Weaver interview [Begin Tape 1, Side 2] Weaver: One thing I do regret this year is that I saw Mr. and Mrs. Elrod were there. I guess it was in the beginning of the ball, and you wonder where were those photographers when you want one to have your picture taken, because I wanted to have my picture taken with them. And I saw one of my advisers there, Bob de Maria, in the journalism department. He and his wife were there. That's pretty neat, too, that you drop the label of student and you drop the label of faculty member and you're just there for the party. You're there for the 25 orchestra and the big dance. You look out across the entire ballroom and you see everyone in their black tie and dress, and they're just having a great time and no worries and there's no sense of kids who are maybe doing something they shouldn't be doing, you know, they had a little too much to drink. They're just having a good time at a good party. There's no looking down upon that. I don't know if that sounds right, but you don't feel embarrassed that the professors are there too, because there's not that judgmental aspect of it. There's just people having a good time, not in the typical environment of the classroom or the lecture hall, but it's just with the orchestra and music. One thing I wanted to talk about too is how much I think music is very important here. Maybe I'm just the only one that thinks that, but I associate the good times with music. I love Motown. I think people here love Motown. , There's one group called Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts. I don't know if you've heard of them before. They've been around for thirty years. It's an old soul band, and they were kind of big in the sixties. At one point, Ike and Tina Turner was their opening act. They were doing a big stadium tour. They're not as big as they used to be. They had some records way back when, but they didn't go anywhere. They now just do fraternity parties, they do weddings and socials, and they do their whole litany of R&B classics--you know, the Temptations and the Jacksons and everything else like that, good dance music. But their signature thing is they do dirty limericks. They have about thirty of these. You wouldn't want your mother to hear what they're saying at all. But everyone knows the words to these limericks, you know, and they sort of fashion it according to the audience, who's there. There's a saying, what's the difference between a Hollins girl and toilet paper? The answer is, you only use toilet paper once. The people know the answer though. He'll hold the mike around different places, and his whole routine is, "Nuts, hot nuts, get them from the peanut man. 26 Nuts, hot nuts," and so forth. And then another verse comes, and what is this or what is that. Some of it is pretty lewd, but that's just kind of a unique thing to them. Getting back to the whole idea of music, I think people like music that reminds them of a certain time and sort of captures that timeless essence. So whenever I hear a certain song, I associate it with a certain time. That may be just very unique to me, but you think of like the bands here, like Dave Matthews Band. It has a certain sound, almost, that sort of captures and reminds you of an afternoon you spent, you know, at Zollman's or something. There was a band going on there and it was a beautiful day and your friends were all there and it was just a lot of fun. It just reminds you of things and sort of eases a little bit. I'm always more comfortable with music around me. That sort of eases everyone's tension. I think that people here love concerts and love bands and they love certain groups that go around, and that kind of sticks with you. I have a huge CD collection now that I didn't use to have, just because I always have my stereo on. I'm not sure if that's unique to Washington and Lee, but at least I feel that's important to me to just remember certain things like that. Warren: Well, if we're talking about music, we ought to talk about "The Swing." Weaver: Oh, of course, "The Swing." Warren: I know you have a unique relationship with "The Swing." Weaver: Yes, I do. Warren: Is it still sung? Weaver: At football games they'll play it after a touchdown or something like that. People will kind of sing along to it. Every single, I think, concert here, the chorale concert or orchestra concert, it always closes with the hymn first and then "The Swing." That's how every single concert closes. The last times the hymn go through, then all of a sudden the piano raises up and you know what's coming after that. Everyone starts clapping and standing up. It happens every single time. 27 Everyone knows at what point to clap, at what point to stand up and at what point to whirl their hand and what point to say "Sweet Briar" or "Yahoo," depending on what your choice preference is. It's kind of neat. That's where "The Swing" comes into life most practically, I guess. At every concert, it's there, and everyone knows it, too. It's our song, a very special song. It's a good song, too. Warren: Yeah, it's great. You mentioned Zollman's. Take me to Zollman's. Weaver: I never would have thought--it's the most illogical place to have a party. It's so far out there. Warren: Out where? Take me literally. Weaver: It's heading towards Collierstown, I think. I know it's on 11 or off of 11. I don't even know the roads. It's kind of like the houses in town. Whenever you first get here, you don't know exactly where everything is. You know at this turn you turn right. It's sort of the legend. You see a confused pack of girls from Hollins, "Does anybody know were Zollman's is?" and you know they'd never find it if you tell them the street names. You're like, "You go around this corner and you go about a mile from there, about a mile, take a left." It's sort of Oz, almost. You have to find it. It's a big shack. It's not a barn. But it has a stage there, and it's really kind of rundown. It's not at all there for being aesthetically beautiful. It's right by this big field, and people get their cars, and you usually get a truck with a keg in it, and you kind of congregate around that. People kind of walk around the cars, and they'll head into the music sometimes. The music also just kind of filters out into the fields. People kind of spread out. During the spring, especially, usually during a beautiful day, it's just nice to be out at nighttime. The evenings are very clear and you see the stars. You feel very safe out there. You're just sort of off in the middle of nowhere. 