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.

The post My Hypocritical Role in a Responsible Drinking Greek Organization appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

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.

The post Cisco, Private Stock, BB Guns, and Police appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

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 post I Started a Greek Life Newspaper in College appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

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.

The post The Day a Car Hit a Fraternity Brother appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

The bar was pretty dead when we got there, and we took turns buying pitchers and dancing. After an hour or so, more people started filtering in, and the dance floor got increasingly more crowded.

I was a few beers in and feeling good when a fist came out of nowhere and smashed me square on the nose. I never saw it coming. This guy who threw the sucker punch never said a word to me.

All I knew was that it hurt like hell and I couldn’t see anything for a few seconds. Then, I realized blood was gushing out of my nose. This guy broke my damn nose. My shirt was covered in blood, and I pinched it to try and stop the blood flow.

Some guys who were with me helped me back to the Pi Kappa Alpha house. It was just around the corner, but my painful face made it hard to navigate. As we walked through the front door, my brother, Mike, and a couple of other guys were there, and he asked what had happened.

I told Mike how a bunch of us were just drinking and dancing at the Cellar, and a random guy threw a sucker punch at me. He told me to go up, change out of my bloody shirt, and come back down.

When I returned to the front door, Mike and Rob, a fraternity brother who played on the University of Maryland hockey team, told me to go with them back to the Cellar. When we got back inside, they asked me to point out who punched me. He was outside the bathrooms with three or four of his brothers, and I let Mike and Rob know.

The next thing I knew, Mike and Rob were throwing hands at all of those guys, and within like 30 seconds, they’d dropped each and every one. I felt better, but still wanted to go back to my room and chill.

Before I could do that, one of the guys in our house said I should go to the hospital and get it looked at. I hopped in his car, and we were off to the emergency room, where we spent the next many hours waiting to be seen.

When I finally got to go back and have a doctor look at me, they spent just a few minutes cleaning me up, putting tape across my face, and said I should ice it often and sleep with my head elevated.

When I got back to my room, I crashed hard until lunchtime. My face looked rough in the mirror. This white piece of tape was holding my nose in place, and everything around it was red, except for under my eyes, both of which were on the way to being black eyes.

We had a Halloween party scheduled that night, and one good thing to come out of all of this was that I figured out my costume… a prizefighter. All I needed was a robe, so that was cool.

That Saturday also happened to be the day I was going to meet my girlfriend’s father for the first time. We made plans for lunch, and I hadn’t mentioned anything to her before meeting up, so she was surprised and concerned when I rolled up with a bashed-in nose.

I was worried her dad would think I was some knucklehead who got into fights regularly, so I apologized when I met him and told him the story. He just laughed and said he was in the Air Force and saw many broken noses from nights at the bar.

The next couple of weeks were very uncomfortable. I couldn’t blow my nose, and when I slept, if my nose even brushed against my pillow, it would make my eyes water from the pain.

But I am a glass half full guy, and I did realize a benefit from this punk surprising me with his cowardly fist. Before the punch, my nose was slightly crooked. After I got punched and then healed, my nose was more or less straight. I’d gotten a free rhinoplasty, so there was a benefit at the end.

Thanks for having my back, Mike and Rob.

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

The post How I Managed to Break My Nose in College (Without Being in a Fight) appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

While I was initiated in early 1989, my drive to be a leader in the house was delayed because I spent all of 1989 doing community service when I wasn’t working or studying.

My first roles were in spring 1990 as the public relations person for G.A.M.M.A. (Greeks Advocating the Mature Management of Alcohol), corresponding secretary for Pi Kappa Alpha, the Greek Week booklet chairman, and as a copy editor and staff writer for the Greek Insider newspaper.

Each semester after that, I ran for various offices and served on committees to represent our chapter on campus and gain experience myself.

All of this led up to the spring of 1992, when I decided to run for President of the fraternity. I made some handouts to share with the brothers during the election that highlighted my experience and reasons I should be elected.

As the election drew closer, I made one of the toughest decisions of my fledgling political career. I had scheduled a get-together for brothers and alumni to begin encouraging alumni to come around more and help the active brothers with the chapter.

But after I’d scheduled the event with our alumni, my girlfriend told me her spring formal was on the same night. I knew what I had to do. I told her I was going to the fraternity event and would have to miss the sorority formal. That didn’t go over well.

I thought it would be important to show my priorities to the brothers and alumni, and reinforce how serious I was about becoming President of the chapter. Did skipping the formal help me win the election? I have no idea, but it didn’t hurt.

Well, it hurt my relationship with my girlfriend, but that ended a year later, and I still have the composite from when I was President.

Plus, as President, I got the best room in the fraternity house, and no rent was charged to the President, which was a huge perk for me, as I paid my way through school.

That same spring, a Democratic primary debate was held at the University of Maryland on March 1, 1992. Jerry Brown, Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin, and Paul Tsongas participated in the debate, and afterward, Bill Clinton held a party at the Santa Fe Cafe, which was next to our fraternity house.

My term began at the start of the fall 1992 semester, shortly after Bill Clinton had secured his nomination at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

I went to a campus rally for Al Gore on September 18, 1992, and got to shake his hand as he passed through the crowd. That day, I got a Clinton/Gore sign and put it in my room window.

My one-semester term concluded shortly before President Clinton was sworn in on January 20, 1993. I accomplished the goals I’d set and was happy with how everything went while I was in office.

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

The post In 1992, Bill Clinton Got the White House—and I Got the Frat House appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

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.

The post When Pi Kappa Alpha Ran ACAmania at the University of Maryland appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

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.

The post Fraternity Away Weekends Were Fun and a Little Weird appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

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.

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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.

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