Archives for May 2026

When Pi Kappa Alpha Ran ACAmania at the University of Maryland

May 27, 2026 by Shawn Collins

It was early 1989 when my PiKA brother, Rich Dickson, mentioned at one of our chapter meetings that the fraternity would be running a large-scale, multi-day sale of ACA JOE clothing to benefit Family Stress Services in Washington, D.C.

Dickson’s mother ran the retailer, ACA JOE, at the time, and Rich organized ACAmania with some other fraternity brothers. The event took place at Ritchie Coliseum on the University of Maryland campus.

The whole building was filled with tables with merchandise from ACA JOE, and all of us helped to put out clothes, ring up sales, etc. I guess we were selling all of their clearance items, since the prices were cheap, and tons of students came through and bought the gear.

I have no idea how well the final sales went, but $5,000 was donated to Family Stress Services, and the clothing we sold was all over campus for years after. I bought a bunch of stuff, including some rugby shirts with thin, colorful stripes and a blue jacket with shoulder pads (I regretted that one, but wore it for a while because I needed a jacket).

As we were promoting the event, a photographer came to the fraternity house to get a picture of us all wearing our ACA JOE t-shirts on the front porch.

They made posters from the picture, which were displayed at the ACA JOE stores, and I still have my copy. But those clothes are long gone.

In the December 1989 edition of Shield and Diamond (the magazine from the national headquarters of Pi Kappa Alpha), the recap of our chapter (Delta Psi) mentioned ACAmania…

Delta Psi chapter also presented an ACAMANIA weekend in April, a giant clothing sale which raised money for Family Stress Services in Washington, D.C., to help fight child abuse.

There was more coverage in the Shield & Diamond chapter notes in the March 1990 issue about the first ACAmania and the upcoming second event.

ACA-MANIA was a major effort put forth this year by the chapter. Pioneered by Rich Dickson, with a hard-working support staff including Andrew Auwerda, Rob Bruno, and Joe Millman, this venture has been widely successful. The chapter is now on the verge of the second annual ACA-MANIA at Maryland, and several similar undertakings have been launched at Pike chapters around the country. The three-day public awareness and fundraising event is designed to bring attention to the problem of child abuse and is underwritten by ACA JOE, a leading men’s specialty retail chain.

Family Stress Services, the D.C. Chapter National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse, was the recipient of a $5,000 donation. Judy L. Rhodes, Executive Director of Family Stress Services, writes: “I have never been more impressed. The organizational and managerial skills that your fraternity displayed would give credit to some of the best public relations and fundraising firms on the East Coast.

You designed and orchestrated this project with obvious respect for professionalism. Everything from T-shirts and poster design to radio, television, and print media coverage was completed with an eye for detail and perfection. You were able to secure not just public service announcements, but in-depth interviews with noted personalities.

You managed to acquire, display, and sell (at +50% discount!) quality merchandise from ACA JOE, a very reputable clothier. You even managed to salvage the event from a major rainstorm. The other support activities – soft drink and food sales, lotteries, and a disk jockey-topped an already impressive function.” Congratulations to Delta Psi on a job well done.

And after all of these years, what’s Brother Dickson up to? He’s been the CEO of Gap, Inc. since the summer of 2023, after working as President of Mattel, where he made Barbie relevant again.

Originally published at https://shawncollins512.substack.com.

Fraternity Away Weekends Were Fun and a Little Weird

May 20, 2026 by Shawn Collins

I was at the University of Maryland for five years and one summer session, but I only went to four away weekends while I was there. During my final semester, in 1993, the fraternity’s finances were a bit unstable, and we didn’t have one.

We went to Williamsburg, VA, for two or maybe three of them, and also Nags Head, NC. I went with my first college girlfriend for the first two, and then my second college girlfriend for the third and fourth.

Well, in 1991, my date was a future girlfriend, because we didn’t really know each other. We met during Greek Week, and a couple of weeks later, we were headed to Nags Head.

I guess it didn’t really feel that weird at the time, but looking back, it had the potential to be very awkward to go away for the weekend with a cute stranger and rooming with a friend who was also with someone he barely knew.

It was a blast for me. I didn’t have a driver’s license, so my friend, roommate, and good sport, Chris, drove from College Park, MD, to Nags Head, NC with his date riding shotgun, and I was in the backseat with my date.

Before we set out, I grabbed a twelve-pack of beer for the ride, and we had a little backseat party going on. Chris’ date didn’t want any of the beers, so it was all for us.

I’d guess it was somewhere around Richmond, VA, when we were each a few beers or so in, and we started making out in the back. At one point, I looked up at the rear-view mirror, and Chris was glaring at me.

We laughed and laughed and had an awesome weekend.

Nags Head was my favorite spot, but I also had lots of fun in Williamsburg, VA, when we went there. During one of those away weekends, we went to the Pi Kappa Alpha chapter at William & Mary for a party, and it was cool to meet some brothers at another school.

