Pi Kappa Alpha Archives ⋆ Page 2 of 2 ⋆ Shawn Collins' Blog

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.

The Night the Fraternity House Went Up in Flames

April 29, 2026 by Shawn Collins

I graduated from the University of Maryland on May 20, 1993, and for the last two years of college, I lived in the Pi Kappa Alpha house at 4340 Knox Road.

The house was far from perfect, but it was home, and I was sad to move out and on to the real world. And then, a month after I graduated, the national fraternity took away our charter and sold the house. It was the end of an era, and it sucked.

“Now you can tear a building down

But you can’t erase a memory

These houses may look all run down

But they have a value you can’t see…”

– “Open Letter (to a Landlord)” by Living Colour

I’d go back to College Park to visit friends, and we usually ended up back on the porch of our old house, drinking a 40 of Private Stock. Some guys would sneak in and do some urban exploring, but mostly we just wanted to visit our old friend.

That old house had a lot of personality and so many memories from over the years. Sure, there was usually no hot water, and I didn’t have a thermostat in either room I lived in. I lived on beds and couches passed down by guys graduating.

And our house smelled like stale beer, puke, weed, and industrial cleanser. There was no air conditioning, lots of roaches and rats, and the bathrooms were straight out of a crackhouse, but it sure was charming in its own way. Plus, we could see how long the line was to get into the Vous from the front porch.

Even though our chapter, Delta Psi, of Pi Kappa Alpha, had lost the charter in 1993, I held out hope that one day the chapter would recolonize and buy back the house, so we’d all have a place to gather and visit for Homecoming and other occasions.

While there were some bad days there as a pledge, the house held so many good times, smiles, friends, and love. It was too special to just go away for good.

“I’ll tell you this – I’m gonna get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames!”

– Jim Morrison, The Doors

But the house was gone for good on Wednesday, March 29, 1995. A “suspicious fire” tore through the house, and it took about a dozen fire departments and 80 firefighters to extinguish it. That was the official end.

This house, which meant so much to so many for generations, was just gone one day. The whole thing was erased to make way for a generic apartment building for rich kids.

It didn’t seem real. This house that I was scared to walk into during rush in the fall of 1988, and then, scared again for where my future was taking me, when I walked out for the final time in May 1993. It was just gone like it never existed.

“This is the house we used to live in

This is the place I used to know

This is the house we used to live in

Where I felt I could always go

House that we used to live in

House where I left my heart

House that we used to live in falling apart”

– “House We Used to Live In” by The Smithereens

But it will always be standing there in the hearts of so many of us. RIP Buzz Parker.

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

Greek Weeks Were My Favorite Weeks in College

April 22, 2026 by Shawn Collins

Springtime in college meant fraternities pairing up with sororities for Greek Week, an annual, week-long tradition filled with parties, philanthropy, and various competitions.

In spring 1991, at the University of Maryland, Pi Kappa Alpha (?KA) asked Kappa Alpha Theta (KA?) to partner, and then my pledge brother Joe Incaprera and I ran as co-Greek Week chairs to organize the week’s events with Theta.

Joe and I put together a couple of fliers for the Greek Week chair election, and we went on to get elected to handle the Greek Week festivities.

After the election, we got together with our fellow chair on the Theta side, Kathleen Gamboa, and started making plans. There were lots of fun events like kickball, ultimate, chariot races, and a carnival, as well as a philanthropy event where members of the fraternity and sorority served as huggers at the Special Olympics. But, really, the focus was on a week of parties.

We put together a schedule with one or more parties every day for six days. Things kicked off with an opening bash at a local firehouse, and continued with four-way and six-way parties packed with kegs, live music, and revelry. The week of parties wrapped up with WHFS DJ Neci spinning records at the PiKA house.

Throughout the week, we may have won some stuff. I don’t actually remember, but we had a lot of fun. I don’t think we ever won overall Greek Week in the five springs I was there. I still have some beach scopes from the week – I guess we sold them as fundraisers.

On the Friday night of Greek Week, I had to sneak out from some of the nighttime partying to go see the Dead Milkmen at the Student Union. I tried to convince them to come back to the house to party, but they had to head on to their next city.

I think I took this last picture during the dance or lip-sync contest at Ritchie Coliseum. I’d like to say I applied some sort of artistic treatment to make some or most of the stuff look blurry and frenzied, but I just had a crappy camera.

Those weeks were some of my favorites, except for when I’d trade a set of letters to some random person and never see them again. But I always gained a Greek Week t-shirt to add to my giant collection of frat t-shirts.

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

My Most Compromising Gen X Photo

April 8, 2026 by Shawn Collins

I don’t think I had a camera in college. If I did, it was rarely used, because I didn’t have the money to get film processed. So, most of the pictures I have from those five years are the fraternity and sorority event photos.

I have a whole photo album of these types of pictures, but just a handful of non-event snapshots from 1988-93.

Gen Xers like to reminisce about not having cameras around all the time when we were growing up, so we wouldn’t have embarrassing images or even ones that could be a liability in our personal lives.

And yes, it’s a good thing those pictures don’t exist, because we were getting naked a lot in college. I can remember at least half a dozen times when I was in public without clothes on during my college days.

