Scatter Brained

C H A P T E R   9

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S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
03
Greek Life: 
Surprising Fraternity/Sorority Members
BOB DYLAN
 — Back when he was Robert Zimmerman, 
Dylan belonged to a Jewish fraternity at the University of 
Minnesota—well, until he dropped out. Fans likely wish he’d 
stayed close to his Jewish roots—the three albums Dylan 
made during his stint as a born-again Christian are generally 
regarded to be among his worst. For what it’s worth, though, 
Dylan didn’t seem to think highly of his frat-boy experience. 
In a poem titled “Last Th
  oughts on Woody Guthrie,” Dylan 
wrote, “. . . Hope’s just a word . . . /But that’s what you need, 
man, and you need it bad . . . /And it ain’t in no fat kid’s fra-
ternity house. . . .”
✖  ✖  ✖
HARPER LEE 
— How could Ms. Lee ever have imagined such 
a charming and realistic social outcast as Boo Radley when 
she was an attractive and popular Chi Omega? Well, one of 
the more pervasive literary conspiracy theories in history is 
that Harper Lee didn’t write 
To Kill a Mockingbird
 at all. It 
was, the conspirators say, none other than her friend Truman 
Capote (who, as a Southern homosexual, sure knew some-
thing about being an outcast). But like most conspiracy theo-
ries, this one doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny—Capote was a 
versatile writer, but never composed anything with the tone 
or structure of 
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Fellow Chi Omega:
 Lucy Liu
✖  ✖  ✖
GEORGIA O’KEEFE
 — All we have to say about this is that 
the boys at UVA must have had a lot of panty raids at Kappa 

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Delta, Georgia’s sorority, because those “fl owers” she painted 
sure weren’t wearing underwear.
Fellow Kappa Delta:
 1983 Miss America Debra Sue Maff ett 
(-Wilson)
✖  ✖  ✖
BILL COSBY
 — One of the oldest and largest black fraterni-
ties, Omega Psi Phi, claims Langston Hughes and Michael 
Jordan as members, along with the famously sweatered 
Huxtable patriarch.
✖  ✖  ✖
W.E.B. DU BOIS
 — Author of the classic 
Th
  e Souls of Black 
Folk,
 Du Bois was an early member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the fi rst 
Greek-lettered fraternity for 
black college students, at Fisk 
University. Du Bois went on to 
get his PhD from Harvard, 
where fraternities have a very 
minor presence due to the 
prominence of “fi nal  clubs,” 
which are exactly like fraterni-
ties except more pretentious.
✖  ✖  ✖
BOB BARKER
 — 
It’s hard to 
imagine the 273-year-old Bob 
Barker as a college student, 
but apparently he once was. 
And although he is a long way removed from his life as a 
member of Sigma Nu, Barker’s
 Th
  e Price Is Right
 off ers an ex-
cellent road-trip option for the latter-day 
Animal House
 resi-
dents among us.
Jerry! Jerry!
JERRY SPRINGER
 — In the 
1960s, Springer joined the 
Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity at Tu-
lane. TEP is now defunct, al-
though we can’t say for sure 
whether they disbanded be-
cause they couldn’t bear the 
humiliation of having Jerry 
Springer as their most famous 
member.