Greek life on Vanderbilt has recently seen a lot of upheaval. In the past few years, without fail, the coolest and most “do you know who my father is” fraternities have found themselves sent packing (only to then combine and become stronger than any mere mortal could have ever imagined—legend is that when a case of white claw enters their house it merely evaporates into the air).
However, this has left those fraternities on campus—the lower-upper-middle tier frats—feeling quite restless.
In an effort to connect with this increasingly restless fraternity community, Vanderbilt’s Interfraternity Council announced the slogan, “Socially liberal, fiscally conservative” after scouring the results of a survey sent to the fraternity community.
The head of OGL, Marsha Todd, gave the Slant insider access to the results. The first question was age. Of the 250 results, 180 said they were “21,” 69 said “22” and 1 said, “However old your mom is lol.”
After age the survey asked for sex. Todd claimed that she wasn’t thinking when she sent the survey and was just using a template, saying, “otherwise I never would have asked such a stupid question to a bunch of frat boys.” Of the 250 results they were all varying forms of the phrase “yes,” with a few “affirmative’s” from the ROTC kids.
The next and final question was to define yourself in four words. The phrase “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” was the leading response-getter with a whopping 170 answers. After that was, “a chill ass dude” with 30 responses, and “best pong player ever” with 25 responses. Then there was a lot of diversity—not of ethnicity or socio-economic background of course, but in the answer. Some highlights were, “Lady Gaga’s little slaveboy,” “Jesus Christ’s worst nightmare,” “an avid Neopet collector,” “Sooooo bad at replying,” “Weirdly sick at hackysack,” “Heir of Pepperidge Farms,” “Not not a Goatfucker,” “Addicted to doing good,” “Mommy’s little mess maker” and “Candle Eater (Try it).”
To Todd the choice was clear. She neither confirmed nor denied her support for the sentiment of the statement, but she firmly stood by her choice saying, “I mean c’mon, they aren’t just carbon copies of each other. Clearly this phrase has some sort of unifying factor to it, and that’s what this slogan is meant to do.”
