The house was scrubbed clean for the party, but it is in the process of being painted and decorated. Several members have used rag-rolling techniques to add texture to the walls of their bedrooms, and there seems to be a competition to exceed each other in good taste. While the guests poke around the rooms discussing paint colours and lighting effects, one fraternity member whispers to me that a clean and tasteful decor seems to increase his success with women.

This party is for prospective new members to meet the active fraternity members, recent alumni and sorority sisters who have come to help their brothers entice new blood into the system. In the recent past, fraternities would have tried to outdo each other at this time of year with outrageous parties leading to stories of spectacular hangovers that would later become part of fraternity lore. But this fraternity doesn't even serve alcohol during Rush week, when interested students shop around among the fraternities to see if they want to join.

Eddie Woo and Daniel Murphy get down to some serious university cooking at their fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha.

The Lambda Chi Alphas have invited me to join their party and witness their exemplary behaviour. They are earnest and eager and practically fall all over each other in their attempts to see that I enjoy myself and that I see them enjoying themselves.

While everyone is smiling and laughing, there is something subdued about the evening. It could just be that it's Monday night and everyone is anxious about the beginning of the school year. Or it could be that we would all really like to have a drink.

Allyson Spindler, left, and Jennifer Powers sit in front of their sorority house, Gamma Phi Beta. Alcohol is not allowed in the house. "It's not so much about partying anymore. It's all about sisterhood," Powers says.

Although fraternities and sororities have no official affiliation with the university, London has the largest number of fraternities in Canada, made up mostly of students from Western. The university allows the fraternities to set up booths on campus for one week in September, from which they try to interest students in joining. The sororities do the same the following week.
 
 

Vyta Sileika unpacks a few boxes last month at her Alpha Phi sorority at the University of Western Ontario.

In 1998, there were 97 fraternities and 50 sororities at universities in Canada. There are 18 fraternities and six sororities at Western now. Last year there were 20 fraternities, but two have folded due to dwindling membership, which worries some people and makes Rush week events more important than ever. Many fraternity members believe the whole system will collapse if they don't clean up their image and start attracting a new breed of frat boy. Such silly pranks as dumping a dead sheep at the door of another fraternity (as happened in London a few years ago), or bar-room brawls (at University of British Columbia in 1996) have not helped to improve their image. But more serious incidents in the United States, in which members have died from alcohol poisoning, have led many fraternities to institute no-alcohol policies in some of their houses.

Jason Shoemaker, last year's president of the London Inter Fraternity Council, the governing body for all fraternities here, was initially concerned that dry fraternity houses would be the end of the brotherhood. His own fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, went completely dry last year. But he says it hasn't hurt membership at all, and they even got a break on their house insurance.

"Things really started to change about two years ago. There was a change in attitude and involvement," says Keith Crawford, a member of Phi Delta Theta. "Our president came in and said there's so much more to life than parties. He thought we could attract bigger and better membership by being less self-absorbed and getting more involved in the community."
 
 

Dwindling membership at fraternities and sororities has resulted in a new, cleaner ethos. From left, Gus DeCamargo and Devin Hutchison arrive with one of the comforts of home at an event for their Phi Delta Theta fraternity at the University of Western Ontario.

Andrew McInnis, one of Crawford's fraternity brothers, says that some members didn't like the new, quieter ethos, but most of them have since graduated and are no longer active members. "The Animal House mentality died. That's just not reflective of society anymore or how school is. And it's definitely not what kids coming in to university want," McInnis says.

Now, rather than thinking up humiliating pranks to test the mettle of their new recruits, fraternities are more likely to ask them to perform charity work, such as taking children from the hospital out for Halloween.

This year's president of the Inter Fraternity Council at Western personifies the new idealized frat boy. Tyler Hand, a handsome, wholesome man of 22, picks me up for dinner on the first night of Rush week in his early '80s silver Oldsmobile with soft red leather interior. The car, which once belonged to Hand's grandfather when he was chairman of the Continental Bank, lends Hand just the right touch of stylish irony.

He likes clothes and tends to spend his money on his wardrobe and on eating out. Tonight he's wearing an ice-blue nylon shirt with slim black pants. He suggests we go to a 1950s-style diner that is popular with students. He's the kind of guy who holds the door for women and will wrestle you for the check at the end of an evening.

Hand says he prefers formal dinner parties with his fraternity brothers and sorority sisters, and martinis with his beautiful blond girlfriend, Lisa, at a sophisticated bar to guzzling beer straight from the pitcher and downing shooters at his Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house.

He is in his final year, studying business at Western and he finds he likes to be in charge. "From the day I first saw how a fraternity runs, I saw they had their own house and were an incorporated not-for-profit business, I knew I wanted to be president," he says. "Some people say they want to party their face off, others say they want to meet girls. I just wanted to be president."

In keeping with the new trend toward greater responsibility, Hand has instructed the fraternities in London that the IFC will not condone hazing or excessive pranks of any sort. "As a fraternity member, you are no longer an individual when in a public place, but a representative of that chapter. So we're learning to grow and adapt to changing demands and expectations," says Hand, who is also working with a faculty advisor on devising a sexual harassment policy for fraternities, designed to instruct the brethren on proper behaviour with women.

To a great degree, these students seem to have adopted some rather sophisticated social notions about relations with the other sex. At one frat party midway through Rush week, glamorously dressed sorority girls -- many in short skirts and clingy sweaters -- were treated with special deference by their hosts. They were greeted at the door, kissed on the cheek, their coats were hung in closets rather than thrown on beds, and they were offered a drink -- beer or soft drinks -- before they could even make it out of the hallway.
 
 

Tara Kubicki, president of the Panhellenic Council, was on campus encouraging female students to join sororities.

