University of Maryland Archives ⋆ Shawn Collins' Blog

Cisco, Sanford and Son, a Payphone, and Post-it Notes

September 9, 2026 by Shawn Collins

It was summer 1991, and the lease on my Knox Box apartment was up. I hadn’t renewed it because I was moving into the fraternity house for the next year. So, I crashed at the frat with a few other guys until Hell Week was set to start and we would settle into our rooms.

My temporary home was room 13, right there when you walked through the front door of the house. During the semesters, this was the first stop for many people when they came to the house, and the summer was no different, except there were far fewer people around.

When I wasn’t working my summer jobs at Cluck-U Chicken or Campus Rec, I was hanging around with guys at the house. My typical downtime fun was having a 40- or 64-oz bottle of Private Stock malt liquor and a bottle of Cisco (a very strong, disgusting fortified wine) and watching some TV with the guys.

That summer, it seemed like Sanford and Son was always on, so I think I saw every episode a couple or three times. One day I was enjoying a marathon of Fred Sanford’s antics with Lance, and when the drinks kicked in, I decided I really needed to call my girlfriend.

There were no working phones in the house, so I had to gather all my change and walk across the street to a payphone. I was so psyched to talk to her as I dropped my coins into the phone. I excitedly punched in her number, which was long-distance, so I think it was like $1.50 or more for the first few minutes of the call.

My heart was beating fast as the phone rang on the other end. Then an unfamiliar voice said, “Hello.” I asked if my girlfriend was there, and the person on the other end said I had the wrong number, and they hung up.

That was it. I spent what little money I had on that call, and I was left deflated.

Then I got a great idea. I was the Secretary for the Interfraternity Council (IFC) at the time, so I hopped on my bike and rode over to the student union to call her from the IFC office. As I pedaled across the University of Maryland campus, I kept repeating her phone number in my head to be sure I got it right this time.

It was less than a mile on my bike, so after my quick ride, I locked up my bike and headed into the office. I speed-walked to the phone with a smile on my face, punched in the correct number this time, and prepared to chat.

The answering machine picked up, and I left her a message dejectedly. She had no way to call me back, so I probably wouldn’t talk to her until she came back to campus to get ready for sorority rush.

Oh well, I didn’t want this trip to be in vain, so I fired up the office computer and played Sim City for a while. After I got bored of that, I decided to head back for more hang time. On the way out the door, I saw a big stack of Post-it Notes and grabbed as many as I could for no particular reason.

I got on my bike and pedaled back across campus with one hand holding a bunch of Post-it Notes. All was well until I headed downhill on McKeldin Mall and veered off the sidewalk. With one hand on the handlebar, I went head over ass and landed in a heap.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in bed, and it was nearly midnight. Lots of hours had passed, and I guess I made it back to the frat on autopilot and climbed into bed with bloody arms and legs.

My bike made it home with me, but the Post-it Notes got lost along the way. Everyone else must have been out at the bars, so I climbed back into bed to go to sleep for the night.

My Bloody Valentine, Beer, and Decades of Rats

September 2, 2026 by Shawn Collins

You never know when some random moment is going to turn into a thing you talk about for the rest of your life. For Pat and me, it was when we watched the 1981 slasher flick, My Bloody Valentine.

We were new brothers in Pi Kappa Alpha at the University of Maryland, and there was a low-key get-together with a sorority where everyone drank beer and watched the original version of My Bloody Valentine.

I think it was a double-feature with a Diceman concert at Madison Square Garden.

Anyhow, the Coors beer was flowing from our house bar, and we were tossing back our drinks and enjoying the ridiculous horror film.

Those movies were fun because they were gory, but also silly and campy. I prefer that old slasher style over the shock and gore of current horror.

Anyhow, if you’re not familiar with the movie, it takes place in the small town of Valentine Bluffs, and the residents are planning the first Valentine’s dance in twenty years.

You see, the Valentine’s dance had been banned for a couple of decades after a deranged minder went on a murder spree in town and left the hearts of victims in gift boxes.

