On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
Animal House—also known as Dartmouth College—is making national news again, this time about a controversial op-ed written by a current student, senior Andrew Lohse, on the experience of being hazed in his fraternity. The op-ed brings up some important questions about being a young person today.
In the piece, Lohse describes what he had to do as a pledge for his fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon (for those of you who are familiar with the film Animal House, this would be the "thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another" fraternity populated with preppy WASP types). Warning, the contents are graphic:
Among my many experiences as a fraternity pledge, I was: forced to swim in a kiddie pool full of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen, and rotten food products; forced to eat an omelet made of vomit; forced to chug cups of vinegar until I was afraid that I would vomit blood like one of my fellow pledges did; forced to inhale nitrous oxide; degraded psychologically on a daily basis; forced to drink beers poured down a fellow pledge’s ass crack; vomited on regularly, and encouraged to vomit on others.
He then calls upon the president of Dartmouth to take action against hazing:
Dr. Kim, I have a question for you: what will it take for you and your administration to decisively address hazing, sexual assault and substance abuse? If one student speaking out isn’t good enough for you, what is?
It has now been over a year since I shared this information with the College administration.
(In the interest of full disclosure and context, Lohse is no stranger to substance abuse. This little party habit—which he and other brothers allegedly indulged in the very fraternity that traumatized him so—was eventually reported to the police by another fraternity brother, Phil Aubart. Lohse and the other users were arrested for cocaine possession. And Aubart, who was also trying to do the right thing by "speaking out," was threatened and ostracized as a result. According to information included in an affidavit, "Lohse allegedly spat on Aubart and poured out a beer on the door of Aubart’s room in the fraternity’s physical plant, according to an e-mail written by Aubart and sent to Hanover Police Officer Rolf Schemmel.")
Alright, so, with that context in mind, back to the main story. Lohse is now a senior. He pledged the frat as a sophomore. Apparently had some good times in those intervening years. But he is now not so happy with how things went down. He wants justice, or something like that, from the Dartmouth president. For our purposes, the issues are: should he get it? Does he deserve it? What should be done about hazing?
There's an interesting question that arises here: to what extent do we blame the "system" or the "system's institutions" (here, the frats) for causing social evils, and to what extent do we blame the individuals within the system? You must answer that question before taking a course of action to solve the problem because either you sanction the "system" or you decide to hold individuals accountable for their misbehavior.
Lohse blames the system:
One fellow pledge shared with me once that he was so troubled by his experiences that he spent six months in counseling dealing with their emotional and psychological effects. He then became a pledge trainer himself, seemingly unable to break the cycle of abuse he had been so tortured by. One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth, one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men, is that good people can do awful things to one other — for absolutely no reason. There is an intoxicating nihilism at the center of our culture, one which fraternities try to downplay under the pretense of plausible deniability. The sad truth is that my experience is not the exception, but rather the norm.
It seems clear to me that institutions can't be bad in themselves without people in them doing bad things. Here, those people are the frat brothers who allegedly hazed Lohse and the other pledges. However, all the responsibility does not fall on the brothers. Some of it falls on the pledges. My question to Lohse is this: if you were enduring this "torture" as you call it, which would have commenced within the first few weeks of your pledge-hood, then why didn't you get the heck out of there—de-pledge the frat? Lohse wants to blame the Dartmouth administration and hold it accountable for what he had to suffer through, but he needs to hold himself accountable first. Don't let yourself be degraded.
In difficult situations, some people take personal responsibility. But Lohse, like so many disaffected young people today, is quick to condemn the "culture" for his own problems. This means that instead of proactively making decisions to change the way he lives his life, he idly stands by for administrators to form committees and task forces that, in the end, do nothing. He writes, "I, my fellow pledges, and all pledges since, have been trained to treat Dartmouth women with about the same respect with which we treated ourselves: none." Trained? Really? If you're treating yourself and the women in your life with no respect, then that sounds like a personal problem to me.
Here I have to agree with Gawker's John Cook, who writes:
If you join a frat and volunteer to let people vomit on you and bathe in semen because you believe that if you do, people will eventually think you're "cool," you totally deserve to get vomited on and bathed in semen. Enjoy your college years, kids.
Fraternity brothers like Lohse need to find the moral courage to stand up for themselves and not allow themselves to be degraded by these sick and twisted, sadomasochistic pledging rituals. If that means de-pledging the frat the instant your conscience sends up a red flag, if it means giving up being "cool," then that's the price a young person has to pay for doing the right thing.
