Wrongs of Passage Excerpts

An Excerpt from Wrongs of Passage Fraternities, Sororities, Hazing, and Binge Drinking
by Hank Nuwer:

Groups such as fraternities and cadet corps tend to reward with power and status individuals who are perceived as making the group better. If hazers are perceived to be doing the group a service by teaching newcomers precedence and getting weaklings to "toughen up" or quit, they are rewarded with a kind of status. Why? Because the group likely concluded that the hazers are trying to uphold its quest for higher standards.

Hazers are in effect extremists. They justify actions that are outside the range of normal human behavior. People join extremist groups because they crave relationships and acceptance, not primarily because they respond to the group's particular ideology. People who are friendless, who move to a new locale, who lack focus, or who need a romantic attachment are vulnerable to the recruiting efforts of extremists. Fraternities and sororities "rush" predominantly first-year male and female college students who find themselves in unfamiliar settings, away from family and from childhood friends, and who seek a feeling of belonging. Part of the exhilaration some college students experience upon their arrival in college involves their ability to choose a Greek group that offers them friendships, some that are quite likely to endure for life. To these young people, enduring hazing beats the pain of loneliness.

Not that joining a group is wrong. Students seek membership in a caring primary group as a way to avoid feeling alone for four years in a "holding pen," as James Ridgeway, author of The Closed Corporation: American Universities in a Crisis, called undergraduate life. Those willing to undergo harsh mental and/or physical abuse to gain admittance into a group as members may have insecurities that are not all that apparent on the surface. Rather than feeling elated about being accepted into a given university, they may still be smarting from a rejection letter from a more prestigious institution. Large classes at large universities leave many first-year students with a craving for membership in fraternal societies in which spontaneity, intimacy, and individuality are encouraged. Several colleges welcome students as quasi-family members through positive, non-hazing rituals. The Church of God-sponsored Anderson University assigns new students a "family" of "brothers" and "sisters" who answer questions about the school; parents are eased through their own adjustment at a special orientation where they simulate the experiences their child is experiencing. The historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta also has a church-like ceremony that welcomes new students and makes them cognizant of the importance and solemnity of their decision to get an education and to make a difference in the world.

However, such ceremonies have not eradicated hazing. After some acts of non-criminal hazing that administrators found unseemly in view of the college's spiritual mission occurred at Anderson University in 1997, the administration tightened regulation on how student clubs can initiate newcomers. And Joel Harris, who had given up competitive swimming because of a health problem, collapsed and died at Morehouse College during harsh physical hazing required for admission to Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Even though most undergraduates cannot articulate what it is they are seeking when they pledge a fraternity or sorority or try out for an athletic club, such clubs and others like them respond to vulnerable individuals' need for primary group support. Social organizations become even more attractive if they are perceived as providing entrance into a campus group with prestige, a way of meeting attractive members of the opposite sex, an opportunity to belong to a group that values participation in sports or other activities, or something meaningful that can be put on a resume.

Hazing demonstrates a group's power and status; it teaches precedence as a way to subjugate the individual for the perceived good of the group. And in many fraternities whose members believe that their high status has been accorded because of "manly" accomplishments such as drinking, athletic success, sexual "conquests," or even crimes such as gang rape, there is a high degree of what an author of a book on male rituals has termed "macho posing and phallic swagger."9 Thus the sadomasochistic sexual assaults or threats of such assaults that occur as part of some fraternal hazings may be performed by members to demonstrate male dominance over other males.

Those who are hazed in fraternities, sororities, and military schools are often told that they cannot gain admission to the group until all pledges or plebes demonstrate unity, loyalty to the larger organization, and respect for tradition. Greek letter-society members and military school cadets push the more aggressive members of the pledge or plebe class to pressure their peers to conform. Inevitably, pledges and cadets lose their identities as individuals to take on a collective identity that will likely resurface after initiation, ensuring that the new high-status people in the group will haze the next round of newcomers.

Fraternities put so much emphasis on group identity that even people who have never joined a Greek group have a common perception of them. Too many Greek groups for too long have contributed to their own national stereotype with public displays of drunkenness, boorishness, and hazing activities. Robert Egan's vulgar From Here to Fraternity, written in 1985, contains interviews with hundreds of Greeks at 100 colleges in thirty-five states. The book glorifies demeaning and revolting hazing, sexism, and alcohol-abuse rituals that are gleefully at odds with what fraternal and university leaders say a collegiate educational experience should be.

