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 :
Dec '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
Yikes, but not as crazy as you Brits who choose to send young sons to boarding schools to suffer through a great deal more than fraternity hazing.
Aug '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
The more times I read the description of what this guy claims he was subjected to, the more it sounds like a Stephen Glass article, particularly "Spring Breakdown".
Anybody know if the text of "Spring Breakdown" is available anywhere on the Internet?
Dec '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
Luckily, you're not in charge of anything.
Don't be so sure that the kid in question is not FOS.
Kids now a days are not liable to put up with anywhere near that level of crap.
I had a pledge once tell me he was going to file a hazing complaint because I made him stand and watch while I taught him how to use a mop and mop bucket properly.
Dec '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
CoolHand
Kids now a days are not liable to put up with anywhere near that level of crap.
I had a pledge once tell me he was going to file a hazing complaint because I made him stand and watch while I taught him how to use a mop and mop bucket properly.
Exactly. And I had a pledge tell me she was not going to go over to the SAE house and serenade their pledges. Go figure! :-)
Dec '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
EThompson
Exactly. And I had a pledge tell me she was not going to go over to the SAE house and serenade their pledges. Go figure! :-) · 5 hours ago
Heh.
I once sang to a full sorority house wearing nothing but shaving creme and a big goofy grin. My pledge brothers and I may or may not have been inebriated, accounts vary.
We had a blast, and the girls got to throw tomatoes (or other kinds of fruit, again, accounts vary) at us. A good time was had by all.
I would not even joke about sending pledges to do such a thing now a days, for fear that they'd get arrested and come back a week later as registered sex offenders.
The man has certainly made pretty much everything less fun than it used to be . . .
/emo sigh
Edited on Jan 25 at 10:50pmDec '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
Cool: I went to college in The South, so trousers were definitely de rigueur!
Apr '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
CoolHand
Luckily, you're not in charge of anything.
Don't be so sure that the kid in question is not FOS.
Kids now a days are not liable to put up with anywhere near that level of crap.
I had a pledge once tell me he was going to file a hazing complaint because I made him stand and watch while I taught him how to use a mop and mop bucket properly. · 6 hours ago
I admit I am biased against frats in general. I hate their whole culture and mentality. They are glorified binge drinking clubs in my opinion. At least that is what I saw at UIUC. Perhaps your Frat is different. But based on your later post it doesn't sound like it to me.
I agree he could be FOS, but shouldn't his Fart brothers come out to challenge him? He is slandering them then.
Dec '10
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
Valiuth
I hate their whole culture and mentality.
Oh teh noes!!!!!!11!!! People having fun!!!!! Call out the troops!!!
Yes, I drank many times my own volume in Jack Daniels while I was at school, and until the hangovers finally became too long to sleep through, I enjoyed it immensely.
While doing that, I also learned to be an engineer, a leader, a machinist, and a fabricator. I also started the business that now serves as my sole source of income.
So maybe your paint job here requires a smidge narrower brush.
You might also consider that what you actually hate is not fraternity culture as it really exists, but rather the caricature of fraternity culture that both the media and non-members continue to perpetuate.
Of all the fraternities I've been inside of, I can count on one hand (with fingers left over) the number of them that fit that stereotype.
It's funny how we're not supposed to prejudge people because of their skin color or heritage, but it's perfectly acceptable to prejudge them based on other stereotypes (IE, the air head frat guy, the lazy and useless fat guy, the bigoted white person, etc).
Dec '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
I agree with the consensus that this student is primarily responsible for not walking away. But, it is also the school's responsibility to manage things that happen on their property. However, schools realize this, which is why this story sounds fishy.
That said, peer pressure is very powerful, and there is a cultural aspect to it. An environment where the group pressures a few to be subservient, combined with the modern degrade into filth, will result in terrible hazing, which the pledges will feel they are forced to endure.
Aug '11
Re: On Hazing, Frats, and Animal House
As far as the hazing allegations in Dartmouth. I tend not to believe it was that bad.
Valiuth notes that he's "biased against frats in general." I can't really speak to that. But I'll try. Every fraternity chapter and every campus is different.I know SAE chapters I'd want nothing at all to do with (and they wouldn't want anything to do with me).
At UMiami fraternities overwhelmingly did the most community service and donated the most blood. For a variety of reasons we weren't a party fraternity, and most fraternities weren't party fraternities.
Guy Incognito makes a good point. Peer pressure is really powerful, especially in fraternities. It can be very difficult to speak in chapter and say "we should do this instead of that." I eventually grew up and began speaking out more but it was a process. That's why fraternities can be really good or really bad. When they are good they are really good and they encourage ownership and responsibility. But I can see how peer pressure and the belief that "I'm not the one doing the hazing." Can create toxic situations.