Question about his college years.

[Duce]

Does anyone know what fraternity LC was in?

[Simon]

From Ira Nadel’s biography:

Acadamically, his university career was undistinguished but he continued the extracurricular zeal of high school, becoming president of both the Debating Society and of his fraternity, ZBT.

...

Cohen introduced new ideas and radical policies to his fraternity. Drinking on the lawn and in the fraternity house was encouraged, leading to Cohen’s impeachment. But he brought life to the institution, leading house meetings with his songs and guitar playing, and often unexpectedly promoting surprising moments such as the time a friend and female guest appeared at lunch sharing one evercoat which had difficulty staying closed. To his fraternity brothers Cohen brought “limitless space’ and the gift of possibilities. He was a popular member.

Nadel, Ira. Various Positions. Random House. (1996) p. 33-34

[dick]

Thanks Simon

I checked Ira, but only caught debating society and the fun he brought to fraternity. Only page 34. Pate33 shows-- Zeta Beta Tau it is!

Do you know if the house still exists on campus? We were unable to find it at montreal 2000 event -- but didn't look that hard.

[Simon]

I’m not much familiar with fraternities. Here’s what I found through a Google search. ZBT does not seem to be present at McGill anymore, or maybe it has merged.

http://www.zbt.org/

http://bama.ua.edu/~zbt/About%20ZBT.htm

http://www.search.com/reference/Zeta_Beta_Tau

http://www.geocities.com/mcgill_iglc/members.htm

http://www.canadiangreeks.com/news/mcgi ... 91305.html

[~greg]

ZBT home page:
http://www.zbt.org/

ZBT Fraternity song:
http://www.zbt.org/downloads/ZBTFraternitySongM.wav

ZBT coat of arms:




It's interesting!

I checked Ira, but only caught debating society and the fun he brought to fraternity.

That's what I always thought.

LC - not the joiner-type, joined on a lark.
Was quite above it all, taking none of it seriously.
ZBT may have been an Omega Theta Pi type of house,
and LC tried to turn it into a Delta Tau Chi (-Animal House house references.)
Simple as that.

But what if he did take it seriously?

What if he was very much affected by the experience?

It seems to me for example that LC's coat of arms
was somewhat influenced by the ZBT's coat of arms
(- jpg above).


I just watched "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Leonard Cohen" again,
and Irving Layton was definitely the typical frat type. And Leonard
definitely was not. He clearly admired the extroverted type,
but was himself way too sensitive. The experience
of being a pledge must have been shattering to him, somewhat.
The fraternity sceen!
Just isn't Leonard Cohen.

And after that he went to Cuba!
Because of a fascination with violence! (He said.)

How else can bits of bio like that be accounted for if not as
a reaction to his fraternity days?


Someone around here, who's screen-name I can't pronounce,
has been crying in the wilderness - like a troupe of rhesus monkeys
being rounded up for experiments - about MKULTRA experiments
and alleged allusions to them in BEAUTIFUL LOSERS, etc.

I think it's infinitely more likely that much of that stuff in BLs
(- and we all know what I'm talking about, - even if I don't)
- came not from vague rumors floating around about MKULTRA,
but from Cohen's very own concrete personal experiences
as a pledge in a fraternity. It seems to me that Cohen shows
early in his writing that he had that insight into human nature
that was later made explicit by Stanley Milgram in "Obedience to Authority".
It may have come intellectually to Cohen by reading Hannah Arendt
and by thinking about WWII. But concretely by way of fraternity hazing.

During the 1980's, every Greek-letter group continued their efforts to stop hazing.
Despite ZBT's best efforts, hazing continued and increased in frequency and severity.
ZBT concluded that all efforts to reform the institution of pledging had failed; pledging was
the problem. This was because pledges were considered second-class citizens,
with no rights and no chance to refuse even the most outrageous demands of a Brother,
unless he quit the Fraternity. In 1989, in a last-ditch effort to eliminate hazing, ZBT
eliminated pledging and all second- class status from the Fraternity. In its place, ZBT
established a Brotherhood Program, with minimum standards (Brotherhood Quality Standards),
as well as programs of education, bonding, and earning one's Brotherhood status that
applied to all Brothers of ZBT.
http://www.indiana.edu/~zbt/history.html

Every few years some pledge electrocutes himself while putting up home-coming
decorations. Or else there's a hazing scandal. Or whatever. And then the popularity of
fraternities goes down. But then it goes up again. They satisfy some kind of need
in many people. And they're all very much the same kind of thing. All very much
like boot-camp. All like "the base" (al-Qa'ida). All very much like mkultra.
But now there's no need to postulate indiscernibles like that!


~greg

[Simon]

But still he was not just a simple member, he was president of ZBT. So he must have found something in it that made his frat fibers vibrate.

...During this brief period, the society came to serve as a kind of fraternal body for college students who, as Jews, were excluded from joining existing fraternities because of the sectarian practices which prevailed at the end of the nineteenth century in the United States

I wonder if discrimination may have been infuencial in the mid 50's at McGill in his choosing ZBT over other fraternities, or otherwise if it was not precisely ZBT's jewish cultural setting that attracted him.

The society was called Z.B.T., which stand for the first letters in the Hebrew phrase "Zion Bemishpat Tipadeh" which translated means "Zion shall be redeemed with justice". This is taken from Isaiah 1:27 - "Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and her converts with righteousness." ZBT has interpreted Isaiah's prophecy to mean in it's ritual that "All Men Are Brothers".