28 It's kind of odd. I don't know why we do; we just sort of do. It's fun, though. The only bad thing is getting a ride back. You have to make sure someone's sober to take you, and you also have to have a seat in their car, too. Another thing happens, too. At the very end when people are heading out, everyone kind of piles in different cars. "So-and-so, do you have a place for me?" Everyone kind of piles back in and heads back to school. I don't think anybody's ever really left there, but you just have to kind of wonder, "How am I getting home?'' But everyone seems to get home after a while. There's a river going by there, too. People kind of like skip rocks on the river or just kind of maybe stick their toe in or something like that. It's just a comfortable place to have a party. I like it there. Warren: Are they always daytime parties? Weaver: No, they're nighttime parties, too. For instance, there's the Buffalo Creek Music Festival, which is the weekend after Shipwreck, so put it on your calendar. That's a Friday night, all of Saturday, and Saturday night, just sort of one continuous thing. They have, I think, seven or eight bands out there just sort of in a row. For the most part, parties are at nighttime, I'd say. I know alumni weekend there's a party out there during the day, and they have Pete's Barbecue out there, too, and serve dinner. They have a soul band that's going to be playing. So that will be fun there, too. But most of the time it's nighttime. The best thing about Zollman's is that it's really cheap to rent and you don't have to clean it up, as opposed to like the fraternity house where you have to make sure it's spotless before the maids get there, because the maids, you think they'd be there to clean, but they're there to fine you if it's really dirty. So you have to kind of moderate how much mess you make during the week and make sure you don't make a really huge mess; otherwise, the university clamps down. They want you to 29 keep those houses nice, and so you have to. At Zollman's, you don't have to worry about it at all, because the guy who owns it cleans it up. Warren: You mentioned there's a party at Zollman's alumni weekend, so is that a student and alumni party? Weaver: I think it's for alumni, but I think students would be welcome, but not a lot of students would head out to hang out with the class of '71 or anything like that. Warren: What's wrong with the class of '71? [Laughter] Weaver: I think they would be welcome if. they wanted to go, but I don't think many students will head out there for that. I'm looking forward to that. They're having the Drifters, the Coasters, and the Marvelettes out at the pavilion on Saturday evening of alumni weekend, so I'm headed out right there. I'm scheming now to try to have my photo taken with all of them. Sometime I'll show you my room. I have, I call it my wall of fame. It's just sort of famous people I've encountered or worked with or something, and I have pictures and posters and things like that. Warren: The world comes to Richard Weaver. Weaver: Exactly. [Laughter] I have a picture of myself and Coolio. You know who Coolio is, right? Warren: Yeah. Weaver: Well, he's got a marijuana cigarette in his mouth, which is just really strange. I'm there, and not just my skin, but like everything about me, I'm just incredibly white. He's from the ghetto, he says. He's a gangster rapper. And here I'm wearing something like this. I'm just smiling. The two of us together. I just love the picture because it's just so funny to look at the differences between the two of us. But he was interesting. He was a good concert, too. Warren: Did he really pray for his audience to have soul or to have rhythm or whatever it was? That was a great caption. 30 Weaver: I have a good story to tell you, too, about George Clinton. You've heard of Parliament/Funkadelic and the Mothership and all that. He was here for Fancy Dress concert last year, the Thursday night concert, and I did a phone interview with him for the paper about two or three weeks before he was supposed to come here. It was a pretty good interview. He was talking about music and his inspirations and so forth, and he was very friendly on the phone. At the end, I said, "There's this place in town that we like to go eat. Would you like to have dinner with me before the concert?" He said, "Sure." So at the appointed hour, I showed up at the Ramada Inn out that side of town and knocked on the right door. You know the P-Funk All Stars. You know what they're dressed like. They're very wild-looking people with feathers and beads and multicolored everything. They look very psychedelic, I guess is what you would call them. I knock on the door, and one of the P-Funk All Stars, the backup singers, opens the door. I told him who I was, and they let me in, and there was George Clinton. You know what he looks like, at least. He was lying face down on the bed, and all across the room were just handfuls of marbles, like children's marbles, just all over the place. Really strange. I didn't ask what they were there for. This guy kind of motioned for him to get up, and he kind of got up and looked at me. Remember, we're going to go to dinner. He shook my hand and said hello, and he went into the bathroom and he put on this red jumpsuit, and it had "Parliament" emblazoned right here. And then he has waist-length braids, with like ribbons and things tied in them, and he tied all his braids together in like a big braid and put it on top of his head and then put a turban around it. So he was looking very strange, and plus the P-Funk All Stars were just multicolored dressed and very splashy looking. 