Featured on Blogger on January 7, 2008

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 AKP 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.

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THEY BLINDFOLDED ME on that early Sunday morning of March.

They made me stand up, my body bent forward while my hands held in support of my crotch, or should I say my “balls”. I was almost at the halfway point of this rite of passage. Of laying claim to be a part of a brotherhood of men.

“Omega Pelta Kappa. Omega Pelta Kappa. Omega...,” I trembled as I recited those three Greek-sounding words over and over again like a mantra expecting a sudden whack from a wooden paddle from behind me. I received, I mentally counted, twenty-four paddle strikes at the back of my now tender thighs. The last one had been unpleasant for it had been done in a deliberate and chopping manner instead of the flat piece of the paddle hitting you. And the two before that on my poor rump...

“WHACK!” Came the twenty-fifth!

“Arrgh!” I jumped up and down as an agonizing pain swept up through my body from my swollen thighs, sweat poring down on my forehead. I began to doubt my brazen determination and my patience wore thin. Now how did it came to be that I was made to be a part of this extra-curricular foolishness? This weird and cruel test? This demeaning and humiliating initiation?

Prologue

I remembered then about two months ago when I visited my girlfriend at her home and I noticed that she was not feeling well. Concerned with her condition, I offered to buy medications for her or, if need be, to accompany her to a doctor for a look-see. But she was adamant that there was nothing wrong with her.

Then at some point of our verbal see-saw she admitted that she just came from a sorority initiation. I saw bruises on her shoulders and arms and the marks of the paddle on the back of her legs. I was shocked! How could she do that? I was so stunned! It was she, of all people, who forbid me not to join a fraternity or else...

Wow! I got so envious of her. Believe me, she hurt my pride so bad back then that I felt myself to be just a miserable wimp incapable of protecting the woman of my affection. How could they do that to my girl? I will have my revenge (sic)!

The Crucible and The Acceptance

“To be or not to be.” My thoughts debated if I should quit or not. To quit now meant I won't be able to savor that sweet smell of my own self-styled revenge and the pain won't go away if I suddenly halt abrupt this painful interlude. Besides, I will lose face. No, I have to go on. I have to go on and offer my behind to the divine dictum of the paddle wielder and face the consequences. I can stand the scoldings of my parents later, if they will know. Maybe I can stand the threat of a break up my girlfriend promised if I ever join a fraternity organization, if she will know. I have already burned my bridges behind. I cannot turn back now. Come hell or high water I have to continue this!

“WHACK!” The fifty-seventh came as I have expected. The last ten paddles or so were now painless maybe because I know that the initiation is nearing its end or maybe because my legs were already so thick with the constant flogging and so severely numbed that the feeling of pain is now absent. Somebody removed my blindfold. Then I got my dues. Someone I knew shook my hand and called me “Brod” and so did the others. Then they sung the Peltan's Song. Everybody welcomed me as one new addition to their numbers. I cried that I passed my test of manhood. Elated, I forgot the pain. It was already dusk.

The Aftermath

I got home that night and nursed my swollen thighs. Reality came. It was hell removing the pair of jeans from my legs for my bloated skin adhered itself to the very grain of the thick fabric itself. I thought it looked like longaniza or a bloated sausage!

Monday morning came and it was the final examination day in my school. Still reeling from the bruises, the pains, the cramps, the aches and the who knows what from yesterday, I have to rise up from the comforts of my bed and it was pure torture when I stood up. My mind swam in dizziness and my eyes blinked as the pain swamped and shocked my very existence as I held on to my room's wall for balance. Then another torture came as I maneuvered my lumpy legs to fit inside a clean pair of jeans.

I walked slowly, slightly limping, and pain shot through me as I sat inside a PUJ. I let out an expletive under my breath as I tried to ease my legs from touching the seat. Reaching school, I went upstairs to take my exams at a room in the fourth floor! Hey, it was like carrying a cross to Calvary only my cross was my stubbornness. My willingness to accommodate pain in order to be a Peltan provided me those times of disquietude bereft of comfort. What a jerk I am.

“Never again,” I said to myself.

“Sure, you won't. Instead, you'll gonna be the one doing that thing to another, when you are fit.” My other conscience told me so.

But it was all worth it.

Epilogue

That I did some months later and it was already more than twenty-six years ago today. My parents never found out about my joining a fraternity. My girlfriend did found out about it and we broke up two months later. I am still a Peltan. In name only. I have been inactive for quite sometime.

But the Omega Pelta Kappa Fraternity and Sorority is still here and we just celebrated the 42^nd Founding Anniversary last September 8, 2007 at D' Family Park in Nasipit, Talamban, Cebu City.

Peltans forever...!!!

This document is written in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS, size 12.