‘Lupe’ and the Guys

College humor, as everyone knows, has never been based on goodwill, honesty, spiritual enhancement, parental love or family values.

It tends more toward scatology, human failure and sexual heroics, those being the upper limits to which college guys aspire.

The same is true with fraternity drinking songs. They usually end up debasing someone because, the theory goes, it somehow isn’t right getting drunk while singing “Amazing Grace” or “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Madrigals, hymns or songs sung around the old campfire simply do not qualify as . . . well . . . testicular enough to be included in those celebrations that combine male undergraduates and booze in bacchanalian songfests.

That general theory was applied when, earlier this year, UCLA’s Theta Xi fraternity distributed a songbook to its members that ultimately got it suspended.

The book was passed around, if you can imagine, as an “associate member educational manual” and featured, among other ditties, a tune called “Lupe.”

According to its lyrics, Lupe was a “hot . . . Mexican whore” who lost her virginity early and “finished her life in a welter of sin,” most elements of which are described in blunt, less than lyrical terms.

“Lupe” caused an uproar on the UCLA campus. Everyone, with the possible exception of fools and the guys of Theta Xi, condemned it as sexist, racist and vulgar.

When the dust had settled, the fraternity was lodged in hell and everyone was swearing a new allegiance to love, caring and social sensitivities.

But somehow Cal State Northridge just never got the word.

In a spirited effort to destroy itself while simultaneously supporting the principles espoused by Theta Xi, CSUN’s Zeta Beta Tau recently gave itself a Mexican theme party partially in honor of . . . you guessed it . . . good old Lupe.

“In honor of Lupe” appeared on party flyers distributed throughout the campus and, predictably, was followed by an expression of outrage equivalent to a small revolution.

Several hundred students, led by organizations of women and Latinos, rallied against the fraternity, the song, racism, sexism, obscenity, vulgarity and the fact that the tune has absolutely no redeeming social values.

It remains unclear why the Zeta-Betas, as they are known, chose to make reference to Lupe after so much hell was raised on a campus a dozen miles away for more or less the very same reason.

Some blame the presence of smog in the Valley for diluting the significance of the outrage at UCLA, thus lulling ZBT into a somnambulant state when it came to defining its own brand of fun.

Others shrug and say what can you expect of a generation raised on the likes of Madonna, Howard Stern and pepperoni pizza?

Fraternities have always been the college equivalent of street gangs, utilizing financial thuggery, snobbery and rejection as primary weapons.

Jews and blacks were once their targets of choice and now, to a limited degree, women, gays and Latinos are apparently the ones to get, through one means or another.

Smug hatred, as it turns out, is not limited to the outside world but finds a place, however uncomfortable, within the ivy-covered walls of academia.

Bad taste among fraternity boys isn’t a suddenly acquired trait.

I recall similar episodes of insensitivity from my own undergraduate years, although most of us had wit enough to simply drink and make out, without regard to cultural qualifications.

“Lupe” is a vile piece of work we would not have allowed into our lexicon of drinking songs for all of the reasons cited above. I’m not sure we were nobler in our outlook toward women and minorities than today’s undergrads, but we knew what kind of words caused pain and tried to refrain from using them.

I asked CSUN’s vice president for student affairs, Ronald Kopita, how something like the “Lupe” business could occur. He ultimately suspended Zeta Beta Tau for its flyer.

Kopita blames it on students who lack a clear understanding of what’s offensive and what isn’t, a vision impaired by 12 years of Republicanism in the White House that was insensitive to caring about people.

“But the disenfranchised are rebelling and aren’t going to take it anymore,” he says, adding: “The message is, ‘Look, kids, things are going to be different.’ ”

What gives one pause for concern is that, unless their fun assumes less hurtful levels, the guys who sang “Lupe” are going to be humming it someday in high places, with what impact we can only imagine.

I’m not looking for doxologies at a beer bust, but tunes free of hatred might be nice.