Content Warning: This section includes discussions of anti-Black racism, drug dependency, murder, and violent hazing rituals.

Max Marshall opens Among the Bros by discussing Mikey Schmidt, a young man from Atlanta, Georgia. He began college at the College of Charleston (C of C) in 2013. He was a small teen, earning him the nickname “Little Mikey.” He chose to attend C of C because of its seven-to-two ratio of girls to boys, and he planned on joining a fraternity.

Marshall learns about Mikey in 2016 when he sees a press conference by the Charleston Police department. Mikey, along with several other college students, had been arrested in connection with a drug bust, where police seized “five pounds of marijuana, a pound and a half of cocaine, seven firearms, a Tac-D grenade launcher, $214,000 in cash, and forty-three thousand pills worth $150,000” (11). The drug bust was linked to the murder of college student Patrick Moffly. It revealed a campus drug ring that “sold everything from MDMA to LSD to Xanax” (11). 

Marshall is struck by the appearance of all the boys arrested in the drug bust. They are preppy fraternity “bros” like him with swoopy haircuts.