In addition to having a formal during the weekend, we also spent a day at Busch Gardens Williamsburg riding roller coasters and drinking beers at Das Festhaus.

It probably wasn’t a great idea to drink many beers and go on amusement park rides, but back then, nothing hurt, and everything was easy.

During the formal in Williamsburg on our 1992 Away Weekend, the remaining guys from my pledge class gathered for a picture. It’s neat to see that moment frozen in time, because I still feel like I am still there 34 years later.

I didn’t manage to make it to a spring break until my final semester, so these away weekends were the best vacations of my year from 1989-1992. So many memories and smiles. It would be so cool to go back for one more day.

Originally published at https://shawncollins512.substack.com.

Frat Boys Scalping Tickets to Pay for Tuition

May 13, 2026 by Shawn Collins

The first time I can remember waiting out for tickets was probably early 1987 for the Genesis “Invisible Touch” tour that came through Maryland in May 1987. I was jammed in my friend Matt’s VW bus with a handful of Pi Kappa Alpha brothers. Matt and I were still in high school.

It was freezing outside as we waited to buy the Genesis tickets at the Hecht’s department store in Laurel, MD. We got paid something like $50 or $60 for the night to buy tickets, and that was huge to me, since I was making around minimum wage as a movie theatre usher.

After that night, it became a regular thing. We’d sleep out on the streets of Richmond, VA, Washington, DC, and various places around Maryland. My brother, Mike, worked with a ticket broker, Ricky (Ticket Rick) Rae, and he would set up the ticket waitouts.

When I got to college, the chance to sleep out for tickets and make money was a highly sought-after gig. Mike would put up a sign-up list at the PiKA house, and guys would race to get on it. In addition to the nightly pay, we’d also get pizza and beer to fuel us for the nights and days.

This was the era of the big stadium concerts from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, U2, and The Who. Lots of those ticket waitouts were multiple days, and we’d stay in sketchy areas, where no one else wanted to wait, so we’d get the front spots.

Sometimes, I’d also sell tickets in the parking lots of concerts in Maryland and Washington, DC. That was a whole lot more lucrative, except for the time that I decided to buy a bunch of tickets for the Cure and couldn’t sell any. Those charges hurt when I couldn’t pay off my high-interest credit card.

Anyhow, those times sleeping out with a bunch of guys from the frat were a good time. There was this one time, there were probably a dozen of us sleeping at RFK Stadium in Washington for the Who.

During the long nights of beers and hanging out, someone came up with a drinking game called Whoville. I don’t remember how to play, but it involved dice and lots of drinking.

When tickets went on sale for U2’s Zoo TV tour, a large group of us again waited at RFK in late April 1992. In addition to the PiKA crowd waiting out, a guy named Redskins Rob brought out ten or so homeless guys to wait in line, as well. Our crew of middle-class frat boys and Rob’s homeless guys became fast friends and partied and laughed for days.

The Washington Post covered the U2 waitout and heralded how University of Maryland students were beating the scalpers.

After an 80-hour ordeal — four nights stuffed in a car, three days breathing bus exhaust, scarfing Cokes and franks, running blocks for pit stops — the three University of Maryland seniors who camped out at RFK Stadium prevailed. They beat the scalpers to U2 concert tickets.

At 8 a.m. today they would be, if all went as planned, first on line at the RFK box office. By 9 a.m. the 52,000-seat stadium will sell out, predicted a Ticketmaster official.

“It’s what you got to do to get good seats,” said Crawford Conniff, 22, stretched out near the stadium among traffic island dandelions.

“We have unlimited time,” said Mike Collins, 22. “If we had a job making 50 grand, we could pay $150 to scalpers.”

Actually, $150 sounds cheap for the $28.50 face-value tickets. Today’s ticket sale for the Aug. 15 concert, one of the summer’s hottest, is likely to ignite an orgy of profiteering.

When the band played Los Angeles, scalpers scored up to $1,200 a ticket for prime seats. In Washington, as early as Tuesday, ticket brokers had stationed students, unemployed and even homeless people at ticket outlets to snap up hundreds of choice seats.

Those scalping days weren’t all glory, though. Sometimes I ran into trouble while selling tickets. I got robbed at both the 1994 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and a Grateful Dead show in Washington around the same time.

After college, I was underemployed for a while and kept slinging tickets whenever I could. I was also trying to make it as a writer, and I wrote up a freelance article about scalping (Diary of a Ticket Scalper) experiences that was mostly a troll. I got paid $100 by the New York Press (an alternative to the Village Voice at the time), and it elicited some angry letters to the editor.

That article caught the attention of worldwide performing artist Citizen Cope years later, and he sent me a DM on Instagram about it. It wasn’t random, though. I often ran into Cope in the 90s, when he also sold tickets on the streets of Baltimore and DC. I still have his first CD, which he sold to me out of his trunk while we were scalping Pearl Jam at Constitution Hall in January 1995.

