So it’s Friday night and you’re not sure what’s going on. You could go to your friend of a friend’s apartment in Sunderland, but then you’ll have to take the bus back at 1 a.m. You’ll never make it back to your dorm with those odds.

There’s a bonfire in South Amherst, but by the time you get there the trusty Amherst cops will probably have broken it up.

People are always partying in the dorms, but how much fun can you have in a tiny dorm room filled with more people than the UMass policy states is legal? So what’s there to do? You could watch a movie, make some tea and pass out or there’s always that other option: Frat Row.

Frat Row is pretty conveniently located. It’s a reasonable walking distance from most dorms on campus, so you’ll make it back to your room if that’s where you want to end up. Parties on the weekend are a guarantee and as long as you’re a girl or have some cash, you’ll get in.

The typical frat party consists of half-dressed girls grinding up against random guys or their friends, rap and hip-hop music blasting, and plenty of kegs of cheap beer to quench your thirst. Sometimes there’s a theme for the belligerently drunk and the not-quite-clothed, sometimes there’s not. This could be your scene.

There’s something about frats that motivates me to start up the hot pot and pop in a DVD if my Friday night plans are left to that option. I’ve only experienced the frats at UMass twice, though. Once first semester, I wandered onto frat row with a friend, unaware of what was going on. We ended up at a random frat that let us in without question. The place was kind of empty, there were just a few guys hanging around that table you spend hours throwing ping pong balls into cups on. There were dozens of thirty racks just waiting to be opened and a few girls dancing up against each other. So we left.

Now, I wouldn’t want to judge all frats based on that one experience, so earlier this semester I took up an opportunity to go to that other frat: you know, the one not on Frat Row. Right as I got to the house, my friends and I were split up. Guys go to one door to pay a certain amount to get in, girls go to another. So my friends and I walked toward a crowd of girls surrounding a guy at a door with a flashlight. Something was strange about what was going on