31 So we got into my friend's car. I didn't have a car at that point. I told my friend I was going to have George Clinton autograph his seat, but I didn't. Anyway, we get in his car, and we go to the Lee-Hi truckstop. So we walk into Lee-Hi, and everyone turned around, the entire place turned around. I'm dressed pretty much like this, I had a jacket on, and then there was George Clinton. For some reason, there were students there that were having dinner, and they turned around and said, "Oh, shit. It's George Clinton." They came over to the table and like had him autograph placemats and things, the Virginia map placemat, George Clinton, P- Funk. So he signed that for a while, and then we ordered our food. He had a big thing of cottage cheese, because he was on a diet. Then he started talking about Japan. I wouldn't tell you, this is kind of graphic, but things about women that he liked, Japanese women in particular. It was just kind of odd. Wherever he would be talking and no matter what the subject was, he'd talk and then he'd break into rap all of a sudden, and the two singers would join in, the backup singers. He would be like, "And I was telling you this," and then he would start rapping, and you're like, "Whoa." They would join in with this whole little song. Then he would stop as soon as they began, and he would finish the sentence. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen before. He was just telling me stories of like fans and crazy people and stuff like that. By that time, it was time for us to go, and so we got back in the car and he popped in a tape of some new single he was working on, and they were like singing the song that they had on the tape. It was just so weird having it right there. I just thought it was very--we were passing by Lee Chapel, rapping about this "Jack and His Beanstalk," was the name of the song. We get to the pavilion and we get to that back area there, and he goes into his dressing room. That's the point where I met our cameraman from Channel 2. I was going to do a TV interview. Five minutes later, I knocked on his door and opened 32 the door, and there's just this naked man sitting there. So we kind of go around him, and there's a real smell of something in the air, probably pot in the air. I've never used marijuana, so I don't know. I'm just guessing that's what it was. George Clinton's sitting back in his chair kind of like this, and he motions. He says, "Come here," like this. So we come over, and he said a bunch of obscenities, answering our questions. I don't think he was trying to make us angry or anything. But one that he did say was just really funny. We said, "Mr. Clinton, how should we prepare ourselves for your arrival here at Washington and Lee?" He said, "Well, son, you better be getting yourselves some condoms, because when I'm finished with you, you're going to be feeling sexual." And then we followed him on stage as he began to sing, and it was a fantastic concert. Man, it was just amazing. It was so loud, too. I wrote about it. It was in the paper, too, so a lot of people know about it. But it was really a very strange experience, because you had the blackest man in the world here in Lexington, and he was fascinating. Warren: What an interesting experience. So is it the Lee-Hi truckstop where you take Tom Wolfe? Weaver: Exactly. I haven't told him this, but I've taken the whitest man in the world to Lee-Hi. I've also taken the blackest man in the world, George Clinton. Warren: Does the Lee-Hi balk when they see you coming? Weaver: Oh, no. They like me. All the waitresses know me. It's my heart, I guess. I go there and have some coffee at nighttime. They all know who I am, or at least they know my face, at least. I don't know why, this one cashier she just really likes me. Warren: I Warren: It's about the only place you can go late at night around here. 33 Weaver: Yeah, that's true. One cashier just calls me "Baby." She's like, "How're you doing?" She's very friendly. When I came back one summer, they were like, "We missed you. Where have you been?" Warren: That is a fabulous story. That is truly a classic. I don't think anybody else will tell me that story. Weaver: It was funny, whenever the alumni magazine came out with the article about me about "The Swing," it was on one page, and right directly opposite page was this gigantic picture of George Clinton. So I have both of them on my wall, just the way it was in the magazine. That was a bit of irony there that that's how it came out. Warren: I'm interested in the timing of your stay here at Washington and Lee, because you ended with mock convention. How important has the mock convention been through all four years, or is it really a one-year event? Weaver: They started planning my sophomore year, and I honestly had about zero interest in it. I thought it was kind of neat spectacle, and I had no interest in it. I'm not a very typical person to ask about that. A lot of people got excited about it, who did work on it, and I just had other things to do. I guess I'm not a good person to really talk about mock con. When it was here, when I saw it, I was really impressed by it, but as for its preparation, I really just had no interest. I don't know why. Warren: That's interesting. I would think as a journalism student you would be caught up in it. Weaver: Well, I was interested in the journalism sense of actually doing the coverage for it, but that was only when it was actually going on. But the planning for it, drawing up the platform and doing the political maneuvering and research and all that kind of stuff, I didn't want anything to do with that. I just was busy with other things. 