Word: moms
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Motherhood seems about a decade premature for Leslie A. Garbarino ’04. Still, this bubbly, curly-haired junior has been doing her share of nurturing—39 strapping young men on campus call her “Mom.” Garbarino holds the title of “Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) Mom,” an honorary female position in every chapter of the all-male fraternity. Girls on the inside of Harvard’s fraternities have privileged access to the real character of the campus’ Greek life, which they...
...brother William L. Smith ’03 says that at colleges with residential Greek life, the mom is traditionally an older woman who lives in the house, often the widow of an SAE. Her job in the fraternity is to offer maternal love to the students who live away from their own families. “She’s not there to supervise them or to discipline them; she’s there to care for them and to look out for their well-being,” he writes in an e-mail...
Garbarino says she was appointed as the SAE mom earlier in the year, when the fraternity was looking for a responsible girl to list on the chapter paperwork. She says she agreed to take on the title because she had a lot of friends who were members. Garbarino laughs at the idea that the role of the mom carries any serious responsibility. The closest that she comes to cooking, she says, is the mere thought of it. “I have to feel free to bake them cookies,” she says. “I feel free...
Back at Harvard, the frat girls remain dedicated. That is, at least until graduation, retirement or incarceration, when the SAE mom must recruit her successor. Her contract with the fraternity specifically stipulates that if she has a run-in with the law, she is not released from this responsibility. Says Garbarino, “If I’m in jail, I guess I’ll be using my one phone call...
...front. But the war we are seeing is bowdlerized, PG-rated. There are fancy explosions galore, shown from a great distance; there are retired generals wandering through giant maps with pointers and Telestrators; there are gagging doses of Oprah-like human-interest drama, the (slightly) wounded saying "Hi, Mom" and tearful families waiting for word. There are photographs of rubble and of bloodstains that could easily be mistaken for spilled wine. But there is none of the horror, none of the unimaginable sights--bodies torn apart, limbs flying--that cause combat veterans to go mute when asked about their experiences...