It’s been years since I sold tickets, but it all came full circle in 2018 when I met actor Robert Romanus, who played ticket scalper Mike Damone in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

“Scalper? Did you call me a scalper? Listen, gentlemen, I perform a service here, and the service costs money.”

– Mike Damone, Fast Times at Ridgemont High

I miss those days of sleeping and selling tickets on the streets. So many fun, long nights with fraternity brothers and strangers. Those hot showers when we got home were so amazing. And so many of us managed to chip away at our college bills because of it.

Ticket Rick passed away twenty years ago. RIP Ricky.

Originally published at https://shawncollins512.substack.com.

Four Important Lessons Learned Outside of the College Classroom

May 6, 2026 by Shawn Collins

All these years, I thought I graduated with a 2.7. That is a lousy GPA as it is, but I was stunned when I came across my college transcript and saw that I had a cumulative GPA of 2.412 on 126 credits.

My semester GPA ranged from 1.0 as a first-semester freshman and fraternity pledge to 2.846 midway through my academic career.

I have my diploma from the University of Maryland, and I walked at the graduation ceremony, so I definitely graduated. But I may have to change my college on LinkedIn to the School of Hard Knocks, given my grades.

But really, it didn’t matter in the end. I was never asked for a copy of my transcript by a prospective employer, and the things I learned in my five years of college classes were largely obsolete by the time I started working with dot coms in the late ‘90s.

While my grades were average, I did learn a lot as an undergrad, though most of it came outside the classroom.

It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know

For most of college, I worked at Campus Recreation Services as a supervisor. While I’d like to say I got promoted after one semester based on merit, it was really because my boss at the time was in the Greek system and he hooked me up as a fellow Greek.

It was an early lesson on the importance of networking.

You Catch More Flies with Honey Than with Vinegar

Our fraternity house would receive many pages of infractions from the city manager after each inspection, which was a major strain on our finances and resources.

One semester, I tried buttering up the city manager by telling him how much our fraternity respected him and how it would be an honor to have him draw the winner for a booze raffle.

After that, our inspections were easier.

To Lead, You Must First Learn to Follow

For most of my time at the University of Maryland, I held various offices and leadership positions within the fraternity, the Greek System, and the university.

I started out running for positions with fewer responsibilities and worked my way up to President of our fraternity chapter. Along the way, I won some elections and lost some, but the key was observing people’s leadership styles and methods.

As a follower first, I developed empathy, humility, and reliability, as well as an understanding of the importance of empowering and recognizing others.

Persistence is the Secret of Success

As a kid, I was always looking for a side hustle, whether it was peddling candy door-to-door, shoveling snow, or selling zines and pictures by mail.

This mindset continued in college when I found out that a newspaper called the Greek Insider was shutting down. I had written for the paper and wanted to continue writing, so I started a new newspaper, the Greek Times.

In addition to being a writing outlet, it was a way for me to make money, since I wasn’t earning enough from my campus job to cover tuition and other expenses.

One problem was that I didn’t know how to put out a newspaper. I taught myself to use a Mac so I could write and print the content, then paste it on a board for the newspaper printing company.

Using a computer seems basic now, but before the Greek Times, I wrote my schoolwork on a non-electric typewriter. The need for higher-quality text and photos forced me to go to the campus computer lab and learn how to use a computer.

Organizing a volunteer staff, writing a lot of content, taking pictures, selling ads, dealing with the printer and their pricing and deadlines, and then distributing all of the papers. This was all on me, and the paper wasn’t happening without all of this.

It was a lot to balance with school, work, being a sorority busboy to earn my meals, and trying to have a social life. It was all worth it because I thrived on learning new skills and on the whole process, from ideas to stacks of freshly printed newspapers.

“I stumbled on the secret of success, and that is persistence… You don’t have to be educated, you don’t have to be talented, you don’t have to be rich, you don’t have to be lucky. It’s available for anyone.

I’m convinced most people don’t fail; they simply stop trying. If persistence is the key to success, how does one be persistent?

I believe, from my experience, the answer to that you must love the process. You must love what you’re doing. Not the success, not the reward, not the bonus, the trophy. None of that stuff.

Just the process. If you love what you do, you have a chance to be successful at it. I think everyone needs to do what they love, or find a way to love what you’re doing.

If you focus on the process, you achieve the goals more often.”

– Jim Bouton, Author of “Ball Four,” Pitcher for the New York Yankees

The classroom was my least favorite place in college. The life lessons in the fraternity were the most valuable, and it was that fraternity house and the people inside of it that I really missed when it all came to an end.

Congrats to all of you who graduated with various accolades and distinctions. But our diplomas were printed on the same paper, and C’s get degrees, too.

Originally published at https://shawncollins512.substack.com.

Archives for May 2026

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