34 Warren: Let's talk about the spectacle of it. Weaver: I think what really made it was the speakers there. I think that just by the fact th.at how they voted on things showed that it was they were pretending to have a convention, and maybe it's been more valid in previous years or been more regulated in previous years, and I'm sure they did a lot of work for it. Everyone did a lot of work for it. But when the actual convention came, it was all centered around who could speak when, and I think that's fine, too. The speakers were the best part. Newt Gingrich was really a fantastic speaker, I thought. Bill Bennett was a fantastic speaker. That's what I will remember is the speeches themselves, and just the fact they were here, too, in little tiny Lexington. I think that makes it the best. We had all the trappings of red, white, and blue and the balloons and the signs and everything else, too, but the star of the mock convention were the speakers, I think. That's what I thought was exciting, just to see them here in our town. Warren: Were you a delegate? Weaver: No, I was not a delegate. I worked a little bit on the TV coverage of it, and then there's a video coming out, I think this month, which there's a company that was hired to edit it all together, but the students assisted with the taping of the entire thing in preparation for this video. So that was the extent of my participation, which I would say is very minimal. Warren: One of the things that I picked up with mock convention that I haven't picked up before or since is it's some big deal about Texas around here. Weaver: Oh, yeah, people booing Texas. Warren: What was the Texas story? Weaver: I just think people just sort of generally rib Texas for just about anything. I don't think it had anything to do with mock con. Warren: Are there a lot of Texas people here? 35 Weaver: There are, but I wouldn't say it's too serious animosity. People just kind of gently rib people, just as you might rib somebody from West Virginia just because they might say they're backwoods or something like that. It's along the same lines of just kind of making fun of people, so I don't think it's too particularly important. Warren: Okay, because that's the only time I've had a sense of it. It sort of kept building to a crescendo, and I wondered if I'd missed something. Okay, let's talk about the speaking tradition. Weaver: That's interesting. Lamar Cecil, maybe he can tell you, or Rob Mish could tell you that the speaking tradition was there and it kind of died maybe in the late sixties, and it was Kathekon, primarily, who focused their energies on kind of bringing more attention to it. And so the speaking tradition, only in the past couple of years, has gained priority, I guess, in terms of little cards that are printed out saying, "Speak." It has a picture of Lee and of Washington on it, and it has the words "The Swing," and it's just sort of things we give out to freshmen. So it's almost artificial how it's been brought back, and may be one of those traditions that's just in a different form now than it used to be. But for a while there, I don't think anybody really tried to enforce it. I think the students stopped paying the fines in the late sixties if they were fined for not saying hello. They just stopped doing it altogether. The university or the students just stopped trying to collect the fines, and so it just kind of died out for a while. That was part of Kathekon's mission was to revive that, and so the speaking tradition, a lot of people speak about it as if it's been continuous from here back until Lee, but that isn't true. I'm not the best person to ask about that, but Rob Mish could tell you that full story there and whenever he came here, what it was like. He was a graduate of '76, and then I think he came back here in '84, or maybe even later than that. I'm not even sure when he came back. But he could tell you more about 36 how the speaking tradition came back again and how people are trying to emphasize it now. Warren: That's certainly my experience, because it's new to me, and I think it's wonderful. Weaver: Yeah. I speak, anyway. You get in the habit of just saying hello and just looking people in the eye, and a friendly look is sometimes even better than a hello. That's that comfort level that we talked about before. It feels good to be here. It feels good to like not have someone glare at you when you walk by. That adds to it, I think. Warren: Getting back to the Honor System, how does the Honor System coexist with the blatant breaking of laws? Weaver: That's another thing we discussed on my show. I should get you a tape of that and you can see. That was all the EC members talking about their impressions of honor and what they're planning for this year, interpretations and so forth. One thing that Marcus Rayner--he's, I think, the secretary of the EC--says that the Honor System does not want to get involved in issues of legality, because you cannot measure degrees of legality, like would it be an honor violation to break the speed limit, or what about drinking under age or cigarettes under age or something like that? Whenever you get into those degrees of legality, it's very difficult. So the Honor System sticks to other areas that the majority of the student body feels it should. The thing with the Honor System is it evolves, and it could evolve to involve underage drinking, but I don't think it will. I think it will stick to a general area, the general consensus of the student body. The unique thing about the Honor System is that it's not prescri?ed by the administration. It's not prescribed by anyone else but the students. They decide what is honorable and what is not honorable, and all students have to abide by those decisions. 