The young locals weren’t scared of this old story, though, and they wanted to celebrate, so they held a secret party deep in the nearby coal mine, and the kids were stalked and murdered by someone in full miner’s gear.

I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I won’t say any more, except for the pivotal scene when some characters were terrified in the coal mine and heard a noise. One of the people said something along the lines of, “Don’t worry, those are just some rats.”

Another future victim responded passionately, “That ain’t no rats.”

The line may have been slightly different, but I am not going to rewatch it to verify.

From then on, Pat and I would use “That ain’t no rats” as a greeting and random shout to each other on campus and at parties. We don’t see each other as much anymore, but when we do, we quote My Bloody Valentine.

My last text to him was a week ago, with a video of a rat in a pizza parlor and the text, “Ain’t no.”

Fandango: A Road Trip to New Orleans After College

August 26, 2026 by Shawn Collins

I graduated from the University of Maryland in May 1993 with a BA in Communications. My job prospects were pretty limited, since I didn’t have a car and was living at my Dad’s house in the suburbs. I needed a job I could walk or bike to, and the first one that said yes was Comfort Suites in Laurel, MD.

I got a job working at the front desk for $5.50 an hour. Five years in college, and the best I could do was $1.25 an hour more than minimum wage. However, the job did have a nice perk: an employee discount at select hotels around the country.

Before I left that job for more exciting opportunities ($7.00 an hour as an Assistant Manager at Blockbuster Video), I reached out to my recently graduated fraternity brothers, Chris and Joe, about a road trip to New Orleans for New Year’s Eve.

I looked into using my employee discount in New Orleans, and there was a Comfort Inn where we could get a discounted room for $19 per night. I booked it for five nights (December 28, 1993, to January 2, 1994), and our plan was set.

By Christmas, our group had grown to six people. A couple of guys from another frat and someone brought their girlfriend. I’d finally gotten my driver’s license, car insurance, and a used 1992 Ford Escort LX with about 12,000 miles on it for $500 down. My “new” car was going on our road trip.

In addition to the McJobs I was working at those days, I was also waiting for concert tickets and selling them while working for “Ticket Ricky.” I reached out to him, and he was willing to have me take a bunch of Sugar Bowl tickets on the trip to sell on consignment. That was perfect, as it would fund my trip.

The Road Trip

On the day we were leaving, I packed my things and went to the local AAA office to get a TripTik, a flipbook with the map for our 1,100-or-so-mile drive from Annapolis, MD, to New Orleans, LA.

I had a few hours to burn before driving over to pick the guys up, so I tucked into the couch to watch the movie Fandango. The movie was about five college buddies from the University of Texas going on one last road trip before entering the real world.

The movie was set in 1971, when characters our age were worried about having to go to Vietnam. Our uncertain future wasn’t quite as perilous, but still scary.

Our drive down to New Orleans was a good time with a rotation of a few cassettes and lots of laughs.

When we rolled up to the Comfort Inn on Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans, I realized why I had gotten such an amazing deal. It was in a pretty sketchy area, and the hotel was in rough shape. But we didn’t care; we had a place to stay that would be about $20 each for five nights, so that was awesome.

The second car arrived shortly after us, and the six of us settled into the hotel room with a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door for the rest of our trip, so the hotel wouldn’t realize we had so many people jammed in there.

Nearly Drunknapped to Mississippi

The bunch of us had Hurricanes and Turbodog beer day and night, as well as lots of Cherry Bombs, which were maraschino cherries in Everclear. I think they were $1 for five.

As we bar-hopped on New Year’s Eve, in that era before cell phones, we all eventually lost each other. I ended up with a group from the University of Southern Mississippi, and we became fast friends.

From what I recall, it was a lot of fun, and as midnight approached, I was chatting with a woman with an adorable Mississippi accent. We ended up kissing as the clock struck 12, and I was smitten.

She asked if I’d like to hop in their car back to Hattiesburg, MS, and I was really close to joining them. Fortunately, I had a moment of clarity and realized I had my car keys, so if I disappeared across state lines, no one could take my car and rescue me from over one-hundred miles away.

