AMONG THE BROS

How the wealthy fraternities of the storied College of Charleston became the hubs of an interstate drug ring.

According to Charleston police working the 2016 case, the drug dealers of Kappa Alpha and Sigma Alpha Epsilon sold Xanax, cocaine, and marijuana, mostly to college students across the South. “One of the largest busts in the city’s history, a six-month collaboration between local police, state law enforcement, the DEA, the FBI, and the US Postal Service,” it was connected to the murder of the son of a real estate developer who was also a board member at the college. Police seized hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, 43,000 pills, seven firearms, and a grenade launcher. Marshall, a freelance journalist, dives deep into fraternity life and drug dealing to figure out how this happened. His ability to identify with the fraternity bros at the center of the drug ring helped him get access to sources. However, it soon becomes clear that his interest lies more with the drug dealers—especially one of the ring’s leaders, Mikey Schmidt—than their numerous victims. “When Mikey and I were in school,” writes Marshall, “most boys in our bubble shared a dream of what college might look like….There’d be white pong balls splashing in red Solo cups, and hot girls who wanted to wrestle in mud or Jell-O.” The author refers to most of his anonymous sources by their fraternity or sorority affiliation, as if that is someone’s most distinguishing trait, and he seems overly enamored of his subjects’ connections, wealth, and hard-partying lifestyles. While he does expose a dark side of campus life, he misses an opportunity to offer a deeper, more interesting story with appeal beyond the Tucker Max demographic.

A flashy disappointment, leaning more on drug dealer fantasy and frat-boy excess than real crime drama.