Scene Depiction

Group meetings have been used throughout the Inter-fraternal community since the first Greek letter organization was founded in 1776, the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Similar to today, these meetings are very important in the fraternity to discuss and solve many issues. This is the main reason for my choice of the scene being during a meeting. I also chose Delta Sigma Phi entirely on my past experience rushing and already being familiar with the active brothers of the fraternity. Even though I’m not an actual brother of the fraternity, they treat me as family, allowing me to hangout at the house, and also attend their events. During the fall semester as a pledge I was not considered a brother, consequently every pledge was prohibited to enter into any meetings. I still recall every Monday coming to the house only to get every actives signature on my paddle. The meetings were generally later in the day, to prevent any class conflicts, because every member was required to be at the meeting. With there being very little room in the meeting area it seemed they never expected every member to attend, which was quite shocking to me at first. Delta Sigma Phi has easily 100+ members, yet no more than half attend the meetings, and still the members that attend are never consistent.

When the time came close to meeting time more and more members pilled into the house, approximately 35 live in the actual fraternity house. Thus, no more than 30 more members come to the meeting who don’t already live in the house. When entering the house each member is met at the door from the cluster of people chatting over a 100 different topics. Surprisingly cops don’t suspect there is a party going on with all the rambunctious activity. The attire for this specific meeting was relaxed, however, there are many meetings that are formal. As I was told as a pledge, “It’s turns you into a man,” were the exact words of the pledge class educator. Particularly tonight the member’s wore any attire they felt was comfortable, jeans or sweats, t-shirts or hoodies, and sneakers of any sort. Ironically, the attire fit the organization perfectly. Instead of being ahead of time, already in their seats and ready almost every member felt the need to wait until literally one second until the meeting began to stampede down the stairs by the dozens. It reminded me of Spain’s Running of the Bulls. After about thirty seconds of massacre every member except a select few were sitting. The last few would join the group a few minutes late, which were the same few every other week. Yet, this problem was never confronted. Sitting in the back gave me a view of the entire meeting area. After entering the room myself I noticed how bright the room was, with green and white walls. This created a very dull atmosphere for me, which made me seem like a kid again. My teachers use to decorate their rooms with different colors to keep kids interested. I always laughed at this concept, yet it seemed to make a lot of sense when sitting in a chair with blank white walls. Even I couldn’t focus on the topic at hand, yet give my attention to some guy talking in front of fifty other guys.

Most meetings I’ve attended have always had a leader or group of leaders to take the role of the spokesperson. However, the speaker usually has the floor, with authority over the meeting. Except, the longer I watched the more I noticed how the entire group controlled the meeting. Without reasoning, yelling out comments to ideas that weren’t in their favor or even holding their own conversations. Since I was a guest, there wasn’t much for me to do except watch the meeting unravel into a mess. It seemed very little work was put into organization of the meeting, consequently showing during the meeting. As the meeting progressed it seemed fewer and fewer topics were being discussed. The attention span of the group seemed almost instantaneous flip-flopping among each other’s conversations, which I mentioned were entirely irrelevant from the topics at hand. The area which normally only fit a little over twenty-five people was now holding a whopping fifty-plus. Tensions seemed to rise directly with the temperature, sky-rocketing. Shoulder-to-shoulder every member sat, breathing, talking, and eating or drinking only to increase the carbon dioxide in the room, which only reinforced the entire concept of Global Warming to me. I’ve learned from different situations, if you group guys too close for too long there is bound to be chaos. The different cliques were easily noticed throughout the room; each having their own beliefs. The only diegetic sound was the mumbling of the group, while I knew on film the jaws theme song would’ve been the non-diegetic sound playing. When a topic came to discussion that was obviously opinionated, I knew someone was about to explode. A common topic discussed is about the pledges. This is exactly where the chaos started. A voice from the left side would yell about how the pledge has been a complete idiot, and rambling about possibly cutting him. While the right side argued the exact opposite, explaining how the pledge has been acting to par and the reasoning for not cutting him. From having the experience of being a pledge I understand some actives will not favor you, while others will go out on a limb for you. The best explanation for this is who you generally hangout with. Luckily, I made my rounds to get familiar with nearly everyone. The discussion at first came very shocking, very harsh comments are made towards pledges. Not saying the active is being irrational, but that pledges have been seen acting in ways that are very unreasonable and have very little explanation behind them. It was obvious the topic was discussed to ensure that every pledge was genuine and possibly a positive influence on the fraternity. One-by-one every pledge was discussed, some very thoroughly for his distinguishing actions or even vice versa, while others were skipped over by single word answers, yes, no, good, or even bad. Every member seemed anxious to leave always constantly checking his cell phone or watch. Yet, there was never an end time put on meeting. This reminded me of psychology, when dogs were conditioned to believe it was time to eat when a bell was rung, causing them to salivate even when the food wasn’t being fed to them.  Similarly the members seemed to never want to be at a meeting, yet they want to achieve better goals in the fraternity. This seemed too hypocritical, wanting better, but not wanting to try. Finally, when the meeting was coming to an end the members went into an oblivious state not giving a care in the world of what was going on. The leaders who were in front of the room seemed to only be associating with each other, which was probably the more progressive action. At the end, the bulls were out again. Fitting fifty plus guys into such a small area was obviously not well thought out. It would seem after the first meeting changes would’ve been made. However, 2-3 years after having the house there has been very little corrections made. Except leaving was always more organized than entering. A Few of the members, mostly leaders would stay behind for a little longer to organize any information gathered or to solve any issues not yet talked about. Before leaving entirely members would go back to the same spot before the meeting to talk about anything else before heading off. While nearly ninety percent left to do exactly what they were doing before, homework, watching movies or television. The few who came from outside the house did exactly that and left, but only until the next meeting.