You've definitely seen fraternities in American films - weird by our standards organizations that exist in US universities. Their members, looking like a mixture of drunken idiots and Freemasons, are often featured in youth comedies. We even discussed with you such a topic as "The Shocking Traditions of American Students" - not everyone then agreed in the comments that this exists.
They wear their own colors, have their own secret rituals, handshakes and passwords, and live in the same big house. And in their ranks, hazing and drunkenness flourish, and they all clearly went crazy with their company. In general, a state within a state with elements of a closed men's club.
But why are they in America, but not here? The answer, as is often the case, lies deep in history.
Where did the student fraternities come from?
The roots of this question must be sought deeply in history. It all started in the 16th-17th centuries in England. Universities then became so prestigious that the elite, even kings, did not hesitate to send their offspring to some Oxford. The future royal majesty also went to couples, passed exams with a hangover and copied from excellent students.
Phi Kappa Sigma student fraternity.
As a result, a curious situation arose: when the prince became king, he chose those close to him not from those who were smarter or more capable, but from those with whom he spent his best (that is, student) years.
Promotional video:
At the university, he formed a company with which he went through fire and water in five years. So he knows for sure that Sir Dork is fabulously rich and gives birth, but a mumble and a simpleton and, moreover, lost his virginity later than the rest. But Sir Bork is from a poor family, but during a raid on a brothel he saved the prince, risking his reputation, and is also able to drink a barrel of wine and not get drunk, and anyone can talk. All in all, an ideal candidate for the role of foreign minister.
In other words, a new and very effective social lift has developed in the universities of Britain (albeit for a select few). Every time a scion of the royal family entered the university, a gang rallied around him, whose members had a chance to stay next to the monarch for the rest of their lives. It was a fully formed student fraternity - with limited membership, secret codes, general visits to a brothel, drinking binges and fights, during which it was found out who was worth what.
Then the Anglo-Saxon model of higher education spread to the colonies. But for obvious reasons, she lost the most important social lift - proximity to the future monarch. Before the American Revolution, no one really cared - all the same, all power was concentrated on the other end of the ocean.
House of brotherhood.
Then the American colonies gained independence and the problem of social lifts in universities became relevant for them as well. Strictly speaking, this is how student fraternities appeared. Moreover, one did not have to go far for examples. First, there were the Freemasons - the brotherhoods learned a lot from them. Secondly, there was a completely natural mechanism for student companies and partnerships. Thanks to your studies, you yourself have probably found friends with whom you still communicate.
Both sources - natural friendships and imitations of the Freemasons - gave rise to American student fraternities. Something similar, however, was not only in the United States: the German Studentenverbindung, for example, exist to this day. But it was in the states that the soil turned out to be the best, and therefore the culture of brotherhoods was formed solid, in contrast to the same Russia (but we will return to it a little later).
It may seem that student fraternities in America were originally created with the support of universities and created "from above". But the opposite is true. The fact is that after the American Revolution, the children of the elite wanted to get hold of communities like those that cobbled together around monarchs overseas. However, democratic trends did not contribute to this. To unite in secret societies full of snobbishness was considered undemocratic.
Being a Freemason was no longer fashionable, and even a little shameful. But the country needed the forge of the elite, and the elite wanted to isolate themselves from the "plebeians", no matter how powerful the pathos of democracy in the country was. And the first student associations in many ways resembled the very brotherhoods that had developed around the princes in the universities of Britain.
Young people rented a house in the woods, where they drank, arranged orgies with prostitutes, and also read, argued about politics and played music. Later, after graduating from university, they kept in touch and helped each other in the service. The one who climbed higher pulled up his comrades to the bread places, and they answered him with loyalty. Including in corruption schemes, to be honest.
Wilhelm and Mary College is where it all began.
The first known and open student fraternity was the Phi Beta Kappa. It originated in 1775 at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. As a matter of fact, the members of this society laid the foundation for the entire movement: they came up with a name consisting of three Greek letters, adopted the idea of recruitment and initiation rituals from the Masons.
The rituals, by the way, often resembled ancient Greek religious mysteries, like the Eleusinian, so we can safely say that the brotherhoods initially gravitate towards the occult, although now this has clearly degenerated into thoughtless repetition.
Initiation ritual.
For example, one of the initiations assumed that the neophyte would lie in a coffin all night. Processions, including torches, were also in motion. Newcomers were often blindfolded and performed painful actions - they could even be cauterized with iron. All this signified rebirth: the new member of the brotherhood went through torment, went blind, died and rose again - happy, enlightened and ready for drinking.
All the same "Phi Beta Kappa" introduced the practice of hazing - student hazing, the purpose of which is to weed out the unreliable and weak in spirit, as well as to cement the community with blood and hierarchy.
So why do they have it and we don't?
From the history of the emergence of student fraternities, it is already clear why they took root and flourished in the United States, but never developed in our country. At their core, they are very conservative and give off the spirit of the Middle Ages. A closed male community with hazing, its own language and charter is either an army or a prison. In order for this to develop in universities, a serious medieval base is needed.
We, of course, did not have a developed university culture in the Middle Ages. And even more so, no one sent the heirs to the throne to domestic universities in the 16th-17th centuries, if only for the reason that there were no domestic universities.
Our universities, after their appearance under Elizabeth, became a high-speed social elevator in and of themselves. The very fact of admission was already a source of status. In addition, the Russian nobility already had a similar community - in fact, the nobility itself. And already inside it it was possible to join all sorts of cliques, Masonic lodges and so on.
As a result, student fraternities in Russia did not really take root simply because they were unnecessary. For their comfortable existence, the rudiments of a bourgeois society were needed, and here it was a bit tough with this in the 17th century. Well, after the revolution, you know, you could not even dream of any secret brotherhoods with pseudo-Masonic rituals.
Here is the answer in short: there are student fraternities in the United States, because in the 17th century, English monarchs gave their heirs to the university.
Vladimir Brovin