“Smoker season” has once again come and gone for the fraternities at Murray State University, and this year as I attended two Smokers with friends, I couldn’t help but wonder where the strange tradition started.
To most of the students on our campus, a “Smoker” is common knowledge – to members of other Greek communities, not so much. When I attended the University of Missouri my freshman year, I never once heard of a Smoker, let alone attended one. Out of curiosity, I texted one of my pledge sisters from Mizzou and asked if any of the fraternities she hung out with now hosted them. She responded: “What is that?”
For those of you who are unfamiliar: Smokers are rush events put on by fraternities toward the end of the recruitment process where notable alumni act as guest speakers to inform and persuade potential new members or “rushees” as to why their organization is preferable over other options. A few active members are also chosen to speak, a video or slideshow is usually shown and some even allow the rushees to add input as to why they are considering that fraternity so seriously. Each brother invites a date (and each speaker is sure to comment on how beautiful the women that associate with their fraternity is – not that they think good looking women might influence the potentials or anything, *cough cough*) and a meal is served. Some have a bar, others are dry, but at one point after dinner the brothers and speakers remove themselves from their dates and take the rushees outside the venue to smoke a cigar in celebration. Hence the name “Smoker.”
After peaking my interest, I decided to google “Fraternity Smoker” to find out more about the origin of this strange tradition. Ten out of 10 would not recommend doing the same, at least not from a mobile device. While I drew a lot of results from individual universities and fraternities describing their smoker events, (which were all very similar to ours at Murray State) I couldn’t find one article about how the event was created. Plenty of hazing articles were populated, as they always do when you google "fraternity," but not one piece of online literature even came close to describing when, how or why Smokers began. I even searched LexisNexis in hopes of finding an academic source, to no avail. A few universities described their first Smokers, but no one claimed having created the tradition, which seems very strange to me as most Greek organizations pride themselves on being the first to do almost anything – good or bad – whether it be hosting an event or getting kicked off campus. It’s safe to say there’s a rich history of fraternity Smokers in our longstanding Greek system, but no one seems to be claiming it. It may be a southern thing, it may be an old-fashioned thing, but more than anything, it’s a mystery.
So many of our Greek traditions are secretive – passed by word of mouth or unspoken understanding. Does anyone out there know where the Smoker came from? My search hasn’t stopped yet, but I guess for now it’s nothing more than an excuse to get dressed up, messed up and meet freshmen boys.
