Adrift from the Brotherhood: A Former Pledge Recalls His Experiences in a Problematic Chapter.

A Conversation Conducted by Hank Nuwer

Excerpt from The Hazing Reader: click to order




No one knows precisely how many national or local male fraternity chapters can be lumped into the category of “cultlike” groups, but civil suits following a death or injury do make it clear that chapters that do haze their pledges severely often sanction paddling or beatings, under-aged drinking and some drug use, assemblies in unpleasant house rooms in which lined-up pledges experience verbal abuse, restrictions on pledge movements, isolation of pledges from non-chapter entities on campus other than sports teams, servitude and encouragement of deception to advisers, national fraternity representatives, and school officials.

The following interview with a victim of a cultlike chapter’s hazing was conducted late the night of September 10, 2001, and concluded in the early morning hours of September 11, delaying the interviewer’s arrival in New York City for a televised event that failed to occur because of a terrorist attack. The conversation took place in the home of the victim’s parents who live a short driving distance from New York City.

I have removed the name of the victim from the interview, along with information that would identify his chapter and school, because at the time of this chapter’s publication, the victim has made a fresh start for himself in an athletic endeavor. The person accused of being a hazer, unfortunately, is also protected, and he now holds a position of trust in a collegiate athletic program. He and his university have resisted all attempts to gain an interview with him for his side of the matter.

However, the hazing chapter herein described has been expelled by both the national fraternity and the university where it once existed.  

The young man interviewed here was treated by a neurobiologist for headaches and mood swings.  


Hank Nuwer: In looking over the transcript...it seemed as if the chapter was determined to break rules from the beginning...

Pledge: You got your bid and then there was about a three-day period where you didn’t have to be at the house, and you didn’t have any duties. During those three days every day there would be everyday beer slides, parties, and all the fun. The brothers gave you the understanding that come the end of the third day it was over with. The fun you had was gone and it’s time to get down to pledging, which was the most important thing to them. In those three days you got into the house when you wanted. They showed you around the house. They gave you all the free beer you wanted. Generally, they were partying a lot of the time.

Nuwer: [Anthropologist] Lionel Tiger calls it “males courting males.”

Pledge: That’s what they did. In hindsight, maybe I should have taken better notes (laughs).

Nuwer:  Often the hazers act as a designated group. They get a kind of status from what they do. It helps the brothers that don’t haze assuage their conscience or consciences...

Pledge:  We got into our hazing...There were brothers who were just, you know, assholes. Whether they were hazing or not, they had a chip on their shoulder. But there were people like the number one pin, which I’ll explain in a minute, when he walked into that [hazing] room in the basement, he wasn’t [name of hazer], he was the number one pin. You could tell by the way he carried himself. He was a little guy, about half my size. When he came down, I remember the first time we saw him, he came flying down the stairs like a gorilla, screaming. All the other times when there was hazing, he would just walk around, and he would be fearless, walking up and down the rows screaming at people. I talked to him several times when we weren’t in the basement and he was just a very different person. There was an authority about him, but it was greatly [changed] from when he wasn’t it the room.

Nuwer: Is this theater or sadism?

Pledge: It was a lot of theater. In hindsight, every time I talked to him outside the room, I always thought he was kind of scared of me. I was twenty-one, just actually four months younger than he was...but some of the mystique he had wasn’t there when we weren’t in the room.  

Nuwer: He was like an actor getting ready to come onstage..or an athlete before a ballgame?

Pledge: Definitely. I was told that before he came downstairs he would be in his room drinking or whatever, and a lot of the brothers would come in to fire him up. They’d get him all riled up, saying we weren’t respecting the house. They would just provoke him, or maybe they’d just get him angry, or a little drunk. He’d come in and, like I said, he’d be this different person...They were getting him hyped up, jacked up, ready to go.

Nuwer: Did you have alums there getting involved?

Pledge: I had alums there the last night I got hit down in the basement. The alums were there for the weekend, but they cam e in Thursday night. It was very uncomfortable having alums there because they still felt they owned the house. But the brothers in the house, they ran the house...It was tension, when the alumni came back and they acted like they owned the place...The night I got hit there were two alums in the basement. I know there was one standing right next to me, because he kicked me during the night. Normally, if it’s a hazing night and they’re in the basement, they’re the ones in the basement running things.

Nuwer: One problem is the NIC [National Interfraternity Conference] and the national fraternities don’t have a way to police alums. There’s not much they can do to them.

