Following a night of drunken revelry, Homer reports, Elpenor — one of Odysseus’s unhappy and rapidly dwindling band of brothers — climbs atop the roof of the house where they are staying to sleep off the booze. Awakening in the morning, he proceeds to tumble off the roof, fatally breaking his neck in the landing. Thus was born the first frat bro.
Falling from height seems to be a regular part of life among 21st-century college fraternities. Fraternity-house residents and their guests regularly fall off roofs, porches, decks, and fire escapes, out of windows, through skylights, and down stairs. This March, …