While I was pledging, we were nude a few times, including when we took a bonding photo of my pledge class on and around the University of Maryland Testudo statue (our Terrapin mascot) in front of McKeldin Library. While we posed, some brothers disappeared with our clothes, so we had to make our way across campus completely naked – 30 or so naked guys sprinting in the cold.

And another time, we did a “Love Run” at the Sigma Kappa (?K) sorority. Again, my pledge class ran around naked, but this time in a house full of sorority girls. Brothers stole our clothes as we made our way through the sorority, and we had to run home naked.

As a brother, I ended up getting lavaliered twice and pinned once to girlfriends, and each time I’d be grabbed off the street by pledges and tied naked to the anchor in front of the Delta Gamma (??) sorority. Then the girlfriend would have to come and untie me.

There are no photos of any of these events, as far as I know, but another time, when I was in my birthday suit, I was captured on film, and I didn’t find out until months later.

I was elected President of Pi Kappa Alpha (?KA) at the University of Maryland for the fall 1992 semester. We had a tradition where pledges would kidnap the new president, get them very drunk, and deliver them back to their room many hours later.

After lots and lots of drinks, I guess I passed out along the way. That’s when the pledges “smurfed” me. I think this must have gotten the name in the past because passed-out guys were painted blue. But when I was in college, “smurfing” meant someone was passed out and had stuff written all over them in marker.

Anyhow, I guess I needed to pee after getting back to the fraternity house, so I wandered into the bathroom and dropped my boxers, since I couldn’t stand up straight. Someone snapped a picture and gave it to me months later, when they developed their film. I don’t even remember who took the photo.

Late that night/morning, naked, covered in marker, and having a couple of scraped knees, my phone rang. Some townies had parked in our house parking lot, and we had a tow company that would come by and give a heads up that they were towing cars parked illegally.

I went out to see the tow truck driver, still oblivious to the ink on my body and face, and the driver laughed and asked what the hell I was up to. I looked in his sideview mirror, and my head pounded as I squinted at my messed-up reflection.

It took many showers to get all of the marker off my skin. I think I skipped class the next day, due to my jacked-up appearance and torturous hangover. But I got a cool picture out of it.

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

I Graduated from College 30 Years Ago Today

May 20, 2023 by Shawn Collins

I dreaded graduating college. After a rough start where I got a 1.0 GPA and landed on academic probation, I straightened things out. It took five years and one summer session (a Spanish class in a room with no A/C in the hot Maryland summer), but I finished what I started on May 20, 1993.

The graduation ceremonies were pretty uneventful. I was just waiting for it to be over and get on with things. I had to look back to see that Dr. Frank M. Snowden, Jr., Distinguished Professor emeritus of classics at Howard University, was the commencement speaker.

My mind was focused more on what the hell I was going to do. I neglected to get an internship and didn’t really have any marketable skills, even though I thought my activities and offices in school merited a two-page resume.

I left campus with no job and no idea what I was going to do with my Communications degree.

It all really hit me when I gave from graduating senior speech at my Pi Kappa Alpha Graduation Party. I was overwhelmed by the future as I double-fisted cheap champagne and babbled some words about all of the memories at the frat.

When I packed my things, I moved home with my dad for a while. I was sending out resumes like crazy to all sorts of jobs and hundreds of fraternity alumni in the area. I got rejected from all of them, but I did get some cool rejection letters from U.S. Senators and congressmen who were in my fraternity.

As I kept sending out applications and resumes, I pounded the pavement in my hometown, and most stores didn’t want me because I was overqualified. I finally ended up at the front desk of the Comfort Suites in Laurel, MD for $5.50/hour. It was crappy shift work, but it was something. After a few months, I became an Assistant Manager at the local Blockbuster for $7.00/hour.

The low point was when an old high school friend stopped in and said they thought I went to college.

Later in 1993, I got an administrative job at the University of Maryland for less than $9.00/hour with no benefits. I stayed there until moving up to New York City and getting a start in magazine publishing at a few stops. Finally, I had some meager benefits and could start chipping away at credit card debt, student loans, car payments, etc.

All along, I was optimistic that I was going to find my place. I’d hoped I could work as a writer, but my total take was $100 for one article at the defunct New York Press.

I was 27 and still didn’t have any direction. And then, one day, I was looking at the classifieds and saw a job with a start-up that needed a marketing person for their new affiliate program. I was curious about it but had never taken a marketing class. My entire knowledge was that I’d joined the Amazon affiliate program earlier in 1997 to try and make some extra money.

I dazzled the guy hiring for the position by dropping some buzzwords I’d remembered from Amazon, and I got the job. At 27, I got the first job that I enjoyed, and I found the industry I’d work in for decades.

While in the industry, I wrote lots of columns and books for money, so I got to be a writer after all.

So, if you’re a recent graduate or still looking for the right spot way later in life, don’t freak out. The path to success, contentment, and happiness isn’t straight and may not make sense, but you can get there.

I got some of my favorite advice when former New York Yankees pitcher, author, and entrepreneur, Jim Bouton, gave the keynote speech at Affiliate Summit in 2006.

“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.”

I was really scared in 1993 and for many years after. But just like with my rough start in college, I eventually came out on the other side after I found love for the process of my work.

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