Pledge: No, it’s the whole older person mentality. You leave middle school and you go to high school when you walk around the middle school you’re king of the valley. They [Alums] have that same mentality.  We’re not in college any more, we’re in the real world. We’re not going to take any crap from some college boy...I did meet a lot of alums who very nice to me. They didn’t haze me, and they didn’t like the hazing.

Nuwer:  With undergraduates it’s supposed to be your [chapter] experience in the house, and yet one of the reasons for hazing [supposedly] is that the house change very little over time. There’s no way anyone can do that. One pledge class can change the house dynamics—

Pledge: —Yeah, there were people who graduated a year or two before and they were revered in the house. Beyond that, the names got hazy. You didn’t know anyone else. So it’s like you said, yeah, trying to keep the legacy of the house, trying to keep the house the same.

Nuwer:  ...Did you think the hazing was a sort of profane [deviation] from the sacred [values] the fraternity holds dear?

Pledge: That’s a hard question. The hazing I went through, there were some sacred cows if you will, that you had to do. First, you had to respect the brotherhood at all costs. We were told this several times—“Protect the brotherhood at all costs.” Just behind that was this: you had to know the pin number. You had to know it. These were like biblical numbers the pin numbers.

Nuwer: Can you explain this? I never went through anything like this [in my fraternity].

Pledge: When you were pledging, you wanted to be the number one pin, meaning at the end of pledging, you wanted to be assigned number one pin. The number one pin, when he was a senior, he would lead the hazing. He would be in charge of hazing; he ran it, the whole show. It would never be the president, because if he got hit, caught, or in trouble, it would take down the whole fraternity. So, it was deliberately separated. But he [the number one pin] ran the house. The president had to run the ideas through him, the top dog. If the number one pin couldn’t do something, the number two pin took over, the number three pin, and so on down the line. The top ten pins in the house got single rooms. Everyone else below, you had to live in a double.

Nuwer: Did you feel that anytime there’d be music playing from The Godfather? —

Pledge: —Yeah, it was bizarre. During the week you had to do favors for the brothers. A favor could be anything like just going to the store for some bread, or some beer, or some fast food. You had to get at least one favor done for all the brothers in a week. But if I was doing a favor for someone whose pin number was twelve, and a pin number of anything higher than twelve called, I had to leave that guy and go.

Nuwer: How did he feel about it?

Pledge: The twelve? He wouldn’t get mad at the other person. Occasionally, someone would take it out on you, like “You left me and I didn’t have this.” Then he’d make you do pushups and stuff. Now that never actually happened to me, but it happened to other pledges.

Nuwer: Did you ever find yourself caught up, where you thought, I want to be number one pin or number four pin?

Pledge:  Yeah.

Nuwer: You did?

Pledge: You’re brainwashed in a sense. I had a lot of time since this [injury] happened to think about it. You know it’s not right. Something about it isn’t right, but it’s like you convince yourself that it’s not that wrong. Then you get into this whole mentality, not of right or wrong, but like: Well, they can’t break me. It was like, whether I agree with the hazing or not, you will not break me. I knew, because of a [prior] concussion I had from wrestling that I couldn’t be the number one pin, because I couldn’t do the heads [headstands for a prolonged time], so to compensate for that I was always around the house. I was twenty-one, so I went out and bought all the other brothers beer, the ones who were twenty-one or not. So yeah, you got into it. You wanted to be the top pin at the end.

Nuwer: Interesting, so you had to do servitude in order to get status. It would be like bootlicking if you were in the military.

Pledge: You’re basically their slave. You have to run around and do all kinds of favors for them—some being very easy, some being very hard. It just depended what mood the brother was. I can’t speak for all the other pledges, but I couldn’t stand it. That’s the thing I hated. I didn’t mind the physical stuff. To me, I could always turn it off. I didn’t mind people in my face yelling, especially [name of number one pin], because he’s yelling and he’s half my size. I knew if it was an open street fight, I would kill him. But to go get a guy a drink who is like two doors away from a fridge, or to sweep out his room, that always bothered me. I know it bothered a lot of pledges to be someone’s servant. I don’t know whether anyone else did this, because I had to keep this quiet and to myself, but when they would send me to get drinks, I would spit in them. That was my little way to rebel against it. If I had to get ice, I rubbed my hand on the ground before I got the ice. If you were a brother and you were rude to me, most likely I spit in something you had. But you’re so proud that you spit in someone’s drink, you forget you just walked down four flights of stairs, because you’re kind of brainwashed and you’re into it.

Nuwer: Did you notice pledges change from the first day?

Pledge: Yeah.

Nuwer: What did you notice? Utter obeisance? Rebellion?