My last kiss of 1993 and first of 1994 was not meant to be anything else. Oh well, I still had lots of Sugar Bowl tickets to sell.

Sugar Bowl Tickets, Dr. Pepper, and Robbery

The Sugar Bowl tickets were moving nicely. It was a big matchup with the #8 Florida Gators facing the #3 West Virginia Mountaineers. I was feeling really good, aside from my hangover, as I sold tickets for more money than expected and was dreaming of a tidy profit from the ticket sales.

There were still like twenty tickets left on the afternoon of January 1, 1994, as I sold them a few blocks from the Superdome near Tulane University School of Medicine.

A couple of guys pulled up to a stoplight and asked how much I was selling the tickets for, and I walked over to show them what I had. In a flash, the guy in the passenger seat swiped the tickets from my hand, and the driver floored it.

I chased after these thieves in vain, and in one last attempt to stop them, I hurled my bottle of Dr. Pepper at the back of their truck.

All of that money just drove away from me. I was going to end up negative from this trip after I worked out how much I’d have to pay out of pocket for the stolen tickets. I heard some guy on the sidewalk laughing and looked over.

He said, “That was a waste of a perfectly good Dr. Pepper.”

It sure was. Now I was out many hundreds of dollars in tickets, as well as my drink. Those monsters.

By the time the game came along, we bought some cheap tickets to get in and salvaged the night. Actually, it was an awesome night. We got to see our first college bowl game with Florida beating down West Virginia 41-7 as we sipped Mint Juleps.

The Long Journey Home

After the game, we continued our partying on Bourbon Street for one last night before driving home in the morning.

Over time, people in our group gradually headed back to the hotel room to get a little sleep. I forget what time I made it back, but I was the second-to-last one to get there.

By morning, we were still missing one person. We were trying to figure out what to do as check-out time approached, and we got the cars packed up. Just then, the missing guy wandered up, and he was still drunk out of his mind.

He had a great time partying until the last minute, which meant he wasn’t going to be sharing the driving duties anytime soon.

The journey home in my car was not fun, with all of us heading back to work the next day. I think we may have gotten home after midnight, or at least it felt like it. Back to reality and my life of underemployment. But things would get better a year later when I moved to New York City.

Still, I loved a line from Kevin Costner’s character, Gardner Barnes, in Fandango… “There’s nothing wrong with going nowhere, son. It’s a privilege of youth.”

Cult of Personality and My First University of Maryland Homecoming

August 19, 2026 by Shawn Collins

I was a freshman in fall 1988 at the University of Maryland at College Park, and I pledged Pi Kappa Alpha that semester.

My pledge class had to dedicate a lot of time from Monday, October 10, through Saturday, October 15, 1988, setting up and cleaning after parties, participating in Homecoming activities, and holding seats at the stadium for the Homecoming football game between our Maryland Terrapins and Wake Forest.

The Terps lost that Homecoming game 27-24, bringing their record to 5-6.

Before Homecoming week started, each pledge had to buy a T-shirt, and I still have mine. The overall theme that year was “Out of This World,” and our matchup was with Kappa (KK?) and AGR (A??).

During our various competitions, like volleyball and a float we built for the Homecoming parade, we had a simple chant that is still an earworm for me…

Are we psyched?

Yes, we are!

PiKA, Kappa, AGR!

It was a lot of fun having daily parties, and some days we’d have a happy hour and a party at night. This was one of those weeks when I just forgot about class, and it helps explain my 1.0 GPA that semester.

Right below the words “Out of This World” on the front of my t-shirt, there is a hole. That hole was where my pledge pin had been, and it was ripped off my shirt by some drunk brother. I no longer have the pin, but the hole has reminded me all these years later.

That was the second time in two weeks that a brother ripped my pledge pin off. The week before, I had to go to PAB (Pledge Advisory Board) to explain myself after getting arrested at our pledge camping trip.

After going through the frat kangaroo court, I had my pledge pin ripped off and was told I was kicked out of my pledge class. I came back to the football tailgate the next morning and got my pin back. I was never actually kicked out. Just some of the drunk hazing mind games.

