Hazing in Fraternities

On the last episode of Bull, Jason Bull signs on to help a young black prosecutor trying fifteen college students, pledges at one of the fraternities who either willfully or accidentally allowed one of their brothers to die during their “Hell Night” hazing. It draws an immediate parallel to what happened not long ago on the Penn State campus and again more recently on the LSU campus. I would have thought such barbaric practices were no longer allowed by national fraternities. But sadistic boys will be sadistic boys, so apparently they continue.

It took me back sixty-six years to the time when I was a 17-year-old who had pledged to one of the fraternities at my alma mater. I don’t need to say what my alma mater was or what fraternity I joined. But I would like to describe what my initiation was like, what was then called “Hell Week” even though it lasted only an agonizing 72 hours. The only element in the hazing on Bull that wasn’t a part of mine was the forced consumption of alcohol. Thank God for that. On the Bull episode, the sixteen pledges were all forced to drink dangerous amounts of alcohol and then swim in a nearby river. One of them didn’t make it back. The alcohol level of the Phi Delta Theta pledge who died in Louisiana recently was a lethal .495.

In the fall of 1951, I was a pledge at one of the fraternities on our campus. Sometime before the end of the year we were subjected to a senseless, brutal, sadistic, dangerous series of actions to “prove” to the brotherhood our worthiness to join them. First, each of us (twelve in my pledge class) had to make a wooden paddle for our pledge father, the paddle to be used on our posteriors whenever the father said “bend over.” The pain level of such paddling depended entirely on the degree of sadism in the paddler. Hell Week probably began on a Friday so that not too many classes would be missed, and then went on to midnight on Sunday.

I don’t remember in what order most of these indignities happened, but I do remember what happened on Sunday night. Along the way through Friday and Saturday, we were not allowed to sleep, were made to eat double or triple doses of Xlax, were made to take a pill that turned our urine blue, were paddled whenever anyone felt like we needed a swat or two, were required to memorize the Greek alphabet and be able to say it in less than ten seconds. Any stumbles or taking more than ten seconds resulted in more paddling. Sleep deprivation, like waterboarding, is a mainstay in torture techniques. I’m surprised our tormenters didn’t waterboard any of us, but maybe waterboarding didn’t come along until years later. By Sunday we were all so groggy we weren’t sure what we were doing or why. Sunday evening we were led to the basement dining hall, made to strip, made to apply peanut butter liberally to the insides of our buttocks, made to get on hands and knees and form a circle, each of us to put our noses into the butt crack of the one in front of us, then made to crawl in a circle, each of us a unit of that circle, each unit connected by nose to butt. I don’t remember how long that ignominy lasted. Not long, I’m sure, for even the most sadistic of our tormenters would grow bored after ten or fifteen minutes. Then we were forced to swallow two or three spoonfuls of a disgusting concoction our “brothers” mixed for us—eggs (shells and all), water, cereal of some kind, curry powder in huge amounts, and, probably, a bit of one or more of our brothers’ urine. If we gagged or vomited, we were made to keep eating until we managed to keep it down. To this day, any smell or taste of curry takes me back to that time in 1951. We were then allowed to put our underwear back on and then led outside where we were blindfolded and taken by cars on a long, circuitous trip to a riverbank (or so they had us believe). We got out of the cars, still blindfolded, and told to leap feet first into the river. I made the sorry mistake of diving headfirst. I landed on my stomach and face on the watered grass behind our fraternity house. I didn’t kill or injure myself, but I could have. The brotherhood, who had all gathered in a circle around the place where we were to dive, all had such a good laugh at this last indignity. And finally, Hell Week was over. I often wondered if all of them thought this hazing was all right or if some of them, like me, hated it but were too intimidated to say so. I should have quit the fraternity right then and there, but I was only seventeen and still too stupid, too spineless and without convictions. I remained in that fraternity throughout my college years but I never ever engaged in any of the “fun” activities of Hell Week for other pledge classes. I stayed as far away from that three days as I could.