USC is on FIRE!

Not sure if it was in the L.A. Times or not, but a certain USC fraternity house caught on fire this week. However, it was NOT an ATO house this time, luckily. This kind of story strikes especially home for ATO as there is some recent history of Fires and our respective houses. The ATO Chapter at the U of A set their own house (The White House) on fire to spite another fraternity that was scheduled to move in. See, The Arizona ATO chapter had been given the ‘Death Sentence’ as I have mentioned before. Their National Recognition as a Fraternity had been revoked. There were forced to find another place to live. Feeling a need for someone to pay for their own mistakes, they decided to burn down a perfectly good house, that I am sure another fraternity (lesser cool?) was very happy to move into.

As for my own chapter, we had a very bad fire in 1995 that burned the upstairs of our house. The fire came right after pledge class had been initiated, started by someone throwing fire crackers into people’s rooms. I’m going out on a limb and saying that throwing fire crackers into rooms is not the smartest thing to do. All was fun and games until one of the curtains caught on fire. I was privileged enough to read one of my bro’s 20-30 page deposition on the matter. The story ends in a very sad fashion as one of the Brothers was not woken up and did not make it out. He had had way too much to drink that night. If any of you have seen what our rooms looked like, beds tied to the ceilings, not the safest place to be in a fire. Come to think of it, the WORST place to be. We used to refer to those as coffins. What we think happend is that he ( the guy who did not get out in time) jumped out of bed, but was still so bombed he passed out on the ground. 80% of his body was burned, so bad that when they found his body on the ground, he had been burned into the carpet. He survived, thank god. Before that, our entire house burned down in the 1960’s, before we moved to 706 W. 28th street. My own experience was nothing close to these two incidents. In 2000, a few months before graduation, there was a strangely quiet Tuesday night. Most of the house was empty, probably at the 9-0. There were a few of us upstairs, just dicking around having a couple of beers. I remember being in Pete’s room, the one next to mine upstairs. At about 11pm or so, someone comes upstairs and asks if anyone else hears that sound or smells smoke. The sound was some smoke alarm, the really cheap ass ones. I had broken the one in my room because the battery ran out every few weeks. No one really flinches at that sound or smoke for that matter. As you can imagine “smoke” was frequent in fraternity houses. About 5 minutes later, the same guy runs up panicked because he ‘knows’ there is a fire downstairs. You can see it through a glass from the outside parking lot. The persons who lived in the last rooms, next to the stair cases, have a second room they can carve out under the stair case called “a pit”. It’s like a closet under the staircase. The pit is the perfect chamber, if you will. The guys who lived in the pit near the back parking lot, had cut through the outer wall and installed a cinder-glass type thing, so that light could come in. This time, bright yellow light was coming out. A house that has a history of fires would probably have fire extinguishers a plenty. That is of course unless spraying people with fire extinguishers, or using them to R.F. someone’s room seems like a more logical use for them. Needless to say, after running through the house, there were none to be found. None that were useful, that is. However, as I had mentioned, I had a read a certain Bro’s 30 page deposition regarding the fire. Since that incident, he ALWAYS had an extinguisher in his room. Religiously kept this in his closet. I had seen him almost fight someone who tried to borrow it, for whatever reason. So, I ran upstairs, knocked on his door, but of course he’s not home. Nothing left to do but kick his door down. I break through, grab his extinguisher and head downstairs. I’m not sure if anyone reading this has every “put out” a fire, but it’s a little scary. I ran to the room that the fire was in, took a deep breath (my mind now is thinking about Back Draft. Did I just see the smoke wisp back under the door? Is a huge explosion coming? Is it inevitable that I am going to die in here?) and kicked down the door. The first thing I saw was a wall of flames bursting from the pit. The room completely full of smoke, I ran towards the flame, extinguisher pumping. I hosed it down until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, ran outside and took another deep breath. At this point, I am not sire if I even put a dent in the fire. The second time in, I notice that the flames had retreated to much smaller ones and were contained inside the pit. So I ran to the opening and let out the can until the fire was completely out. Ends up the fire was started by said persons leaving a candle lit in the pit while they went out for the night. They had wanted a romantic setting and aroma for the tail they brought back. Not exactly the smartest thing to do, in a room like a closet. No real damage was done, and everything was fine. The fire engines came, but in an hour, everything was back to normal.

Anyways. Sorry to get dark, I meant this to be light hearted, because if you read the story about the Phi Delt house, I hope you were entertained by a few things. That being, the stupidity of today’s USC fraternity members.

Example A): C. Armstrong, a Senior and ex-Phi Delt. Here’s where he’s coming from. I’m graduating in a few weeks, but I’m still bitter that this school took away my fraternity 3 years ago. Phi Delt had been given said ‘Death Sentence’ in 2002. Mr. Armstrong’s entire college career had been cut short by this. He was already a Phi Delt, so he couldn’t pledge another house. He was an out cast. A partier with no place to party. A man without a country, if you will. So, he’s going to tell the newspaper about the stupid shit they did like, "We used to burn couches in the volleyball courts (behind the house) just for fun". See, shit like this does not look good in the eyes of USC or National. They are definitely thinking twice about Phi Delt’s re-recognition now.

Here’s my favorite: M. Mosko, who surprisingly is an “undeclared” sophomore, was at the 9-0 on a weeknight. His sympathy towards the Phi Delts can only be put best by him, “It sucks for the Phi Delts, I guess”. You could feel him actually crying for them on the inside. His ability to describe the horror of having flames coming out of the roof of a huge house is un paralleled, “But it's like a party out here ... It's like the party shifted from the 9-0 to here". Brilliant. Strictly, purely brilliant.


I finished Band of Brothers last weekend. That story of me watching it is fit for an entirly different entry. So, I'll leave my comments for later. I will say this though. I almost cried at the start of Story 2 and I DID cry at the end of the last story. Like a fucking baby I wept and so I will say that this was one of the greatest things (I don't even know how to describe what it was) I have ever watched. Dell, you said, "Side, you have to get it, you'll love it". You couldn't have been more right, my friend.

If I'm not ready for the Band of Brothers thing next time, I will give you a little special piece on Top Gun.