what makes a fraternal organization. Find our secrets, don’t find our secrets (hopefully not), but you’ll never be one of us, you’ll never know what it is to be my brother or any other persons brother. I’m going to come back and tell my stories to the new boys, and hell I’ll come back and have a beer with them too. I’m going to support my chapter after I leave. These are my brothers and we’ve been through poop together, some good some bad, but I know I’m going to stay in contact with these guys probably the rest of my life. On the weekend I like to go out with my brothers, maybe get wasted with them, and have just an awesome time. Yes I value my education I study my ass off 5 days a week. Frankly yes there are some frats that are like that, but it’s up to you to find a place for you, find the guys who you like, who like you, and are willing to give a chance to possibly spend the next 4+ years living with and the rest of your life being connected too. Yea you’re obviously a little weird or probably a little upset you didn’t get in a frat, got kicked out before initiation because you were a frack, or just never gave frats a chance because you fell for the stereotypes and thought we were a bunch of partying, boozing, and hazing organizations.

Congratulations you know our stuff, you took the time to search the internet do research on my frat dig pretty damn deep to find all our mottos and symbols. Why do you want to know our secrets that you would obviously have know use for? So you can find us and say hey “Secret Motto.” and pretend to be one of us? So you can shove it in our faces and say ha ha I know your secrets. That’s why we have our secrets it bonds us in a way that is just for us. It just a basic reminder of how much we value tradition. He showed us his paddle which was awesome seeing a paddle that’s 30yrs old and seeing how my paddle is just like his with minor differences. Some of us went up to visit and we would just shoot the poop about his time there and what has all changed at the chapter. I met one of my brother’s father who was an alum from our chapter. I can talk with them about ritual and all the experiences they had when they went through.

It’s more than that still, I can find any of these brothers and sit down and hang out with, I can go visit them at other campuses and crash at their house.

Yes, I have networking opportunities and job opportunities and all that poop they tell you when you’re recruited. I now have a connection with 200,000 other people in my organization throughout the world. For all of you who obviously aren’t in a fraternity or sorority and don’t understand why we have our secrets and why we value them so much, it’s more than just us having our secret time in our chapter room that no one knows about or the house being closed to outsiders for a week. They found us trustworthy enough to teach us the ways of our organization with our values and our most closely guarded secrets. These are sacred to us because we went through our initiation and learned them, we had our brothers prepare us for a semester or a year or whatever time. Yes we have secret mottos, yes we have secret signs, etc. Frankly if anyone has a brother who releases a ritual (because it could only be a brother because no outsider should even know about these books), they are not truly brothers of your organization. The secrecy of rituals is what puts our organizations apart from each other, we all do service, we all do philanthropy, we all have brotherhood, but it’s our ritual that separates us. For those who think there are not secrets any more you are absolute morons. This is laughable, my organization is on here and it’s not even close to our ritual.

Phi sigma kappa