37 Warren: So it really doesn't have anything to do with the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Weaver: No. Let's say that, if I was eighteen and I had a case of beer in my hand and the policeman said, "How old are you?" If I said twenty-one, that would be a lie, and then I could be thrown out of school for that. But if I said I was eighteen, all he could do was take it from me and cite me, and the Honor System would not apply there. It's only when you disguise what you're doing, when you try to lie, that's when it becomes a question of honor. That's where the Honor System is involved. That's why you can't have fake I.D.s here, because you're lying about your identity, or you may say, "I'm twenty-one," when you're really eighteen or you're underage. So that's the application when it comes to alcohol, I think, and that's the majority opinion of people right there, I think, of students. That's its most practical application, for underage drinking. Warren: That's very clearly said. Obviously, nobody has any problems with supplying alcohol to underage people. That's just plain not an issue here. Weaver: No. Warren: I think it's an interesting distinction that's made, but it's obviously the tradition. What about hazing? Let's talk about hazing. Weaver: It's there, and that's not what the administration will want to hear. I don't know how truthful they would want it portrayed, but it's still there. It's based on the belief that people should work for what they get, and you have to work at a friendship, you have to work at building trust with somebody in order to receive the trust of other people, and you have to prove yourself. Pledgeship is a time of proving yourself, and so that's when the hazing takes place. It's to prove how dedicated freshmen are to certain ideas and to certain things and to each other, to test the unity of a group to make sure that in times of trouble and 38 times of stress, will you still be there for your friends, for your fraternity brothers. If you fail that test, then that indicates on you that it's not for you, that you could not be completely with the group. I guess that has sort of a psychological twist to it there. I'm sure it does. But I think hazing, according to the law, is telling someone to do anything, pretty much, sort of compelling them to do something. There's a difference between violence and there's a difference between just kind of petty things, like cleaning up or running an errand here or there. I don't think that's particularly harmful, and I don't really disagree with that. But we don't hit people, we don't attack people. That's where the problem is, when you have physical violence. I think that's crossing the line. It's hard to say, yeah, I want to be a hazer or I want hazing here, but hazing is what you can call any compulsion for freshmen to do anything. The administration is very strange on that. They'll say no hazing, but what is hazing exactly? If you try to define hazing, then you get into all kinds of areas of, "Well, what time of day was it that you asked them to do this?" or "How far was that place that you asked them to go to?" I think the administration should just butt out of it completely. As long as there's not violence, as long as people aren't being hurt, then stay out of it. That's part of student autonomy right there. The students should decide what is appropriate and what is not appropriate in the realm of it not being harmful. If there was violence, then the president and the administration I think would have the prerogative to say, "Stop it, and we're going to make you stop it." But if it's not, then I think it's not their business. That's why I think there's a lot of student resentment right now is changing the rush rules to winter rush. People hate that, and people really hate the administration for doing that, too. I've never seen people so angry ever about it. 39 The administration may trot out some student who says, "Well, I agree with winter rush," but that's not the predominant opinion at all, and I sharply disagree with it. I think that's going to lead to a great number of problems. It all evolves into what I think--students have the grand conspiracy theory. I'm sure you've heard of it, or you may have heard parts of it. The theory is that the university wants to become more like liberal arts colleges and sort of rise in the rankings of U.S. News and World Report, other indications of what makes a good school, and part of that is not having a stronger system, having more centralized social activities, having more women and more liberal topics and so forth, and that goes against the character of Washington and Lee. A lot of people feel that the administration is sacrificing the identity of the school in the name of higher rankings on some chart, and some people are angry about that. They feel you're misplacing a priority, and a lot of people see an administration heavy-handedness when it comes to this kind of thing. I don't believe the conspiracy theory is true, that they're trying to get rid of some fraternities in order to have sorority houses and then maybe have theme housing after that and then kind of break it down completely. I think that part of the theory is not true because of the incredible investment of money that the school has put into those houses. They're not going to abandon them. But I think fraternities, it's important to keep them. They serve a real purpose. Fraternities, when the freshmen get here, including this year, not including next year because of winter rush, they have big brothers, almost, to tell them, "This is what you need to do. You need to take this class or not take that class. You need to stop staying up all night and drinking. You've got to do your work. You've got to focus on what's important here." I think that fraternities guide freshmen. Professors will often, if a freshman is having trouble in class, they'll call up some upperclassman, Sigma Nu, for example, 40 and say, "So-and-so, one of your freshmen, is not doing well. I want you to tutor him. I want you to make sure he does well." And so you'll go and you'll help the freshman. It's sort of like a protection system, almost. It's part of that new family. This is a funny term, but I call it kind of fraternal paternalism, almost. The best you can hope for is fraternities looking out for freshmen. I think they genuinely do, and I think whenever the administration tries to control fraternities, they hamper their abilities. Not every fraternity lives up to its ideals, but I think for the most part they do, or they try to. And so I think that every single interruption you make in fraternities is detrimental and it's very harmful. You makes you very angry, too, that people would interrupt like that. Warren: What's the argument in the other direction? What's the argument for winter rush? Weaver: This is a funny thing, too. The faculty are the people who decide when rush is going to be, and I've never understood why the faculty is empowered with that