The upstanding gentlemen of Lehigh’s many remaining fraternities pay out some serious C.R.E.A.M. in order to”¦ cream.
Don’t look so shocked. It’s as true as the Hill-wide drug raids conducted earlier in the semester by LUPD (you didn’t hear about that from me). Don’t believe me? Well, the numbers don’t lie and we’ll get to them momentarily.
First, some background. Every Lehigh fraternity worth its completely falsified accreditation report (read: not Sig Ep, Delta Chi, or Phi Sig) regularly hosts banging parties where the charcoal-filtered liquor and watery beer flows like Niagara Falls. Occasionally, they will even throw registered parties to appease Tim Wilkinson & Co. Let’s kick the ballistics here: the point of hosting banging parties is to find someone to bang. Agreed? If so, great. If not, stop reading.
These parties, unregistered and registered alike, cost money.
If we agree that fraternities throw parties to facilitate fucking and parties cost money, then it is must be true that fraternities pay for sex (by the transitive property).
Let’s see if we can figure out how much fraternities pay to make the monster with two backs.
We want to calculate annual total cost of partying for the entire Hill. The equation is quite simple:
Total Cost of Partying = Alcohol + Chasers + Rides + Security + Food + Damages
Let’s start with the real bear, booze. Science tells us that alcohol consumption and fucking are positively related. So, each fraternity requires that its members pay an off-the-books social fee in order to by booze. Although the social fees differ from house to house, the average is about $1,000 per year. The average size of a Lehigh frat is about 55 bros. There are 12 legit frats left (counting Theta Xi and Kappa Sig for now).
Alcohol = $1,000/bro X 55 bros/frat X 12 frats = $660,000
Next, chasers. Frats typically spend about $6,000 per year on chasers. Just take a look at your FMA-issued financial statements under the budget line “soda.” Honestly, what ass-ignorant administrators believe that frats casually consume $6K in soda? They couldn’t do that even if the kitchens were replaced with Wendy’s franchises.
Chasers = $6,000/frat X 12 frats = $72,000
Rides is a hidden but necessary cost. Fraternities must give rides to sorority girls because they cannot risk LUPD counting girls walking in to the house. Once it reaches a certain threshold, they have sufficient grounds to walk into the residence without the typical courtesy of knocking. Let’s just use gas and forgo the unscientific asset depreciation methods. On average, fraternities spend about $5,000 per year on gas.
Rides = $5,000/frat X 12 frats = $60,000
For registered parties, Lehigh mandates that fraternities pay $500 for “security.” Security is defined as some old guys in yellow jackets who couldn’t care less if the partygoers are of legal drinking age and get paid to observe drunk people acting like drunk people. It’s honestly not a bad gig for those dudes. Most of them are actually pretty cool bros. Let’s guesstimate that these frats hold about 4 registered parties per year.
Security = $500/registered party X 4 parties/frat X 12 frats = $24,000
Food and damages? People drunk eat and drunk break shit at every party. It adds up. However, in order to be conservative in our estimates, we will just ignore those costs.
Total Cost of Partying = $660,000 + $72,000 + $60,000 + $24,000 = $816,000
So far, we’ve only calculated the cost for the fraternities who party on a regular basis. It would be inaccurate to not include the other 5 or 6 that party occasionally. So let’s assume they expend about half of the norm.
Total Cost of Partying Per Fraternity = $816,000/12 = $68,000
Total Cost of Partying Per Other Fraternity = $68,000/2 = $34,000
Total Cost of Partying For All Fraternities = $816,000 + ($34,000 X 6) = $1,020,000
BOOM, PROVED. Fraternities, all together, pay over $1 million dollars of their parents’ hard-earned money (besides the Wall Street execs) to do the horizontal dance.
Of course, each sorority normally pays every fraternity they oft party with (typically less than 5) a lump sum at the end of the year that averages about $300.
Sorority Contribution = $300/sorority X 10 sororities X 5 frats = $15,000
$15,000 is almost 1.5% of the total cost. So generous!