Anyhow, the thing I most remember from the night of PAB was that it got in the way of a free MTV concert outside of my dorm with the Godfathers and Living Colour.

As I got closer to my dorm after PAB, I could hear the music blasting, but I wasn’t up for standing in the crowd at that point. I thought I was bounced from the frat. But I loved those bands.

When I got to my room, 8151 Cumberland facing La Plata Beach, I opened my window right as Living Colour was playing “Cult of Personality.”

Look in my eyes, what do you see?

Cult of personality

I know your anger, I know your dreams

I’ve been everything you want to be

I’m the cult of personality

That was pretty apt for my night at the hands of the brothers. And the whole pledging semester.

Fraternity Rag Sheets: Brotherly Love and Hate

July 22, 2026 by Shawn Collins

It was the fall 1988 Christmas/Graduation party at the Pi Kappa Alpha chapter at the University of Maryland, where I first saw a fraternity rag sheet. As brothers and their dates mingled and downed drinks, a pile of photocopied, stapled pages appeared.

The front page read, “The Four Pi’s,” and everyone raced over to read the latest edition, which was written by the graduating seniors to roast the brothers who still had more time left in college.

Now, I have the old copies of ragsheets, but I am not going to show the contents of them, because most of the stuff in there didn’t age well.

But the issues of the Four Pi’s typically had columns of what was “In” and “Out” for that semester, as well as “clubs” that made fun of brothers for how they dressed, dumb stuff they’d done, where they would be in ten years, etc.

One of those predictions that was pretty close was for Scott Van Pelt, and it said he’d be doing color commentary on NBC. About ten years after graduation, he was finishing a stint on the Golf Channel and off to ESPN, where he still is today.

As I paged through that first issue I’d seen, I saw my name came up in the “America’s Most Wanted Club,” because I’d gotten arrested at our pledge camping trip.

The issues of the Four Pi’s that came out at the fall graduation parties had the typical trash talk, as well as “stocking stuffer,” where the seniors left things behind for brothers.

I was usually a little anxious at the graduation parties about what might be in the rag sheets about me.

Typically, the worst I got was being on a list of guys who were “whipped” by their girlfriends. There were funny digs here and there towards me, but some other guys would get destroyed by words.

By the time the graduation party for spring 1993 came around, I was happy to get my chance to work on the Four Pi’s with the other graduating seniors, and we put out the biggest edition during my time in the house. We had lots to say.

In the end, there were laughs, feelings hurt, and memories.

The Fake Advice Column That Got Me in Legal Trouble

July 15, 2026 by Shawn Collins

I published four issues of a Greek life newspaper at the University of Maryland called The Greek Times, and I got a nastygram from a lawyer about content in the third issue.

It was an advice column that caused the trouble. One of the staff members, Kendra, would answer questions submitted to the newspaper. They were usually submitted by me and a couple of my friends.

But she said she received one directly to answer in the third issue, so I printed it verbatim.

The problem was that she included the phone number of someone she had a beef with, and that person contacted a lawyer after the Greek Times issue came out.

I was doing my usual routines, going to class, stopping by the IFC office, etc., and saw that there was a piece of mail for me. And not the fun kind of mail.

Uh oh, this was how I found out I had unknowingly printed another person’s phone number in the newspaper, and she apparently received harassing phone calls because of it.

So, I called Kendra up and let her know that her most recent advice column was the last one. And I sent a letter back to the lawyer to apologize.

Fortunately, that’s as far as it went. The next and final issue of the Greek Times featured a new advice columnist, my fraternity brother, Aaron Falcione (aka Ernst).

This one didn’t get me in any trouble, so that was nice. I really enjoyed putting out the newspaper, and it was helpful in my development and real-world experience with budgets, deadlines, staff management, and dealing with a lawyer.

My Hypocritical Role in a Responsible Drinking Greek Organization

July 8, 2026 by Shawn Collins

My experience at the University of Maryland was akin to one of Winston Churchill’s speeches. Specifically a radio address he gave in October 1939 about World War II when he said, “It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…”

You see, I spent a lot of my five years as an undergrad drinking alcohol to a stupid degree. The blackout kind where I wouldn’t remember what happened the night before.

