Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. Need to read something funny today? Take a trip back in time with Brother ValentiNoZe as he reminisces on the schemes and scandals of his time as a NoZe brother at Baylor.
Okay, okay, technically, I boasted NoZehood between 1979 and 1983, from a few months after I transferred to Baylor as a junior to the day I left the stage at Waco Hall with a freshly minted master’s degree, but a string of naked facts makes for a lousy opening sentence in a rumination on the meaning of NoZedom.
I know what you’re thinking: this guy couldn’t possibly have been a NoZebro. Noble NoZemen take a sacred vow; even their hairdressers don’t know for sure. You’re right, we do take a solemn oath, but it goes something like this: reveal your identity whenever it is in your financial or romantic interest to do so (aside: I get a check for this). In accordance with this moral imperative, I disclosed my alter ego to no less than thirty-seven undergraduate women and the counterhelp at Leslie’s Fried Chicken (she wouldn’t take my check) in my first two weeks of membership. The redhead in the Baylor Book Store snitched. I wound up in Dean Perry’s office.
You think there is no due process in Kuwait? Dean Perry had my transcript; it revealed a 3.9 GPA. Guilty. He was about to tell Chief of Security Petty to fire at will when I confessed—well, sort of. I told him I wasn’t a member, didn’t even understand the capital “Z” bit, but I had refracted the truth a tad with the redhead.
“Why?” His eyes narrowed.
“I wanted to smooch,” I replied.
Decades of experience with hormonal undergraduate males led him to buy it hook, line, and sinker, and I learned the value of discretion.
The biggest brouhaha of my NoZe tenure, the Playboy controversy, occurred that same semester. It began when Hefner’s chief henchman, photographer David Chan, announced his intention to include Baylor coeds in the “Girls of the Southwest Conference” pictorial. Judge McCall (then President) fired back that if he opened up that issue and found a Baylor girl identifying herself as such, he would expel her summarily. While the campus community pondered the implications of this pronouncement, the editorial staff at the Lariat redefined freedom of the press to mean the right to blast the owner/publisher in print. When the Judge gave them a lesson in real world journalism (he fired them), the campus erupted in a series of journalism faculty resignations/firings and student protests. I knew things had really gotten weird when a female friend of mine, a member of First Baptist who was so modest she probably didn’t own a swimsuit, informed me of her intention to interview for a slot in the layout.
At this pivotal juncture, manifesting our true talent for dousing an open flame with kerosene, we of the NoZe published what I still consider the best Rope ever. The “Hooboy” edition, designed to parody sexist men’s magazines as much as Baylor, featured a juicy, waist-up, centerfold shot of Brother ElmoNoZe (not his real name) calmly drinking chocolate milk from a quart container in the shower. Lest you think we exploited him, I should tell you that Elmo successfully parlayed this break into a major role as an elementary school teacher in the Houston Public Schools.
About a year later, my confederates elected me Lord Mayor, a rank with about as much power and influence as, say, Vice-President of the United States. My only act of leadership involved a late-night call to President Reynolds. Believe it or not, his lovely wife, Mrs. R., yanked him out of the shower to take the call. I outlined our demands: in return for total absolution and formal diplomatic recognition, we would allow life to continue normally at ole B.U. He said he’d take the matter under advisement. To date, no formal reply. I’m pretty steamed. What could possibly be more pressing?
I knew my days as Bro. ValentiNoZe were numbered my last Comehoming. Chamber put the NoZe brotherhood behind the Riding Club as usual, but we retaliated by fanning out the length of the parade. As I pranced by the Baylor Beauties, I spied two NoZe neophytes tormenting Jane Sommerhalder, the Kappa entry. Jane, a finance major, was no dim bulb. She gave new meaning to the term “grace under pressure” as she practiced her Queen Elizabeth wave from the backseat of an Alfa-Romeo while fending off my colleagues. They were pretty offensive—not a sin in-and-of-itself in NoZeland—but worse, they weren’t particularly funny. I sauntered over and told them to lay off. Jane winked at me and said, “Thanks. Mark.” The Kappas had my number. It was finished.
What’s the point of these reminiscences? I guess it’s that my life as a NoZebrother pretty much paralleled everyone else’s Baylor experience. I showed up a kid trapped in an adult’s body. Instead of pretensions about my looks, my lineage, or my bank account, I betrayed a self-importance stemming largely from my intellect. I needed a peer group to ratify my pomposity until I grew up. Sigma Chi probably could have done the same thing for me, except I look awful in white loafers.
Now, almost a decade later, married to a Baylor girl, and expecting the first child, I sit in my office and regale the nearest available audience with stories of breaking in on Forum or painting Judge Baylor’s nose pink. Sure, they roll their eyes, just as I rolled mine at my dad’s silly tales of goldfish swallowing, but behind their masks of ennui, they understand. You see, now I am a college professor.
