FRAT WARS & HALF-BAKED GANGS

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN being associated with a fraternity or sorority was considered vogue and brings with it prestige, popularity, pride and a sense of belongingness. During those times, the fraternity and sorority organization only recruited those whom they feel would become a good asset to their organization.

So it is common for them to get only the best student and the brightest scholar, the most popular coed or the strongest athlete and the richest guy or the most influential brat. Fraternities and sororities are known to support each other in their scholastic pursuits and even beyond it like landing a job position or being promoted to choice seats of authority.

I think, I belong to that era. And we took care not to tarnish the image of our organization so that its standing within the campuses, which it thrived upon, would not be hampered, especially in recruiting neophytes. Also, it was wise not to attract the ire of the school administration, much less the government authorities.

Only on one occasion though -- my fraternity became a part of a civil disobedience campaign during the Marcos regime! And we won that one and could look back with pride.

Fast forward to today. Cebu City’s news headlines are always assaulted by the repeated nuisance with which the Alpha Kappa Rho and the Tau Gamma Phi are preoccupying against each other. Both of these fraternities (I would rather call them organized criminal gangs having Greek letters for a name) are engaged in a war of attrition against each other and so many promising young lives are wasted every week for just being associated with either one.

The police, on the other hand, has been making threats to classify AKHRO and TGP as organized criminal gangs and have them placed in their order of battle. But, so far, it has done nothing except to announce that threat to the media and, later, doing another nothing by being seen photographed with these so-called fraternity leadership after a peace council was held.

Days after that it’s back to square one. There’s nothing wrong to fight for your turf but when it gets out of hand there must be something wrong out there. Gee, there must be had with regard to their respective leadership and their organization’s thrusts and objectives?

Their leaders always pay lip service to media assuring the city authorities (and the victims’ families) that they are doing their best to correct the situation. So far, I have not seen nor heard of any back-channel talks. They only show up to each other when compelled upon by the authorities for mediation after a series of shootings caused their members’ brains splattered upon the asphalt pavements and alarmed the local residents.

I heard that both groups have employed a rather unorthodox tactic of attracting neophytes. They call it the “community outreach recruitment program”. I have a first cousin, who is a college drop-out and have not been studying for more than nine years, appointed, after being initiated, as a community chapter leader of one group. And under him were high school and elementary students and drop-outs as his chapter members or “brods”.

I think it is time a law be passed to compel every school organization, scholastic or not, for it to secure Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registration papers. It is also important to secure another permit from the provincial or city civil authorities and from the police, with recommendation from the schools where their chapters are entrenched, so as to regulate and control their excesses.

Recruitment of out-of-school youths as fraternity neophytes should be dropped from their programs and discouraged. What is important here is not quantity but quality.

Like it or not, those who fail to comply will be regarded as nothing more than just another criminal group and any criminal acts like murder, homicide or physical injuries attributed to a group, of whose officers and members are publicly known, will be criminally liable being that of either as principal, accomplice or accesory to the said crime being committed.

We, the community, are fed up of their skewed dispositions with regard to running their own organization and I am ashamed even to call myself a fratman, much more so, of being known as a member of a respectable fraternity that has nothing to do with those frat wars and killings that these groups are well aversed at.

Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS, font size 12.