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Comments:
Apr '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
It does sound as if there would be logistical problems in supplying enough vomit to swim in. While disgusting, it would demonstrate a genuine work ethic. With about a quart being the typical maximum that a full intentional feeding and vomiting will produce, and assuming you could eat to the point of being sated and then vomit about 5 times a day of full time effort, taking weekends off to maintain minimum health, to fill a typical kiddie pool will take about a semester. I guess they really, really, enjoyed watching the dudes swim in it.
On a more plausible level, I'm shocked, shocked, to hear that some people go to college and end up engaging in debauched behavior they later regret.
There outta be a law. Maybe if Obama extended mandatory high school age to 25, students would be mature enough to avoid some of the moral pitfalls presented by college?
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
"Forced" to inhale nitrous oxide? At most college parties if you wheeled up a tank of the stuff the line would go down the block.
Apr '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
Agreed, part of the blame is on the hazers and part is on the hazees, but I'm also going to lay blame on our societal mindsets. We've been training young men and women to behave as if they are mere victims of impulse. We rarely encourage them to make the right choices, to discern between good and bad. Before the young man even stepped up to pledge, we have encouraged him to see him as a helpless piece of driftwood on an ocean of impulse and outside pressures.
On one hand we rightly criticize the end result here. On the other, this is more a symptom of the disease than it is the actual infection.
Mar '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
As an alumnus member of a different fraternity, I'd say that any individual who would put up with this kind of treatment, and any organization that would inflict such treatment on an individual as a condition of membership, deserve one another.
I'd have walked. I think I can safely say that any of my brothers would have walked. I know that none of us would have put up with doing any of this to a pledge.
Oct '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
I attended a midwestern engineering and science university in the 1960s, not an Ivy League school such as Dartmouth (2011 tuition: US$41,736/year; tuition, room, board, and fees US$55,365/year), and my impression as a freshman in 1967 was that the people who pledged fraternities were largely morons, and nothing since then has caused me to revise that judgement.
But then most of us there, then also looked down upon those studying dopey things which had no apparent application in the real world, and had lower expectations for them. Haven't revised that one much either.
Nov '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
....and my impression as a freshman in 1967 was that the people who pledged fraternities were largely morons, and nothing since then has caused me to revise that judgement....
John, sort of like the "guns and religion" thing. I guess the one thing this "moron" learned was humility. Maybe that is why I have engineers working for me today. Best, Lookaway.
Apr '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
First, the description seems so over-the-top as to be incredible. So we begin with that caution.
Second, if true, the blame starts with the people involved. I think the word "hazing" is increasingly overused, but there is nothing that compelled anyone into this situation or forced anyone to stay. What was described is disgusting, and it would have probably taken one person to say "to hell with this" and bring the whole game to an end. When the college administration needs to start supervising these activities, then you’re watching our "best and brightest" start being infantilized and our universities becoming pre-schools for watching the kiddies.
Third, if true, you have to wonder what is happening culturally. I went to a school that didn't have fraternities or sororities (CGA '88), but I have sibligns who pledged and neither ever described anything remotely like this. Even if this is not true, it is apparently so credible sounding as to be taken seriously. This becomes the bigger question: What is it about our culture that we have this urge to constantly pursue one over-the-top antic after another beyond any measure of good sense, safety, or dignity?
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
You Americans are crazy, truly. I remember at Oxford trying to smash every window in one of the Quads with my bare hands, licking sorbet out of someone's navel and accidentally urinating on a don. But the stuff described here is beyond disgusting: why would you put yourself through this?
Aug '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
Well, 99% of us never do. The ones who do? They are the 1%. (Which explains a lot, really.)
Sep '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
There must have been a woman waiting as the prize at the end of all this. That's the only reason I can think of.
Sep '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
accidentally urinating on a don.
Leon Panetta wants to have a word with you.
May '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
If even remotely accurate, that's pretty horrific stuff. I have a hard time imagining how (or why!) anybody would willingly put up with any of that.
When I was in grad school at Texas 20 years ago, I was a "house mother" for a small fraternity. I got the job partly because the fraternity's national office wanted to clean the place up, and I'd just graduated from what was at that time one of the model chapters (at Auburn). The month before I moved in at UT, the fraternity in the house across the street was kicked off campus (and several members indicted) for stuff not terribly dissimilar from what's described in the op-ed.