Pledge: No one rebelled, no one rebelled...My close friends ask, what’s the one thing you wish you could have done in that situation? Well, when that first kid got hit, not me, I should have walked out, and I should have told someone. That’s something I’ve got to live with, the fact that I was a coward. My biggest regret is that I didn’t rebel. How it affected the pledge class a sociologist would go crazy for. Out of my two closest friends at the school, one went headlong nuts into it, just fanatical. I don’t know how he stayed in college because he never studied. I would be going to class and he’d be there [in the house] studying the pin numbers. You’d be given a list [to figure out pin rankings]. The first brother’s name was correct; the others were all clues and mysteries. He was basically the first to decode it, because he spent all his time doing it. He spent more time in the house than I did, and I was usually there a lot to do favors.

Nuwer: Did some members treat him with contempt?

Pledge: No, the brothers liked it. To his face, they hated him. They’d yell at him, they’d make him do pushups until he’d be almost crying. This was during the day when no one really would get hit. But they’d make him stand on his head until he’d fall over and get sick. They’d yell at him, and he’d be just taking it and being all proud, like I can take anything you dish out because I want to be a brother. As soon as he walked out, the brotherhood would—

Nuwer: —Think, we’ve got a good one here.

Pledge: Yeah, there was a buzz about. It gives you a sense of pride. There was one weekend, alumni weekend, in which I think I slept seven hours in three days. Your spirits get crushed, and you’re always someone’s—I don’t have a real good [term]—someone’s bitch. All the time, you got to do this and you got to do that. Then someone would come up and say, “The brotherhood—they never said `they’, just `the brotherhood’—The brotherhood’s really impressed that you’re here all the time. It’s been taken note of. I can’t lie, it made me feel good. I felt I was a part of it. The other end of the spectrum, kids that just couldn’t take it, although when I was there no one quit. Basically, I didn’t really quit. They forced me out when I stopped showing up because I was sick. I still remember this little redhead; he was skinny and couldn’t do more than four pushups. He was terrified every time we went down to the basement to begin our hazing. I used to sleep or try to get some sleep in my big brother’s room before it started, and one night Rick crashed on his coach, and I woke up and there was Rick, just crying—terrified almost. Everyone fell between the two extremes: my one friend who went hog-wild into it to the kid who was breaking mentally. Everyone [else] fell in between. [The brotherhood] wanted you to be more toward the breaking, so not that Rick was not the norm, because they wanted you breaking.

Nuwer: It sounds like a concentration camp—

Pledge: I wouldn’t say that, but like a prison. The minute you walked into the house, and the minute your foot crossed that door, you were in a prison, you were theirs. On campus, you belonged to them, but it was more open because people were watching. Always, the brothers and pledges were always very tight on campus. You couldn’t tell a pledge from a brother walking on campus, I mean when they interacted. Everything that was [done] in the house stayed in the house. When you were walking to classes you talked to the brothers like you would talk to your friends.


Nuwer:  What was they psychology here? Why did they do this?

Pledge: They told us. They wanted everyone else to think that [all was run as the school and national headquarters wanted things run]. Yet everyone knew [this chapter at this school] had the worst hazing. Everyone knew it, but no one ever said it. They wanted to keep the illusion up.

Nuwer: That’s deception. How did they feel about the deceiving?

Pledge: The brothers? Well, to them it wasn’t deceiving. To them, it was protecting the brotherhood—that’s what I’m trying to say. That was the main thing you had to do.

Nuwer: So loyalty was more important than any moral qualms [they might have]?

Pledge: Yeah. They put on this big happy front for all the sororities, for all the administration, for everyone to see. The reason is that so no one would suspect all the horrible things they did once you walked into that house. It was a masquerade and it wasn’t a masquerade, because many, many brothers really wanted you to be there. Hazing was something you really, really had to go through, because they went through it too. That was the reasoning. And if I was a pledge on campus and someone [outside the chapter] who was disrespecting the house] started a fight with me, the whole brotherhood would come. They stressed the mentality of all for one and one for all. If I had a problem throwing [an obnoxious guest] out of the house, they were all there. But that was a front, trying to make everyone believe that we were once cohesive unit. But when you walked into that house and there was no one in there but brothers, you were in for a world of pain.... But you couldn’t talk to anyone about the hazing outside the fraternity—outside your pledge class—if anyone knew, and this was a small campus, that was it.

Nuwer: But this [cohesiveness] is also a foreshadowing to the pledges of what life will be like once I’m in as a member.

Pledge: Yes, exactly. It’s going to be good times all around.

Nuwer: Were they trying to humiliate you when they had you get beer for them, or what?