Sometimes, it was due to hazing. There were times when I had to drink lots of cheap gin through a beer bong. Some of those nights ended with me passing out in random patches of grass on campus.

As I got older, I matured a little, and only occasionally did really stupid things like stumbling around on the roof of the frat house or shooting out the windows of a neighboring apartment.

But I also did a lot of extracurricular things that a responsible student would do, such as running a newspaper, working multiple jobs to pay for college, and holding a variety of offices.

One of those roles was as the Public Relations Chair of GAMMA. (Greeks Advocating Mature Management of Alcohol). I was aware of the irony at the time, but I also wanted to do some good, add to my resume, and be a positive representative of Pi Kappa Alpha.

In the spring of 1990, the University of Maryland chapter of GAMMA ran a fundraiser for SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving), and we raised more money than any other university in the country.

This milestone resulted in representatives from GMAC and Pontiac presenting University of Maryland President Kirwan with a $15,000 check for the Student Activities Fund during halftime of the homecoming football game.

It was exciting to win the top prize and have that fat check go to the Student Activities Fund. On a sidenote, it’s cool to look back and see the smaller Byrd Stadium before all of the additions in later years. Look at that packed crowd!

Also, in the fall of 1990, I organized a GAMMA kickball tournament to publicize National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week. It was open to all student groups, and I promoted it across campus kiosks and dorms, but only fraternity and sorority pledge classes entered.

While I had hoped for non-Greek representation in the tournament, it was still a lot of wholesome, alcohol-free fun. And the Pi Kappa Alpha pledge class won the whole tournament.

I don’t have the scoresheet handy, but if I recall correctly, team captain Joe Vettori had the game-winning kick with a bases-clearing double.

I’d like to think that my involvement in GAMMA and other groups on campus provided some karmic balance to my dopey hijinks.

This post originally appeared at fraternitypledge.com.

Cisco, Private Stock, BB Guns, and Police

July 1, 2026 by Shawn Collins

Hank was my big brother in Pi Kappa Alpha, and we hung out a lot in college and sometimes got into mischief. This one night in August 1990 was one of those times.

It was the day that two new roommates were moving in with my friend John and me to our Knox Box. There was Chris, who was in PiKA, and his friend and future PiKA, Dan from back home.

Nothing much was going on, so Hank and I picked up a couple of 40s of Private Stock malt liquor (“The malt liquor with the imported taste”) and two bottles of Cisco (aka Liquid Crack).

Cisco would get us pretty blitzed by itself, but it was rough to drink down, so we chased it with malt liquor to make things easier and to enhance our buzz journey.

I think Chris and Dan must have gone to sleep early, because they were already in bed when the Cisco and Private Stock kicked in. In our altered states, Hank and I decided it would be a good idea to take out our BB guns.

Now, since I spent 1989 doing 500 hours of community service, you might think I’d try to avoid doing stupid things that could get me in trouble. That was usually the case, but the combination of Cisco and Private Stock would take me to a place where bad ideas sounded awesome.

So, we had our BB guns, and there was some beef with the guys in the apartment just over a hedge from us. They weren’t home; we were bored, and one of us thought it would be fun to open a window in the living room and take aim at the other apartment.

My conservative estimate is that we unloaded 100 or more BBs into that apartment. The windows were like Swiss cheese. So was their TV. We had a time, and it only stopped when we heard people coming back from the bars.

We quickly closed the window and turned off the lights as the yelling started from these guys, who had walked in on what looked like the crazy shooting scene at the end of True Romance.

That was the end of the carnage. Hank headed off to his apartment, and I planned to get some sleep after hiding my BB gun under some dirty laundry.

But shortly after, there was loud knocking on our front door. I figured it was the neighbors, so I messed up my hair like I’d been sleeping for a long time and walked out, rubbing my sleepy eyes, to answer the door.

It wasn’t the neighbors. It was an officer from the College Park (MD) Police Department. I guess the neighbor guys concluded that only our apartment had the line of sight to obliterate their windows.

