An American Lion

Swedish Sorority GirlsSome Poindexter is behind this nonsense--I can sense it:

Sorority spring formals call up visions of young women in colorful dresses dancing the night away — not vomiting on tables, urinating in sinks or having sex in closets.

The drunken shenanigans of three sororities at Miami University in southwest Ohio sound like something out of "Animal House" and were especially startling for a school that frequently makes the top 50 in a U.S News & World Report academic ranking but never makes lists of big-time party schools.

The school suspended two of the sororities and put the third on probation. A task force is reviewing discipline and education policies on student behavior and alcohol, and the campus group governing sororities says it will begin teaching new members to speak out when they witness bad behavior.

There is little evidence excessive alcohol consumption is any worse at Miami than other colleges, but students are worried the antics will damage the school's reputation.

"It's embarrassing," said Christina Zielke, 21, a senior from Cleveland, who doesn't belong to a sorority. "This kind of thing gives a bad name not just to the Greek system but to the university and students like me who aren't in the system."

Whatever, grandma.

The economy is to blame for all of this. The schools are full of young women (because of the young men had to either join the military or go to work full time in the mine) and they're bored. They're partying because they know that there aren't any jobs for graduates of state schools out there. Where a Yale or Harvard or Brown grad might be able to find a position with a reputable company, a graduate of Miami of Ohio is going to have to work retail until things sort themselves out. A lot of them are going to have to become strippers if they want to pay off their student loan debts (strippers never have money and never pay their bills, but they always have fifty pairs of thong underwear that they don't like anymore).

If I was attending a state school, I'd get drunk to relieve the stress of knowing there aren't any jobs, too. I'd love to see these girls party. I'll bet they do things that would make a sex tourist who frequents Thailand blush.

I can't remember the last time I had a brawl in public with a group of people at a kindergarten graduation.

I've had several brawls, and more than my fair share of shoving matches and full-throated screaming matches, but they may have taken place at Miranda's third grade sock hop or Byron's fifth grade zoo trip or something like that. You know the kind of brawl I'm talking about. The kind where someone pulls a suit coat over the head of someone else and kicks them in the ribs when they're laying on the ground covering their head. The kind where someone throws alcohol or fruit punch around like they're trying to douse a small fire. The kind where a perfectly reasonable, grown adult turns into a shrieking, quivering, sweating mass of terrified human flesh, desperately clawing at their eyeballs after biting off the ear of another human being. The kind where someone punches their spouse in the crotch, often on purpose.

I have reached out to the children to find out if they remember watching daddy roll on the ground with a howling, crazed mother at a kindergarten graduation, but no one has gotten back to me yet.

I think this points to more serious issues, however:

Two women have been arrested following a parents' brawl that interrupted a Southern California kindergarten graduation ceremony, authorities said.

School officials placed Puesta del Sol Elementary in the desert town of Victorville on lockdown Wednesday morning after a fight broke out among a group of parents.

The San Bernardino County sheriff's department says witnesses told deputies several mothers were involved in an argument and it got physical in a field near the ceremony. Several men then jumped into the fray and the incident turned into a brawl.

A deputy later arrested two people on suspicion of being a disruptive presence at a school. Witnesses said they were the main instigators. In all, 20 adults were identified in the brawl. A school district official said there could be more arrests.

San Bernardino County? Check, please.

This probably didn't have anything to do with slutty behavior or a debt gone bad. It probably has something to do with trash talking or an inadvertent shove down a flight of stairs. I do remember how ridiculous it was to go to a kindergarten class and have to sit there while the kids would drone on and on in their little lisp--you know, that baby-tawk lisp that I cannot stand. We never talked babytalk with the children, at least, not that I can recall. When I think back to how my second, third and fourth wives raised the children, I seem to recall nannies, tough love, and awkward silences punctuated by cold-blooded stares and finding things slashed to pieces in the middle of the night. Standard family fare, of course.

Miranda never talked like a baby. She came out fully formed and had a wonderful vocabulary by the time she was in first grade. That was the first time she lectured me about ethics and ethical behavior. Coming from an over-serious child dressed almost entirely in black it was like one of those comedy bits on one of those shows I don't watch.