Pledge: We were sluts—we were told that. One night there was a meeting while I was out of town coaching at a high school and everyone had to repeat the mantra, “Women are sluts.” One pledge was told [by a member], “My mother is a slut, your mothers are sluts. Women are sluts”  

Nuwer: So this is hearsay?

Pledge: Yeah, it’s hearsay in that I wasn’t at the meeting where they said this, but I heard it enough [from other pledges] in other conversations. The women were nothing.
Women were nothing to the brotherhood. A girlfriend, you gave her respect, and if she wanted a beer you got one to be polite, but other than that, women were just a commodity. I worked the door [at numerous parties]. All I had to do was let in young freshmen or sophomore girls, or sorority girls—basically if they were hot they came in. The whole task of being the doorman was keeping the highest number of girls and the lowest number of guys. Women might have thought [the brotherhood] paid special attention to one sorority or another, but they didn’t care. To them, they said, they were nothing more than whores.

Nuwer: This is not acting, they actually believed this?

Pledge: Yeah. Women were nothing, and to prove a point, I threw out one of the pledges’ girlfriends out of the house because she was acting very drunk and very rude while I was the doorman. I said, “It’s time to go.” I kicked her out. He got mad, with reason, since someone just kicked his girlfriend out of his supposed house, but the brotherhood didn’t care. [Someone said,] “You made the right decision, because she was a stupid slut.” Now the same guys who would say this would then go and cuddle with their own girlfriends. And sometimes, in the basement in the middle of hazing, they would just tell funny sex stories. You always got the feeling that women meant nothing.

Nuwer: Did they call you feminine names?

Pledge: They called you a faggot; they called you a homo, pussy, things like that, but nothing to make you feel like a woman. It was brothers, pledges, everyone else.

Nuwer: Are they actually anti-homosexual, or was that acting or satiric?

Pledge: They were anti-homosexual in the fact that you got a houseful of thirty-five or forty homophobic guys. The word faggot and homo was thrown around a lot, but not with a connotation. I don’t think anyone ever sat around and thought, “This means homosexual.” But there never would be a gay pledge or a gay brother—I’m pretty sure of that. They would never allow that. But I never saw them kick anyone [visitor] out of the house for being gay, and I never saw them targeting [gays].

Nuwer: Anti-black?

Pledge: As for race, there were no black guys. A lot of brothers used the word nigger, but they also never went out of their way looking for trouble with black people.

Nuwer: Did they get into fights with other fraternities?

Pledge: There were two feuds going on when I was there. We hated TKE for some reason. I was never sure—Apparently a couple years ago someone started a fight. Did I personally hate TKE? No, a couple guys I lived with were TKE pledges. We were told at the beginning that [Tau Kappa Epsilon] was our biggest rival, and that you were to hate TKE no matter what. We were told the opening night of pledging that a pledge is lower than whale shit, but higher than the TKE president...And you never referred to one as a TKE, he was a TKEbag. If you say TKE in the house you’ve got to do pushups, so the next time I had to say TKE I said “TKEbag.” We had a running thing. They kicked us out of their parties, and they kicked us out of our parties. But no one ever actually fought, because if I threw a punch [at a TKE], I could be expelled. The feuds really were just a lot of talk. I’ve had time to think about [the pledge hazing sessions]. If I had turned around and I dropped the president [with a punch] or the number one pin, I don’t think anyone would have done anything.... They would do all this violence against the pledges, but the minute they got into a real-world situation where someone could fight back, you’d never see it. They were cowards in the sense that they fought [the pledges] in numbers, too.

Nuwer: Did you have sorority little sisters?

Pledge: No, but sororities would bring their pledges over.

Nuwer: Did [your chapter] haze their pledges?

Pledge: We watched them get hazed.

Nuwer: What was the [hazing] behavior?

Pledge: They’d maybe get forced into a line, yelled at, but it was mostly things like having to do silly dance moves. You weren’t embarrassed for them. You’d think, “Great, I go down into a basement and get the shit beat out of me, and they have to dance to Ricky Martin—This isn’t quite fair.” I don’t know what they did when they weren’t here, but they’d haze them for about twenty minutes while we were there watching, and then it would be, “OK, party!” Our connection with the sororities was this: You never offended a sorority too bad because you wanted to have sex with them. That was the whole mentality.
You could have a girlfriend, and be in love with a girlfriend, but you never ever chose a girlfriend over a brother... And in our fraternity, Ecstasy was a huge drug, huge drug, taken with alcohol all the time. You’d take it to get through hazing...You knew which brothers had access to certain drugs. It wasn’t just fraternities but sororities [on campus]. The sororities were actually bigger on Ecstasy than the male fraternities.