decision. It's not academic at all, but it's just there. But the faculty feel that the freshmen would focus more on their grades or on their classes if they weren't distracted by fraternities and rush and so forth in the first semester. Also, the school says that they want to promote class unity, and this is a concept that I feel is impractical. You can't have 1,600 close people, and people naturally go into little groups. I think that's just human nature, and you can't prevent that. The question you run into is, how are you going to entertain these people for the first semester? This is a town where there's not much to do, and if the freshmen males can't go to parties because of rush rules, you're going to have a bunch of bored people, and you're going to have to entertain them somehow and establish alternate social activities for them. Then you're taking away focus from the fraternity system. You're decreasing interest in the fraternity system, so less 41 people join. Well, less people join, you have less money go back to the school to pay for the houses. So they're hurting themselves, I think, by this process. The same thing with the idea of the sophomore housing requirement. They are requiring sophomores to live in university housing this year, and they say it's for two reasons. They say it's because financial to recoup some of the money spent on the housing, and it's for class unity. Well, no one believes it's for class unity. It's financial. They want their money back on Gaines Hall and on Woods Creek and the other houses around there. What I think is really silly is now they're talking about building sorority houses. I'm in favor of sorority houses. I think the sorority girls should have that, because the fraternity guys have that. But what you're going to have again is all these empty rooms in Gaines and Woods Creek, because the sorority girls who live there now are going to live in the houses. So you're going to end up with more debt, more buildings, and just a deeper problem because they have upset the balance of what used to be here, where people lived in the town after their sophomore year or in fraternity houses. It was fine that way there, too. The town depends upon the students. That's a very important part of the economy, not to say that the renting is the only part of the student involvement there, but I think that it's important to keep that in mind, at least, town relations. It looks very arrogant of the university to simply withdraw a major part of their market. People depend upon the university for the livelihood, and I think that that's arrogant of the university to do that; and plus, they're digging themselves in a really big financial hole by doing this, I think. I've never heard anybody counter that argument at all. I actually did a show about this, too. I brought up this idea of this is going to big money drain in the very end and it's going to defeat the purpose of which they started out doing. I feel that the reasons why they're doing a lot of these changes are wrong, just for the wrong reasons, and they're going to create bigger problems. That's just my personal 42 opinion, but I think a lot of students agree with that now, looking back on it, and I have never ever heard any of the administration counter any of those arguments at all legitimately. So perhaps that would be something to bring up to other people to see what they think of that. But that is known as the conspiracy theory, I guess, around campus. It's what I call it. Basically, it's sort of the grand master plan. I don't think it's as devious as that. I just think it's a series of bad mistakes that's going to come back to haunt this place, and I don't want that to happen. This university should be strong, and I'm just afraid they're making mistakes now that are going to have real repercussions later on along the way. That was a real pontification, wasn't it? Warren: Yes. Is it comfortable up there on that soapbox? You made a reference to the big investment the university has made into the houses. How aware are the fraternity members of the concept of Fraternity Renaissance? What does that mean to you? Weaver: Oh, everyone knows that the houses were rebuilt. The university said, "Either you will refurbish these houses up to code or we're going to call the health inspectors and everybody else in on you. Or you can turn the deeds over to us. We'll do it. We'll let you live there if you live by a certain standard, certain rules of the housemother and cleaning service and so forth." I was a very smart move by John Wilson, because fraternities are very important to alumni. The fraternities have always been important, and to maintain the fraternities maintains interest by the alumni in coming back here to see that things are still well, things are still good when they come back to the houses for the parties and the cocktail parties and everything else. Everyone's aware of the huge investment. I think it was $13 million, maybe $12 million for the sixteen houses. I'm not sure exactly. I believe that was financed 43 by either a bond offering or I'm not sure what. But every single fraternity member pays $400 a year in what they call the Greek tax, and the Greek tax goes toward paying that debt of the $12 million or whatever it was that they had to borrow. I think some of it they just outright spent, and the rest was financed. The Greek tax goes to pay for that. Everyone's aware that they are paying for this probably for a very long time, and so that's what they see as the leftover fraternity renaissance. I think it was a good investment. I don't mind paying it. I think it was right for the university to do. Warren: Fraternity houses are in much better shape than they were twenty years ago. Weaver: Oh, yeah. Warren: What's the sense of responsibility that brothers have for maintaining them? Weaver: Well, if we don't we're fined, so it's immediately a financial idea. But it's also a sense of pride. It's I don't want to live in a dirty house, I don't want things broken in my house. It's nice now, and I like it being nice. So if someone's roughhousing with the furniture, we're