I answered the door and turned on the living room lights. The police officer walked in and asked if I had been shooting BBs at my neighbor’s apartment. I acted appalled that he would even ask me that question.

Then, he glanced down at our coffee table, which happened to have dozens of loose BBs on it.

He looked at me, and then at the BBs, and back at me again. I scrambled to come up with a good story.

“One of my roommates just moved out. He worked at a bike shop (which was true), and he sometimes worked on bikes in the apartment. Those are ball bearings from bikes.”

What a horseshit story, but he bought it. He left, and I went to sleep.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The next day, I started getting phone calls from the landlord of the apartment next door. I answered the first time, and he was screaming and yelling that he would have to hire a glazier (I had to look in my Webster’s Dictionary to find out what that was).

I denied it and said it must have been someone hiding behind the hedges, but I hadn’t seen anything because I was sleeping. I hung up, and it was over as far as I was concerned.

The calls didn’t stop, but they did go straight to our answering machine after that. The landlord was increasingly hostile and threatening. He claimed he ran a ballistics test, and the BBs in the apartment he owned matched our “ball bearings.” I knew that was not true because the officer hadn’t taken any of our BBs with him, and I walked up to 7-Eleven and threw them all out the next day.

So, I did what any Gen X delinquent would do… I made a mixtape of a bunch of Hank and my favorite punk and new wave songs. In between the songs, I put clips from the voicemails.

Eventually, the landlord gave up trying to collect money for the damages, and I largely behaved for the rest of that year that I lived in the Knox Box before moving on to the fraternity house.

Welcome to the Knox Box, Chris and Dan. Thanks for not moving out the next day.

I Started a Greek Life Newspaper in College

June 24, 2026 by Shawn Collins

I always enjoyed writing, and the first time I saw my name in print was for my elementary school newspaper. It was just a photocopied publication of maybe six pages, but I loved being a part of it.

When middle school came around, we didn’t have a paper, but we did in high school, and I spent two years writing for the high school newspaper. My articles were mostly about music in high school. I remember one of the articles was all about how outraged I was that the band New Model Army could not tour in the US, because the government thought they were too subversive or something.

Also, during high school, I published a zine called A Silver Lining. It started out as a U2 fanzine, but over time it evolved to cover local punk shows, reviews of records that were sent to me, and cartoons from the guitarist of the Dead Milkmen (we were pen pals).

I also had some features in there. My two favorite items in A Silver Lining were a rambling multi-page letter from Charles Manson and Mad Libs from Evel Knievel. I’d asked Manson what he thought of U2, and he went on about government conspiracies and Abbie Hoffman. The Mad Libs from the legendary daredevil were typical answers, but it was awesome that he sent them back.

Pre-Journalism and College Newspapers

Anyhow, by the time I went to college, I still wanted to write. I started with a major in Pre-Journalism (my first of three majors I sampled), and I headed up to the Diamondback newspaper office at the University of Maryland. I was ready to be the guy writing about music. But they told me they wanted an article about the marching band to see my style, and I walked out and never returned.

A year or so later, I got involved with a newspaper called the Greek Insider and wrote a handful of articles. But that paper closed down after some key people graduated.

That door closing gave me an idea. Maybe I could start up my own newspaper on Greek life at the University of Maryland. So, I pitched it to the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and the Panhellenic Association (PHA) that if they covered the printing costs, I’d handle everything else.

They said yes, and the Greek Times was born.

Birth of the Greek Times

That was the easy part. After the yes, I had to figure out how to put together a newspaper. To that point, all of my college papers had been written on a non-electric typewriter that I’d had from my zine days. I had to figure out how to use a Macintosh SE in the campus computer lab.

Someone told me about a program called PageMaker for laying out the newspaper, but the software was not installed on the computers in the lab. So, I had to use MacWrite II and set the column width to a couple of inches so the pages would have four columns across.

After I entered the content, I’d have to cut each headline and column with an X-acto knife and then paste them onto these big boards. It was a painstaking, imperfect process, but I enjoyed it.

