You know what would be the best part about being an Ancient Greek? Killing Trojans, minotaurs, togas, feta cheese, olive oil wrestling and essays on determinism. Oh, and pouring beer down your throat through a funnel.

According to CNN, Dartmouth is dangerously close to integrating their greek system. Either that or eliminating it. Ouch, that’s gotta sting.

Protesters took to the streets in record numbers on Thursday, a massive field of pea coats and crewcuts making sure that the tradition of greek fraternities and sororities continues at the Ivy League school.

Thirty percent of students are greek at Dartmouth.

With those numbers, you would think it would be impossible to make any change in the greek system, substantive or otherwise.

It seems like the more powerful a greek system the safer it would be, but apparently the closer a greek system gets to being huge and powerful, the closer the scrutiny it falls under.

Universities don’t like powerful groups challenging their authority, I guess.

According to their Web site, Delta Lambda Phi, America’s first and only openly gay fraternity, was founded in 1987. But in the category of high irony, I would like to point out how redundant it should be that gay men should have the need to found their own fraternity in the first place.

In case the small “G” greeks are unaware of the practices of the big “G” Greeks upon whom they have supposedly based their associations, here is a brief reminder of what your supposed forebears were really into.

To the greeks, a weekend of partying is all about getting tanked on beer, talking about getting tanked and finding some honeys who are tanked to get over on.

To the Greeks, a weekend of debauchery was all about getting tanked on wine with honey, talking about philosophy and getting naked in a steamroom with a man of impressive intelligence to have a romantic liaison with.

Intellectual pursuits for the greeks involve having a well-stocked filing cabinet full of term papers, quizzes and test to help maintain a decent GPA.

The Greeks held intellectual pursuits in the highest regard and would never have cast aspersions on attending philosophy club meetings because they were too nerdy. They would have made fun of philosophy club meetings for completely different reasons.

Olympic events for greeks involve binge drinking, power drinking, drinking a lot, drinking heavily and bed races. And Jell-O shots.

The Greeks were big into decathlons and nude wrestling. Jell-O shots hadn’t been invented yet.

The need for gay fraternities is ironic indeed.

It should be a rare thing for there to be a fraternity that isn’t gay or, at the very least, open to gay membership.

If you really want to live up to the Greek ideal, the Greeks had no problem with homosexuality; they held it in higher regard than marriage with women. Marriage was about good citizenship and bearing children, not love.

But then again, there are plenty of gay men in fraternities who simply hide their true natures’ from their bothers.

I’ve known more than one gay fraternity boy who played the role of babe hound to the hilt just to make sure his brothers thought “sure he’s effeminate, but he gets all the chicks.” Well, nothing suspicious there, I guess.

But I guess I have to admit there really is nothing inherently gay about 30 guys living together in one big house with paddles in every room. Nothing gay about the tradition of spanking — that is 100 percent masculine adventure! “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”

Nothing gay about calling an older boy Pledge Pop, Pledge Dad or even Pledge Daddy, for that matter. I know all my straight friends love to call me that; it just feels natural and straight, real straight.

It isn’t like fraternities are notoriously fashion conscious, either. You don’t see a lot of thin, clean cut guys running around buying just the right clothes and wearing just the right cologne on nights out mocking and ridiculing those not cool enough to conform.

That is because fraternities are all about straight guys doing straight guy things: drinking contests, trolling religiously for babes and wearing clothes that say “yes I’m a lumberjack, but I’m a lumberjack with style, dammit!”

One of my best and straightest nights was spent at the old Alpha Sigma Phi house on West Street. I will never forget the good times we had doing beer slides, beer bongs, drinking beer and dancing around in circles to The Village People’s “Macho Man” as the ladies looked on stunned and amazed at how cool and straight we all were that night. Good times.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.