Shawn Collins pledged a fraternity in fall 1988 and kept a diary of his experiences.
The first time I can remember waiting out for tickets was probably early 1987 for the Genesis “Invisible Touch” tour that came through Maryland in May 1987. I was jammed in my friend Matt’s VW bus with a handful of Pi Kappa Alpha brothers. Matt and I were still in high school. It was freezing…
All these years, I thought I graduated with a 2.7. That is a lousy GPA as it is, but I was stunned when I came across my college transcript and saw that I had a cumulative GPA of 2.412 on 126 credits. My semester GPA ranged from 1.0 as a first-semester freshman and fraternity pledge…
I graduated from the University of Maryland on May 20, 1993, and for the last two years of college, I lived in the Pi Kappa Alpha house at 4340 Knox Road. The house was far from perfect, but it was home, and I was sad to move out and on to the real world. And…
Springtime in college meant fraternities pairing up with sororities for Greek Week, an annual, week-long tradition filled with parties, philanthropy, and various competitions. In spring 1991, at the University of Maryland, Pi Kappa Alpha (ΠKA) asked Kappa Alpha Theta (KAΘ) to partner, and then my pledge brother Joe Incaprera and I ran as co-Greek Week…
It was just weeks after I became a pledge when I saw a sign at the frat house about a pledge camping trip. I’d never gone camping before, so I was pretty excited. Each pledge had to bring a case of beer for the weekend. We drove from the University of Maryland out to western…
I don’t think I had a camera in college. If I did, it was rarely used, because I didn’t have the money to get film processed. So, most of the pictures I have from those five years are the fraternity and sorority event photos. I have a whole photo album of these types of pictures,…
I paid my way through college with a combination of a Stafford Loan and working menial jobs. But often, there were shortfalls, and I couldn’t afford some expenses that would come up, like food. Fortunately, when I was a fraternity pledge in the first semester of my freshman year, I was sent to cover for…
Each year, our fraternity house in College Park, MD, had to undergo city inspections to ensure compliance with housing and life safety codes. These inspections were conducted by the City’s Department of Public Services. The list of things to repair in the house was long. If I remember correctly, we’d have around one-hundred or more…
I decided to join a fraternity sometime during the spring of my junior year in high school. The town where we lived, Laurel, MD, was a generic strip mall suburb. We lived in the central part of town, a predominantly middle-class area of townhouses, apartments, and run-down single-family homes. On a typical Friday night, if…
My college career kicked off in the fall of 1988, the day my dad dropped me off at Cumberland Hall-affectionately known as “Scumberland”-at the University of Maryland. From the start, I had one clear goal: join the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. The parties and the lifestyle were intoxicating, and I knew I wanted in. Beyond…