For many years a chapter's overall grade-point average (GPA) and member accomplishments helped determine whether that fraternity had high or low status on campus. Today, "high status" fraternities too often rate high in the pecking order because of superficial attributes. "If there is a responsible group on campus with a high GPA, but the physical attractiveness of their members is low or they're regarded as nerds--more the academic type than the jock type--their status is a lot lower than the group that has great parties and rates very highly on the physical appeal of its members," said James "Jim" Arnold, an Oregon counselor who has studied fraternities firsthand. In his experience, what sometimes happens is that a chapter regarded as low-status will over time try to raise its collective self-esteem by emulating the less-admirable aspects of the high-status group, for example by introducing hazing or throwing an unauthorized multikeg party. "We can find fraternities and sororities that are not on the high-risk end of these kinds of groups, but my opinion is if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it must be a duck," said Arnold. "If it's called a fraternity, it's going to exhibit fraternity behavior. There seems to be a general knowledge [on campuses] of what being a fraternity member means."

There is also a fraternal consensus on what national Greek leaders want the fraternity of the future to mean to members. The NIC Commission on Values and Ethics has said that fraternity is a belief "in developing the human spirit." The commission statement concludes that "it is through the values expressed in our ritual that we share this belief," and "it is through our actions that we exemplify this belief."

Pledges hungry for group identity may condone attitudes, behaviors, and group mores they would ordinarily find objectionable. In that respect, executives of Greek-letter groups, much like authorities in charge of facilities to train law-enforcement officers, firefighters, attorneys, and doctors, must remain vigilant against hazing outbreaks. What these unlike groups have in common is a profound respect for the traditions of an organization or a profession, a reluctance to follow suggestions for reforms offered by outsiders who lack direct experience as members, a certain amount of secrecy in regard to their rituals, and a belief in systems of order that preserve the status quo and foster fear of change. And whenever there is secrecy in organizations, members of certain groups tend to refrain from reporting the wrongs of other members.

What is true of initiations in police recruit schools, pro football training camps, or oil-rig shower stalls applies equally to hazing in Greek-letter groups. The experience involves a great deal of idealism and personal excitement and is associated with detachment from the old life and immersion in the new. An important part of learning comes from observing veteran members, and members regard their very seniority and the fact that they have survived the rigors of the first days on the job as evidence of their superiority. Newcomers detect subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the done thing and the formal rules, as well as between a culture and its subcultures. Newcomers in groups that haze are also outcasts, in that initiated members call them disparaging names and ridicule them. But what is true of hazed pledges is also true of police academy recruits. After members consider the pledges full-fledged group members, all the hazing stops. What remains are the resentments and the physical or psychological wounds.

All members, and to a lesser degree all pledges, share a common belief that one is either a member of a group or an outsider. Those who drop out of the group may despair because group members view them as misfits. Would-be members who die or are hurt during hazing are viewed by the chapter as people who failed to measure up. Had they been equal to those in the group, they would have survived all the ordeals the members survived when they pledged. The group rarely blames itself for perpetuating collective idiocy unless the entire group becomes traumatized when a death occurs and members see how their actions are perceived by the press, the public, and, in some cases, the lawyers who take them to court in a civil suit. Because those in the group continue to harass dropouts with reproachful looks, threats of violence, or abusive words, many who leave a fraternity also end up leaving school. Auburn University student affairs administrator Grant Davis said that he encourages pledges to fight back by staying at the university after reporting hazing. He said that he is trying to empower pledges to end the hazing abuses. "Pledges have a lot more power than they think they do," he said, adding that members know fraternities will die without new recruits. "If they will just stick together and say no to hazing, the fraternities will back down.

