For a few short months in the fall of 2023, I found a community in the last place I ever expected: a frat house.

The brothers treated me like one of their own, welcoming me, joking with me, insisting that I was fitting right in. By the time spring semester began, joining the fraternity felt like my natural next step. But when rush week arrived, I quickly learned how easily belonging can be revoked when a group decides your identity is a liability. 

When I arrived in college, I avoided Greek life instinctively. Everything I had heard, from the hypermasculine culture to the exclusivity, made it feel like a world that I was not meant to be a part of, especially as a queer man.

But when my closest friends joined one of Kent State’s many fraternities and moved into their chapter house, that distance vanished. Suddenly, Greek life was no longer something I could judge from the outside looking in. It was where my friends lived, ate and laughed in a house that I was now expected to visit. 

My first time at the frat house was like a disappointing safari ride. The rooms were bare, the house was quiet and there wasn’t nearly as much “wildlife” as I had expected. I only stuck around for a short time before returning to the safety of my apartment. 

“I was definitely a little apprehensive.” My friend, who asked to remain anonymous, says while recalling that night. “I didn’t really know what to expect. I understood that there might be people there who weren’t necessarily thrilled about it, but I also didn’t really care.”

I reluctantly returned the following night for a kickback, where I spent a majority of my time scrolling on my phone, occasionally glancing up to watch four strangers drink beer and play a game involving throwing a die in the air and sometimes running around the table like chickens with their heads cut off. 

“If you’re going to be here, you need to be more present,” my friend told me. 

So I did. I slowly started learning the brothers’ names, joining their conversations, laughing at their jokes and sticking around for longer than 30 minutes at a time.

Initially, I was convinced that there was no place for me in that house. But somewhere between the late-night conversations and the way they’d excitedly yell my name when I entered the room, I suddenly felt the most shocking sensation; I was starting to belong. 

And it wasn’t just on the surface. For the first time, I felt fully embraced by a group of men without my sexuality feeling like something that I had to conceal.

At parties, when I clumsily flirted or made romantic advances with a guy I found attractive, the brothers didn’t recoil or make it weird. In fact, they hyped me up, nodded in approval and teased me the way they would have any of the other guys. It was so small, yet so significant. 

If someone had brought up the idea of rushing the fraternity just a few months earlier, I would have laughed. But now, feeling so confidently that I belonged, rushing didn’t just feel like an inviting idea; it felt more or less inevitable. 

That’s when the small cracks started to appear. 

The Spring 2024 rush week started with a house tour, during which “potential new members” would have the opportunity to meet all the brothers.

Going into this event, I felt not only at ease, but almost sorry for any other potential new members coming into this event. After all, I had an advantage over them: I was already familiar with a majority of the fraternity. At least, I thought I was. 

When I came to the first two rush events, which also included a Cavs watch party and wing night, something felt different. Most of the brothers, barring my close friends, seemed to avoid engaging with me.

It’s as if they realized that I was no longer just a friend-of-a-friend; someone they only had to be polite to in passing. The idea of my permanence changed things, and made me much harder to ignore. 

After I registered to rush and made small talk with as many of the brothers as I could, I retreated back into my friend’s room, confused but still completely unaware of the conversations that were now happening within the fraternity. Conversations in which I was at the center. 

I reluctantly skipped the third rush event – a bowling night at Spins Bowl – but felt confident in my standing nonetheless.

For months leading up to rush, I heard the same reassuring whispers of how I was an easy yes, a shoo-in and had nothing to worry about. I was still convinced, despite the awkward side-eyes and lack of excitement from the other brothers that I pretended not to see. 

By the fourth rush event, it became clear the fraternity was having recruitment problems of their own. I was one of two PNMs who made it to information night.

For whatever reason, it made me more hopeful. I thought, if they have so few options, there is no way they’d let us go. Five days later, their recruitment chair DM’d me asking if I could come in for my interview that day. 

I shivered outside the door that night, from both the cold and anticipation. This interview was my final step. When the door opened for me to enter my interview, I found the entire executive board looking back at me, many of whom I had barely spoken to.

The interview lasted no more than 20 minutes. They asked why I was rushing, what I’d bring to the table, how I’d handle conflicts at parties, plus a few odd questions thrown in for laughs. 

I left my interview feeling as confident as ever, later being told that I had said all of the right things. 

But if that were true, then why did everything start to go wrong from there?

Two days later was meant to be the fraternities’ only invite-only event, where PNMs received their bid to join. Instead, one of the brothers told me that this event had been pushed back to allow for a second round of rush, due to their low recruitment numbers so far. It sounded like a cheap excuse, but I thought little of it. 

But suddenly there was radio silence. For weeks. 

When I brought up rush, the air in the room changed. The conversation quickly shifted. Deep down, I knew what it meant, but I kept it to myself.

Until a drunken confession revealed the conclusions I had already come to on my own: I would not be receiving a bid due to “conflicting beliefs and ideologies.” 

I put on a brave face at the time, but I felt humiliated. I had convinced myself that everyone wanted me there, and that I found a traditionally masculine space where my sexual orientation wasn’t something that I had to tuck away. 

Everything I learned in the year that followed made things worse. According to my friend in the fraternity, my membership was barely even discussed. I was never given a vote. I was simply swept under the rug, discarded so the president could end recruitment without addressing me at all. 

“I think a majority of the room has their minds made up,” my friend says. “And nobody wanted to say it out loud because they didn’t want to face the reality of what they were admitting to.”

I did not learn about what the conversations between high-ranking members were like until much later. An anonymous executive board member told me my largest obstacles to getting a bid were their president and social chair at the time.

At various points, they pointed to my sexuality, my grades — despite multiple active brothers having lower GPAs than my own — and a vague allegation that I was “weird with girls,” which was as baseless as it was confusing. Their more controversial claims were often disguised as concerns for other brothers’ feelings, not reflections of their own. 

I later spoke with Michele Criss, assistant director of Fraternity and Sorority Life at Kent State, to give some broader context to my experience. She emphasized the challenges that come with preventing situations like this from occurring. 

“Within Senate Bill 1 and the things we can and cannot do as staff members right now, it’s really on our students and our governing council leaders to carry forward that inclusivity work,” Criss says. 

At the same time, she emphasized that not all fraternities share the same ideologies. One notable example she brought up was a gay member of another fraternity who currently serves on the Interfraternity Council, showing that inclusivity is always possible if the leadership allows for it. 

My experience taught me a valuable lesson about belonging: it simply isn’t guaranteed. While I may have been welcomed by some, systemic barriers prevented me from ever truly belonging in that fraternity.

While Greek life may offer connection to many, my story demonstrates that inclusivity requires more than just shared laughs and nods of approval. It requires active effort on both ends, and a willingness to create a space where everyone belongs.

Connor Nagy is a web writer. Contact him at [email protected].