Frat City Bitch

WORDS • LILY BALL

Solo cups, beer funnels and sweaty bodies galore, welcome to the frat city bitch. 

Imagine every American stereotypical college movie you’ve ever seen – that’s exactly what college life is like.  While the frats are few and far between in the north, they still exist and they are still ridiculous. My first frat experience happened on my first night here.  My room mate took me to the farmer frat.  Okay, wait a minute.  Farmer frat?  That exists?  Yep.  Wait, you can go to college to be a lumberjack?  Anyway, imagine pick up trucks, American flags and flanny shirts and you’re there.

Why does everything smell like weed?

After everyone gets over the initial shock of speaking to an Australian, attention turns to trying to mimic my accent.  Americans, you can’t do it, you just sound weird, please stop.  But, don’t turn around and tell me that I do a shit Australian accent, you’re weird.

I’m slowly finding that there’s more to the college party scene than the frat parties.  There’s the kind of house parties where you are crammed into a room like sardines and guys think it’s ok to grab whatever they want.  No.  Then there’s normal house parties where you play beer pong, flip cup and chandelier, those are fun.  Then there’s the nights where you just walk up a street, knock on a door and say “got room for some Australians?”.  Works every time.

In the lead up to my time here, I head some horror stories about frats which roofie girls which I’ll admit, scared me, but what I would like to know is where do all the hot guys go on the weekends?  I know you exist, I see you during the week.  Do you have some exclusive hot people club?  Like where do you go?  We just don’t understand.  When I pictured Frat boys, I imagined Warner and his bros partying with darling Elle and but alas, he is nowhere to be found.

Another thing about frat parties… it’s the same songs over and over.  Please, keep playing gas pedal, #wecantstop #wewontstop.

I met a guy at dinner one day who was part of a frat.  He was telling me all about his frat trying to get me to go (it was a no right from when he said it was $5 entry).  Anyway, he eventually comes out with, “oh by the way, if you need anything, I’m a dealer on the side, I can get you whatever you want and I always make sure it’s the best”.  Okay then, pleas get me some cough drops and make them the best damn cough drops I’ve ever tasted.

Anyway, overall, the college party scene is wicked fun.  Way more chilled than Birdees on a friday night night and way less rapey than Family on a Saturday night. You can actually have a conversation with someone, although, my conversations always seem to revolve around Kangaroos and Koalas.

 

Lily Ball is a Brisbane-based PR Major on exchange to the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Follow her US adventures exclusively on T.x Magazine, and her blog here.

This article was written for T.x Magazine and can be found here.