Rita Saucier, the mother of a pledge who died at a Phi Delta Theta Christmas party at Auburn, disagreed. A whole semester of coercion and intimidation can paralyze anyone's independent spirit, she said. That pledges typically do not report hazing shows that fraternal members who haze have created a true subordinate subclass. In hazing fraternities, pledges must symbolically display a penitent, servile demeanor long enough to gain acceptance by the group. True, rebels exist in every pledge class, but members control them by beating them down or punishing their fellow pledges until the rebellious behavior ends. Sleep-deprived and frustrated, J. B. Joynt wrote a telling note to himself just before his sudden death in a pledging activity at Frostburg State University in Maryland. "I've come too far to quit now," wrote Joynt. "I've done too many dishes, too many pushups, and been bitched at by one too many brothers to quit now. I'm halfway there & I'm ready to do whatever it takes to get Phi Sigma Kappa letters."

Another excerpt:

Here is a brief passage (unedited, non-final copy) from Wrongs of Passage: Kappa Kappa Gamma is an international female fraternity with 127 chapters. The national fraternity, which is considered one of the pioneers of sorority life, was founded in 1870 at Monmouth College in Illinois. Kappa has initiated nearly 180,000 members, according to Marilyn Bullock, a national vice president. "Every chapter seeks to nurture individual development reflected in high levels of scholastic achievement, student organization leadership and athletic accomplishments," said Bullock.

In the fall of 1997, the national Kappa Kappa Gamma office considered the DePauw Kappas an exemplary chapter. The 129 members of Kappa at DePauw included the student body president and the campus panhellenic president. The group's GPA had risen recently, and members included three women who had been accepted for membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Twenty DePauw Kappas were on the dean's list, and twelve played varsity sports.

The DePauw chapter's nationally viewed hazing controversy began on November 6, 1997, the night some Kappa members who considered themselves a "family" within the chapter planned to carry out an unorthodox ritual that had taken place each year over the past three years. The pressures on students to belong to a Greek group is probably more intense at a campus such as DePauw, which is 78 percent Greek, than it is at some other campuses, said Douglas Fierberg, an attorney who represents hazing victims. Some who pledge do so because their parents, grandparents, and other relatives were part of the Greek system. Consciously or unconsciously, these alumni have pressured young family members to continue this tradition as a "legacy." When your grandmother and mother were members of the sorority you are pledging, "dropping out of the house can be devastating," said Mark Freeman, director of DePauw police.

Early in the evening, some Kappa big sisters hooked up with their little sisters at different meeting paces. Pledge Jessica Zimmerman met her big sister at a fraternity house near campus. Zimmerman said that her big sister made her a large drink of something that "tasted like pine trees." Zimmerman said her big sister urged her to finish the drink because a special sorority event was about to take place at Hogate Hall, a DePauw residence hall used by some Kappa women because booming sorority recruitment had made the house too small to serve all members. A self-described light drinker who backed her claim with the assertion that she had been one of the few people on her [residence hall] floor "who hasn't thrown up," Zimmerman was reluctant to finish the drink...Zimmerman suspected that a pre-initiation bit of buffoonery might be in the works. Perhaps she would have to don silly clothing--maybe wear her bra on top of her shirt. Zimmerman said that she "trusted" her big sister. During rush, the sisters had assured potential members that their sorority didn't haze.

The two went to Hogate Hall, where six pledges and thirteen active members waited. Some members wore sheets and were humming like spirits. A member squirted pledges with an oversized mechanical squirt gun. No big deal, Zimmerman said she thought at the time. I can get through this. But three other pledges indicated that they were uncomfortable with the proceedings. Their big sisters led them from the room. Zimmerman, pledge Damara Karamesines, and one other pledge stayed. The sisters encouraged them to take drinks of Hot Damn and other kinds of alcohol. "It was not poured down our throats; it was more like, here, take more," said Zimmerman in an interview that took place on the DePauw campus on February 27, 1998.

Next, two of the three pledges had to kiss a skull decorated with two racquetballs and something resembling pubic hair, then symbolically castrate a member who wore a fake penis.

The big sister then showed Zimmerman a cigarette burn on her hip. She said the burn was the family's sign, said Zimmerman. The burning signified that those burned were to be admitted into a family within the larger Kappa group. Although the ritual was now four years old, no rumors of it had reached DePauw's Teresa Loser, the administrator said in a 1998 interview at her office.

The three big sisters indicated that the pledges should feel special to have been singled out for this distinction. "It's tradition," one big sister explained, Zimmerman said in an interview. "We're proud to have these on our bodies."