real careful about that, because it's really expensive and I don't want broken things in my house. I have a real pride in the actual house itself. I think a lot of people do. So it's kind of, if you give people something nice, they'll keep it nice, if you give it to them, and in some sense they have given this to us. I think that's what fraternity members feel is they want to keep it nice, because what can be better than these beautiful homes, wood floors and beautiful furniture and plants and a fireplace, and why would you want to destroy that? So we're real defensive about it. 44 Warren: Okay, back at the beginning. Let's go full circle here and finish off. Get me through joining a fraternity. What are the steps? Weaver: Well, it differs per year, but in general I'll tell you. I believe this year you had, when you first got here Saturday evening--that's when freshmen get here. Saturday they get here. Parties start ten days--I mean, for ten nights after that there's a party every single night by every single fraternity. You want to get to know freshmen and attract them to come around to your house. That's the unofficial part of rush, and then rush officially starts some date after classes have started. At that point, there are certain open contact periods where freshmen can come down to the houses for a cookout. There's no alcohol there, so there's no big parties there for the open contact parts of it. They can come down and play volleyball or watch TV or something like that. Supposedly, they'll come down to your house if they met you during all the parties and if they liked you, so that's when you first introduce yourself. If they like you, then they'll come to your open contact times. Then you have what's called the rush dates, and that's where all the freshmen go to every single fraternity house in little tiny groups, and it's about maybe half an hour or forty-five minutes, where you wear a coat and tie and you have, I guess, conversations, but they're in the fraternity house and it's a tie on and, "Where are you from?" and so forth, a little bit more formal than the other open contact periods. By this time, it's hoped that you'll some of the freshmen then, that you'll like them and you'll be aiming for certain people. After the freshmen have gone to all the sixteen houses or whatever the number of houses there are, then they narrow it down. They have what are called rush dates. There are four rush dates, where you pick your top four houses and you turn that list in, and the fraternities will write a list of the people they want. If lists match, they you have a rush date. So if Sigma Nu chooses Bob and Bob chooses 45 Sigma Nu, then he has a rush date with us. Now, if we don't choose Bob, he doesn't have a rush date with us. Most houses--! know it's the case in my house. If one person doesn't like a freshman, he's gone. One person can dislike you, and you have no chance at all of joining. So whenever you're invited for a rush date, you know that people really want you right there if you're invited back. So you come for a rush date, and that's rush date one and two right there, the first two of them. If they like the freshman they say--actually, they say it to all of them, "We'd like you to come back for rush date number five." It's assumed at rush date number five that you receive your bid to join. So at rush date one and two, after they have dinner, a nice dinner at the house, you take them upstairs and you talk a little bit about the house and say, "We'd like you to come back for rush date number five." They say yes or no, and you write their name down and so forth. Then after one, two, three, and four, rush dates one, two, three, and four are done, then everyone has a meeting to talk about the freshman. It's at that point that, if someone doesn't like you, they can get rid of you right there. We all vote to extend a bid after we talk about the attributes or the negative qualities of all the different freshmen we're considering. And then if we've invited someone to number five who just got killed in the process, we call them up and say, "Never mind. Sorry. You can use the time for something else." If they don't hear from us, they come back for five, and then after dinner, there's another nice dinner at five, they are offered a bid. Supposedly, they can be offered bids at rush dates five, six, seven, and eight, but most of the time it works where they're offered bids at five and six. Then they're invited back to dinner for seven and eight just to come back for dinner again. That is on a Thursday, I think. That's a Wednesday, Thursday, and then they come down and tear their bids on a Friday night at a party. 46 You see those photos right there of the big mass of people. That's the tradition, at least in my house, where at the first band break everyone goes out into the well and all the women have their beers and pour beer and water and things all over all_ the guys. They rip off the shirts of the freshmen, you give them a new fraternity shirt, and that means they have torn their bid there, and that's how they join. That's the beginning right there. That's all within the first two or three weeks when the freshmen get here. Warren: So a freshman can receive bids from numerous houses? Weaver: Yes, and then he chooses which one he wants. Warren: Is it typical to get bids from several houses? Weaver: I'd say two or three. Not beyond that, though. Warren: Is that because the freshman has concentrated on those two or three houses? Weaver: You have to have made an impression. In order to be given a bid, they have to know who you are and have socialized with you and liked your personality in the discussions they have had with you. We don't say, "He's been over that so- and-so house. We're just going to forget him, anyway." There's genuine competition between the houses for people, and then the freshman decides. Warren: There are hundreds of people. How can you really get to know hundreds of people? Weaver: You just try, I guess. You figure about 250 men there. You just try. Warren: Obviously you're a big proponent of the system. It seems to work. Weaver: Absolutely. I see no problem with it at all. Warren: How many people fall through the cracks? How many people don't get invited who want to? Weaver: I'd say ten to fifteen, maybe, don't join the fraternity system. Either they weren't invited or they didn't rush. There are some people who are independents 47 here who seem to be happy with it, and that's fine. I mean, more power to them. But most of the people are very unhappy about not being in fraternities or they get very bitter about the power of fraternities and the predominance in the social scene and then they leave because they don't want to be in that environment anymore. That gets us back to what we initially talked about, is that there are very few people who are not like other people, because they tend to leave if they're not accepted into the forum, into like the traditions. And that's the problem with winter rush, is that if you have a couple months' period where people don't join fraternities, then you have probably fewer people who will join them, more people who don't, and they may be more disaffected and they may want to be entertained in different ways and feel they're owed entertainment and owed something to do. So then you've got the idea of maybe having a theme house for them or having activities for them. But the problem with that that people feel is that everyone pays a student activity fee, and then people pay their fraternity dues on top of that. I pay fraternity dues for things I do with the fraternity, and that's what you get for your dues. You get certain activities with your student activities fee, but I feel that my student activity fee should not be used for the entertainment of other people in their own little groups. They should be willing to put the extra money out, like I do for my fraternity dues. They should be willing to put out the money for their entertainment. I shouldn't be paying for another person. That's why people resent independents sometimes, because some of them feel as if they're owed something because they didn't get into the fraternity system or they didn't want to. So there's resentment on that level, too. Warren: There's certainly a lot of things to do on this campus that don't really have to do with--from my perspective, I look at the calendar, and there's a lot of 48 interesting things to do here, maybe not social things, but interesting things when you get to be an old fart like me. Weaver: Yeah. But for the young folks, though, everyone wants to have friends. Warren: But what I want to say is that a lot of the things that I attend, I'm amazed at how few students are there. I lot of the things that happen and Lenfest Center doesn't seem to attract students. Is that because they're involved in things at the fraternities or are things that are offered not of interest to students? Weaver: I think that some things that are offered are just not of interest to students, and I think that has nothing to do with fraternities at all. I don't know, I'm not always interested in walking to Lenfest on a Tuesday night if I have homework to do, too. It just really depends. And that's why some things are attended more than others. It's really not dependent upon anything like that, I don't feel. Warren: Well, the house fills up even without you, but it's interesting to me to look around and know that this is a university and how few students I see there. I have very little tape left, but am I right in my perception? Did four women just get elected to the presidents of each class? I saw the list of people who were elected to class offices. Weaver: It could be. I don't know. Warren: That isn't anything that anybody pays any attention to? I thought it was kind of remarkable, it looked to me. I guess as a senior you don't care that much. Weaver: If it was maybe the second year of coeducation it would be remarkable, but I don't feel that women--1 don't feel it's unique for women to be in leadership positions here anymore, because they've been around long enough and they've worked hard enough. I don't think people make that distinction, "Oh, a woman president," as opposed to a man president at all. I just don't feel that's there anymore. And maybe that's a good thing. Perhaps we've sort of gone beyond the blinders of, you know, they're dead and coed, I guess. 49 Warren: Well, anything you want to get in here that we haven't yakked about? Weaver: I don't think so. We can do this again sometime. If I think of something new, I'll tell you, I guess. Warren: If you have any more exciting trips to Lee-Hi that you want to get on tape. That was a great story. I'll have fun playing that one to people. You know, something I never heard you mention is sports. Are athletics of importance to you? Weaver: Athletics are very important--not to me personally. I don't like sports. People who play them, I respect them, but I could care less about sports, honestly. Warren: But when a football game happens, is there a big crowd out there? Weaver: No, and I would say that, even for people who like sports, the reason they show up is for the tailgate parties which are in the parking lots. People go to lacrosse games, I think, more than anything else, because the lacrosse team wins a lot. The football team doesn't win a lot, and people will only go--there's an old joke that the only time you ever see a football game is if you were talking to somebody at a cocktail party who had their back turned to field. You might look over their shoulder and see there's a game going on there, but you wouldn't want to focus on it. People go to homecoming and go to maybe parents' weekend, but that's it. I've never sat through an entire football game, never had any interest in doing it. That's just not because I'm not a sports fan. It's just because no one does it. I feel sorry for the team because there's no one out there, but it's just the way we are. Warren: It looks that way to me. I usually don't hear people talking about it. Weaver: I'd agree. Warren: All right. Well, my little light is flashing, so I guess we've used up our hour and a half. Weaver: Out of tape. Warren: It's been fun. [End of Interview] 50