The house I was working in never had problems anywhere near that grotesque, but they did have a culture of treating pledges like indentured servants. As a result, any given pledge class hated everybody older than them, and were hated in return by the next incoming class(es). We finally got the point across that this was a lousy way to build a lasting organization, and they were pretty successful (and stayed out of trouble) for some time after that.
Dec '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
The closest thing to "hazing" that I experienced when I pledged was having to listen to Prince's "Party like it's 1999" endlessly while we washed dishes.
I eventually became the big "hero" of the pledge class for the semester, because when I could take no more I went all Samsonite gorilla horribly mangled the offending boom box.
Nobody else from the active chapter was willing to risk their stereo equipment after that, so we finished the semester doing dishes in blissful silence.
I enjoyed living in my fraternity and most of my college career, but there is no way that I would have done what that kid did in order to pledge there.
No way, no how.
Aug '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
I was a Dartmouth fraternity member, Bones Gate (formerly DTD but went local over conflicts with discrimination rules in the 60s.) The Gate, as it was called, was a pretty hard core party frat, but we were not big on hazing rituals, beyond chugging a few beers, the occasional pledgenapping and a scavenger hunt. SAE was somewhat isolated, my roommate was an SAE, and I know they did little in the way of hazing back in the early 70s. Things must have changed. It all sounds gross and sick to me. In my day, someone would get his ass kicked if he tried to pull something like that. I certainly doubt that this is the "norm" for Dartmouth frats. Word would get out. No one would pledge.
Apr '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
I was never in a fraternity, but I'm sure I did some odd things in college. However, my memory is a bit hazy ...
Oct '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
I was in a sorority in the early 80s, and my daughter was in one the past couple of years. Neither of us had anything remotely like that going on - nor did I experience any psychological trauma (I vaguely recall being blindfolded once during initiation week). I didn't ask my daughter for specifics (different sorority), but she's pretty decisive and doesn't put up with a lot of bull, so I don't think she did either.
I recall helping out with a pledge hazing event for one of the frats on campus - they'd brought a group of pledges to our house, and we painted their fingernails. I was in Navy ROTC with one of them, drill day was the next day, and he told me he'd had to scrape it off with a pocketknife.
I guess the University of Colorado wasn't very hard core.
Aug '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
I lived in a house owned by the Anglican Church. They owned all the houses on the block. One of the conditions of residence was that each house had to cook dinner for all the houses on the block at least once.
For a bunch of boys with little experience in the kitchen, having to cook a meal for that many people was sorta like hazing, I guess.
Aug '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
The Dartmouth piece sounds way, way excessive and completely impractical in terms of the hazing said to have taken place.
I was a member of SAE while at UMiami. I wasn't hazed. And I wouldn't have stood for being hazed. And it's really hard to keep hazing, and anything done in a fraternity, a secret. It's really hard. I find it difficult to believe that Dartmouth was completely unaware of what was going on and that they'd be so irresponsible as to not investigate it. But then again, UM was burned by their college football booster. But I'm pretty sure UM was complicit in that from top to bottom. I don't think Dartmouth would get itself in trouble for SAE.
What Emily says is right. "find the moral courage and stand up for yourself." It's easy to stand up for something when you can put the costs on others. It takes real maturity to stand in Chapter and disagree with your peers on a major issue.
That's one reason why fraternities haze I think. They simply don't know how to bid and how to speak in Chapter.
Dec '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
I was in a sorority in college and a Sigma Alpha Epsilon little sister as well (admittedly, back in the Dark Ages). We all knew hazing was not for the faint of heart, but I refuse to believe that these stories are a) not gross exaggerations and b) representative of most Greek houses.
This story brings back unpleasant memories of the smear tactics used against the Duke lacrosse team in 2006.
Ah, the never-ending attempt to feminize or criminalize some basic rites of masculinity...
(BTW, the "E's" have a national reputation as athletes, not "preppies.")
Apr '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
Like everyone I wonder why do any of those things to yourself? Just go find the local cluster of nerdy guys watching Star Trek you'll be better treated and get better grades. The thing is though while the pledges are fools for consenting to do those terrible things the members of the fraternity are wicked for suggesting them. I would shut down all the fraternities on campus as a response. Clearly no one involved in their operation is an adult, that makes this unacceptable.
When did collages start being inhabited by these socially retarded human beings that would ever consent to or conceive of these hazing rituals. I am 26 I think we should by law move the age of adult hood up to at least 25 I would prefer 33 personally. Clearly Collage is not a place for adults anymore but rather a boarding school for children with adult bodies.