Hazing, What is it good for? - The Fraternity Blues
I never understood the practice of hazing. Hazing is, at least to me, an archaic practice of servitude where one is oppressed and tormented by someone or someones as a sort of initiation into a group or club. This was a rather common practice back in the middle and probably even later part of the 20th century. The practice of hazing has a long history evidently going back to at least 387 B.C., with the founding of Plato’s Academy.
I, myself have been briefly subjected to hazing a couple of times. I also kinda feel basic training in our military is actually a kind of hazing as well so that would increase my experiences to 3. I am not a fan. I resisted the non-military instances and just put up with it in basic training understanding that resistance had unwanted consequences.
My first experience with hazing was when I was sent off to college in the fall of 1967. Freshman hazing was still “a thing” at that time. All freshman at Valparaiso University (Valpo) were expected to show up a week early for what they termed orientation week. While I suppose there was a bit of orientation going on what it mostly turned out to be was a week of hazing by upperclassmen that included a set of guidelines or rules we, freshmen, were all expected to follow our first semester. I wrote about how this all worked out for me in a previous piece I posted a couple of weeks ago entitled “Beanies and Bright Ideas”. I wrote about basic training in a story way back in June of 2017 entitled “Screaming Part 2 - I Learned Something in Basic Training”
My second was when I eventually attempted to join a fraternity at Valpo. It was something almost everyone did as basically all social life ran through Fraternities and Sororities. That was true for many colleges at the time especially those in the mid-west and probably any university located in a small town like Valparaiso. Joining involved pledging to the fraternity where you would be given a designation of “pledge status”. (Pledge implies a second-class membership. During this process you are required to endure indentured servitude with extensive memorization, essentially hazing.) Once pledged a 9 week hazing program began where it was expected that pledges complete various tasks all while being harassed by one's future fraternity brothers.
I was not particularly enthused about doing this but it seemed to be a necessary step if I wanted any sort of social life, i.e. spending quality time with co-eds, at college. The process starts off pleasant enough. There is a “Rush” period where the Fraternity guys approach you attempting to convince you to join their Fraternity. You are treated nice. You even get invited to a few parties (with girls! and beer!). At the end of the rush period, if you are deemed acceptable, an offer is made where you are invited to pledge. Once you pledge it's the old bait and switch, the gloves come off. You are now theirs and subject to the fraternity brothers' whims as your 9 week hazing period begins. I ended up pledging the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.
The kick-off for this 9 weeks of servitude is pledge night. It's a gathering at the “Frat House” where after a few shenanigans, alcohol activities are scheduled that require lots of beer drinking. These go on all night until you stop because you're vomiting and can no longer function, or you pass-out, or are the last man standing, although I'm conflicted about using the word “man” in this circumstance. I was 19 at this point. I grew up in New York, a state where the legal drinking age was 18. Most if not all mid-west states had a 21 drinking age restriction. I bring this up because most students at Valpo were from the mid-west and that meant I generally had a bit more experience with alcohol then all the other pledges as well as probably many of the Fraternity brothers. As a result I was better able to handle the effect of the beer and also understand when I needed to back off the drinking. So as the evening went on I started to purposely spill some of my beer as discretely as possible, which was not all that hard as by that time most everyone was a bit worse for the wear. Pledges started getting quite inebriated and getting sick. The last activity I remember was a football game with the pledges against the brothers in the cleared out dining hall. We played on our knees. At this point I was the most stable pledge and really there was only one other pledge who could function well enough to do much so it became me and him against about 6 of the brothers. The thing was I was functioning better than all but two of the brothers as well so it really mostly came down to me against the two of them. After that game it was just me and 2 or 3 brothers left standing and I just found a quiet place to lay down and sleep for what ended up being the rest of the night. When the sun came up and I woke and everyone, except one of the brothers who was also one of the two who were still up when I retired, was still out for the count. I stood up, ran my hand through my hair, nodded at him, and walked out to return to my dorm room. Once there I plopped into my bed where I stayed until lunch time.
There was a required meeting back at the Frat House the next evening. There we met our pledge leader/counselor. We were required to meet with him every Sunday afternoon during our pledge period. He was one of the frat brothers and it was his mission to guide us successfully through the 9 week pledge process. He gave us lots of information, a few tips and also our assignments which include things like cleaning up around the frat house and acting as waiters serving meals at the house meals to all the brothers. We were also informed we had to learn and memorize each brother's nick-name, their girlfriend's name, if they had one, their home town, their major, and a few other things. We also had to memorize certain information about the fraternity and of course the Greek alphabet. We were strongly encouraged to get a small notebook where we could log all this information for reference as we could be quizzed by any brother at any time. There was a demerit system where we would receive demerits for various things including not being able to answer these questions when asked. We were all required to enter and leave the frat house through the back door only. We were required to obey all commands given by any of the brothers. We had to make all meetings, no excuses. Failing to do any of these would result in demerits. Too many demerits would result in being kicked out of and barred from the fraternity.
It turned out that not only did we have to keep this notebook but we had to keep it on a leash or a brother would steel it from us. This happened to me on one of my first visits to the house. Evidently I was supposed to chase the guy who grabbed it from me. I had no desire to do that. To me it was not worth chasing him and if he kept it, (why would he want to?) I figured I would just buy another one. He and for that matter the other brothers there at the time were not too happy about my decision. They explained how I could not let someone steel my little notebook. I was expected to try to get it back. I listened quietly but still didn't go after the guy. Later the guy returned my little notebook and gave me a bunch of demerits. I've already gone on about this too long so I will just cut to the chase. At the end of the first week I missed the Sunday afternoon meeting as I had a rare date with a girl. More demerits. I later met up with our pledge leader and he informed me that I had broken the fraternity record for most demerits acquired during the 1st week of pledging. He explained how I needed to watch myself or I would find myself thrown out of the fraternity. We spoke for awhile and I concluded that I just wasn't fraternity material. He asked me to reconsider as he said he personally would like to see me in the frat. At the end we agreed it was not going to work out. I turned in my pledge book and I left walking out the front door to the surprise of a couple of brothers.
So, I didn't make it as a frat guy. Maybe I'm spoiled, maybe being an oldest child I had entitlement issues (I am a cis-gender white guy). I don't know. I wasn't all that fired-up about joining in the first place so flunking frat pledge was not much of a blow. I just don't like being harassed period.
Is hazing supposed to somehow build bonds? I don't get it. I don't see how it works. I don't see the benefit. Do those doing the hazing somehow enjoy it? I think I would be uncomfortable doing it. I can and do needle or tease people I like but that seems different to me. I've been teased and needled before and have no problem with it. To me hazing just seems mean spirited without any redeeming value to either the hazer or the hazee.
I am happy to report that a few years later the fraternal organization I joined, Lambda Chi Alpha, officially abolished pledge hazing. It was the first fraternal organization to do so. Valparaiso also eliminated freshman hazing within the next couple of years as well. Was I ahead of my time or am I just a spoiled baby boomer? No need to answer that as it was more of a rhetorical question so please feel free to keep your opinion to yourself.
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