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Phi beta sigma fraternity videos11/29/2023 (This is based on a 1950 investigation of a hazing death, which this column will return to in its succeeding editions). It all began with the usual scrap between individual fratmen, quickly developing into group fistfights. There was general consensus within UP that the violence of the Japanese Occupation and the American Liberation/Destruction of Manila took its toll on UP students. They also vied to get the smartest of freshmen and sophomores to join them.Īvailable data suggest that rumbles became part of the fraternity routine after World War II. Back then, the older law fraternities competed at student elections (their unusual Mason-like organization gave fraternities the edge over other student associations), and ran the Philippine Collegian. These political fidelities, however, were the more contemporary edition of long-standing rivalries that – for some fraternities – dated back to the pre-war period. The Left had varying influence inside Alpha Sigma, Beta Sigma and Scintilla Juris (and some slight sway on Tau Rho Xi) while the Alpha Phi Omega, Alpha Phi Beta and Upsilon Sigma Phi were fraternities identified with the Marcos Right. In my time most of the rivalries were dictated partly by their political affiliations (the exceptions were the Engineering fraternities). These were the fraternities I remembered then. But there were also fraternities specific to the college, prominent of which were Alpha Phi Omega, Beta Sigma, Pi Omicron, Sigma Kappa Pi, and Tau Rho Xi. The longest tradition rivalry were between law fraternities (Alpha Phi Beta, Alpha Sigma, Scintilla Juris, Sigma Rho, Upsilon Sigma Phi) followed closely by brotherhoods from the College of Engineering (Beta Epsilon, Epsilon Chi and Tau Alpha) and from the now-defunct College of Arts and Sciences where some of these fraternities have members who were either pre-law majors and those still taking their general education courses prior to moving to the specialization. (READ: UP frat attacks: ‘Suspects used baseball bat, lead pipes’) Whether they did beat each other up after class was something I never had a chance to know. In most cases this mild threat seemed to work, for even members of opposing fraternities appeared to be able to work together when told to be part of a research group. I then would tell them in the strongest of my then cigarette-parched voice that I did not care what they will do to each other outside my room, but as long as they were in my class, they had to treat each other as fellow UP students. Way back when I was a lecturer at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, I would sometimes start the semester by asking who among my male students were fraternity members. After ascertaining the fraternities they belonged to, I then reminded these “frat boys” that I am familiar with the rivalries in campus. This is the first of a three-part series on fraternities at the University of the Philippines.
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