While I liked writing for the Greek Insider, I wanted to do something different. I was interested in a more lifestyle-focused publication. It had fraternity and sorority news, but also a healthy share of fun content.

The first issue featured some typical items like a Greek Week preview, coverage of rush, new Order of Omega members, and Greeks who were recently lavaliered, pinned, and engaged.

But I also added in the results of a student survey on opinions of Greeks from non-Greeks on campus, an advice column, my interview with Joe Jack Talcum of the Dead Milkmen, and a think piece on Cisco (aka Liquid Crack). Plus, there were as many ads as I could fit in there, since I got to keep the ad revenue.

The students liked it, but the IFC and PHA weren’t as keen on the content. They wanted more serious coverage of Greek life.

With issue two, I got more serious by running the results of a sex survey, a hype article on the upcoming IFC Ball, an expanded advice column (all questions were fake and made up by me and given to the advice columnist, Kendra, to answer), “vox populi” (voice of the people) with the question, “What was your worst Spring Break experience,” and coverage of going to the Vous to get drunk on a snow day.

I also reprinted an article to bring awareness to students about date rape.

The second issue had another warm reception by students, and again I was asked to focus more on positive PR for the Greek system.

I said yes, and then put a photo of one of my naked brothers (it was censored) on the cover after he’d been honored as the Silver Sweetheart of Alpha Phi. There was also an article about an acoustic duo called Sean & Dave (my fraternity brother Sean Pelan and Dave Peter, who was in SAE), a full page for the ridiculous advice column, some letters to the editor, a goofy cartoon from a fraternity brother, and an article about Smurfing (writing all over someone when they have passed out).

I did include some serious content… a reprinted article about the legal bias against rape victims.

I was getting great feedback from fraternity and sorority members, and again, I got an earful from the Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Association.

It seemed like they were losing their patience with me, so I went serious for the next cover and ran an interview with Terry Zacker, the University Director of Greek Life, as well as schedules for fraternity and sorority rush.

But also went random again with advice on killing roaches, a threatening letter from a lawyer about a previous advice column answer, a new advice columnist (my fraternity brother, Aaron Falcione), a breakdown of different types of beer, and another cartoon.

At that point, the plug was pulled on the Greek Times. The IFC and PHA decided to go in a different, more serious direction, and I was pushed out after four glorious issues.

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

The Day a Car Hit a Fraternity Brother

June 17, 2026 by Shawn Collins

On a sunny fall morning in 1991, sirens jolted me awake. I nearly fell out of my loft bed in room 7 of the University of Maryland’s Pi Kappa Alpha house, scrambling wildly to see what the chaos was about.

The scene outside didn’t look good. Someone was on the ground in front of a car, surrounded by flashing police, fire, and EMS vehicles. A crowd of Pi Kappa Alpha brothers spilled out onto the street and lawn.

I rushed downstairs to get more information and find out what happened. It was one of our brothers in the street, and I heard that the guys had been playing football on the front lawn, and he ran into the street to catch a ball. At the same time, a car was driving up Knox Road and hit him.

Outside the house, everyone seemed concerned and tried to get details from the first responders, but inside, the vibe was different. The guys were laughing as they peeked out the windows from the chapter room at the chaotic scene.

That was strange to me, but then I walked over to a bunch of brothers who were huddled around a video camera. They had captured the accident on film and were playing it back.

But why did they think it was funny that one of our brothers was hit by a car?

Well, it turns out it was all planned. They’d even filmed a couple of test runs. I hadn’t noticed when I went outside, but it was also one of our brothers who was driving the car.

The whole thing was faked. I watched and then got the real story. The brother who was hit by the car was supposed to go to National Guard duty for the weekend, and he wanted to get out of it so he could go to a sorority formal.

These idiots all got together and thought it was a good idea to fake a car accident, so this brother could get out of his obligations with the National Guard. And they were ridiculous enough to film it.

So insane and shortsighted to have probably all of the first responders for the town to mobilize for this fake accident.

Greek life detractors love to say that fraternity and sorority members buy their friends. Well, I would like to get a refund on some of them.

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

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