Many fraternities seem inclined to embrace these new policies and turn their clubs into more serious and grown-up organizations, but there are a few who feel the IFC is taking the fun out of fraternity life.

"Everyone in the IFC is just a kid, but they take it so seriously," says a 20-year-old fraternity member who asked not to be identified. "They're so worried about saving their own face, they're very politically correct. They're so worried about their own image they will come down hard on any infraction and make an unfair example of that frat. They're just a bunch of kids with power for the first time."

A few of the fraternities seem to be cultivating a kind of bad-boy image by flaunting their irreverence toward more sophisticated parties and responsible drinking. While some fraternities were advertising wine tastings and martini parties for Rush week, the bad boys were promising drinking games and bar hopping.

At the end of Rush week, one such fraternity allows me to attend a party as long as I don't identify them or their fraternity. When I arrive at 11:45 on a Wednesday night, I am just in time to learn about the well-loved fraternity game known as funnelling.

In the centre of what had once been a grand foyer to an old London mansion, the hosts have placed a huge keg of beer with a hose for filling glasses and pitchers. About 60 people -- fraternity, sorority and prospective members -- crowd around the beer keg shouting encouragement at two young men with clear plastic hoses stuck in their mouths. The hoses are about one metre long and at the other end is a funnel.

A couple of the frat boys take the funnel end of the hose up the stairs and pour full glasses of beer into them. The beer rushes down the hose and into the open mouths of those who wait below, like baby birds anticipating the worm. The first youth swallows the whole thing in about three seconds and the other finishes about a second later, while a lineup to participate forms behind them. In minutes, the floor is slick with beer and a sticky film soon spreads all over the house.

The president of this fraternity explains that they just don't like wine and cheese parties. "We're not 35-year-old businessmen," he says, while a beautiful young sorority girl takes the hose and downs the beer. Foam has spurted out and splattered all over her baby blue tube top. Her face is wet and a big droplet of beer hangs from her chin as she holds her arms up in victory.

Some of the young men here to check out the fraternity seem pleased with the party. They were rather surprised, though not put off, by the non-drinking frat parties, but they say they're having more fun at this one.

Certainly the music is louder and the cheering and shouting more insistent. There is a sense of booze-induced camaraderie as people support each other in doorways and drape themselves over one another on the sofas. But even here, there appears to be nothing stronger than beer -- and some of the fraternity members are not drinking at all.

The next morning, I stop by the house to ask when the party ended and to check on the state of their heads. There are plastic beer glasses scattered all over the porch and the lawn, but there is no one home. They have all gone to class.

The sorority girls have their Rush week after the fraternities. They, too, are worried about dwindling numbers and they hope by being more open and visible on campus to entice more young women to join. The image problem that sororities face is not at all like the fraternities. Sororities have to contend with the notion that they are a rich and beautiful pride of cats who will tear to pieces any young woman who fails to live up to their standards.

There have been rumours circulating on Western's campus that the sorority girls subject their new members to some humiliating tests. The most common rumour is that they make the girls strip naked, then wrap them in plastic wrap and mark out their cellulite and fat with a black magic marker.

Tara Kubicki, president of the Panhellenic Council that is the sorority equivalent of the IFC, says the rumours are not true. "We need to make girls feel comfortable with us and to want to be a part of a sorority, so we don't want that bitchy image. Who would want to join a bunch of bitches?"

For Rush week, Kubicki had T-shirts printed up for the sorority girls to wear. They're baby blue, tight and v-neck. On the front they say "Anybody can be a sister," and on the back is a phone number to call for more information.

Both the fraternities and the sororities emphasize the charity work they do, such as raising money for cardiac care or feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving. But none of that has been enough to offset the stereotypical image of party boys and cliquey girls.

"I wouldn't touch them," says Melissa, a 20-year-old media student. "I know they do a lot of fundraising, but I think they seem too bitchy." She adds that she doesn't actually know anyone who is a member of a sorority.

"I have to do some work; I can't drink five nights a week," says Ken, a physics student explaining why he doesn't have time for a fraternity.

"I don't think it's all drinking, but sometimes it seems they make it a priority," another physics student says.

Even Western's student paper, The Gazette, took a jab at fraternities in its Frosh week edition. The cover was an illustration of a board game, and sandwiched between "Get some. Collect condoms from Student Health" and "Watch Mustangs win a game. Advance to Vanier Cup" is a box that says "Join a Frat. Lose everybody's respect!"

The paper's editor, Sabrina Carinci, explains that three staff members were trying to come up with ideas. When someone suggested the line about the frats, everyone laughed. "I guess we're just playing into the game that we don't like frats and they don't like us," Carinci says.

When I tell Hand this at the end of the week as we meet to talk over dinner, he shakes his head in dismay. "This is what we go up against. Every single student at Western picked one of these up and is sure to read it," he says. "I have attended leadership conferences through my international fraternity [in the United States]. That's amazing at my age to be able to do. They also push us in academics," says Hand, sipping a rye and Coke before dinner. It's the only drink he will allow himself for the next few days because he is too busy with school work and fraternity business, and so he savours it.

"In the U.S., 88% of presidents and vice-presidents have been fraternity members. I believe 72% of senators have belonged to a fraternity. And more than 80% of Fortune 500 chairmen and CEOs," he says. (He's a stickler for accuracy and so he calls me later to verify the numbers. "All but three U.S. presidents since 1825 have been fraternity men. Seventy-one per cent of men listed in Who's Who in America are fraternity men and so are 70% of male U.S. senators and representatives.")

He insists part of those numbers is certainly the result of networking, but he also believes that members before the Animal House image took hold learned useful skills in their fraternities that had something to do with their later success. Hand is hoping to take fraternities at Western back to this kind of ideal. "Because when you get out of here, you have to be able to do a lot more than just throw a party."