Nuwer: What about you not getting into the group? Did they consider you to be deviant even though they were the ones doing criminal-like behaviors? In my book Wrongs of Passage, there is a passage on rites of passage, you pass through liminal space or a portal from where you are a non-member to where you [go through pledging rituals and] become a full member. But you suddenly dropped in the middle so that you are no longer on the side you started, nor on the other side with the brotherhood [where you wanted to be]. You can’t go exactly back to your parents but you can’t be with the brotherhood either.
 

Pledge:  Yeah, yeah. One thing you learn right away as a pledge is that you will never be right whether you are right or not right. You run around in this great wrong area. I never felt like a deviant, I just figured that whatever I say, I’m going to be wrong. But when my scenario ended, I was really adrift. I don’t talk about this. The only time I’ve told the whole story was with my parents at a deposition the first time, and they actually heard everything. The hardest thing, what I couldn’t believe, was when I got done, that these guys, who I looked up to, who I had hung out with—I couldn’t believe that they would sell me out that quickly. I didn’t want to get most of the brothers in trouble. I just wanted to get in trouble the brothers who hit me or who allowed it to happen. Two of the pledges were my best friends on campus, and there were three others I hung out with. They were all eighteen or nineteen, and I was twenty-one. I was kind of a surrogate big brother who always bought the beer. I was shocked, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over the fact that these kids, and not only did I pledge with the two, but I wrestled [on wrestling team] with them before we even thought about pledging. That had always been a sacred bond with me. Whether you liked them or not there would always be respect. The minute I got sick with my concussions and I couldn’t go to the meetings because I was sick, I don’t think anyone would have spit on me if I was on fire. Total separation—they just left me. I was shocked, and for the longest time I couldn’t believe it. Even five months after the whole thing happened, I was just mentally blown away. I was actually more pissed off at my pledge brothers than the brothers. These guys, at the drop of a hat, betrayed me.

Nuwer: Do you replay this in your mind?

Pledge: Oh, when [Name of a brother] hit me in the head I’ve seen it a million times. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the “getting hit” part. It was just that—after I got hit and came back, and I started getting the concussion symptoms, I was talking to one of my friends, the wrestler, and he said, “Pledge, don’t turn this into the school.” I never told anyone I was thinking of turning in anything to the school, even though I’d been thinking of it. Eve then it was a foreign idea to me but I said, “Bill, I have a headache every day—and I have dizzy spells,” and I go, “What if I drop out? —If I drop out I am never going to be allowed in anywhere.” He said, “Pledge, don’t worry, when you’re a senior we’ll let you in.” Like, that would make up for everything. I could trace that back to the time [end of tape]









New tape:

Nuwer: How did you feel when you were not a member any longer?

Pledge: I missed the camaraderie. You really do. I never missed the yelling, the being hit. But it was a sense of friendship that you miss, and my older brother was in a fraternity at school and my father was in a fraternity. So when I was pledging I called them up and talked to them, though wouldn’t tell them what we were doing. They would just give me words of encouragement—stick to it. Afterwards, when I finally explained what [the brotherhood] was doing, they were astounded. Even now, I don’t think my parents know how bad it was...I don’t think even my [blood] brothers know how deeply you feel affected by this. I was adrift from the brotherhood, but I knew I didn’t want to be like that. That realization came over a period of time. For the longest time, I actually felt guilty about turning them in.

Nuwer: How did you do that?

Pledge: I went to the dean’s office. I asked them, I said, “Listen I don’t want to get anybody in trouble—these guys are my friends—but if you could just pay for some of the medical tests. Or if they could just cut me some slack. I was sick, I had headaches, I couldn’t go to class, I was falling over. I’d be sitting places, and I couldn’t even remember how I got there. These were all symptoms of post- concussion syndrome. I just asked them for certain courtesies—they laughed at me. My dad told me, “I called the Dean.” I said, “Dad, this is my life—you can’t do that,” and so, to a certain extent, they forced my hand...I knew that was the right thing to do, but you see, that’s the thing no one ever tells you when you’re a kid. They always tell you it’s good to stand up and do the right thing, but they never tell you how painful it actually can be, or how many times you actually regret it. I turned them in, and for a time, I felt bad about it. I felt bad that I was going to punish my friends at that school. The main turning point that pushed me away from the brotherhood was another wrestler friend, not one that I was super-tight with or anything, but we lived in the same eight-man quad. He came up to me one day and he said, I know you’re turning in the fraternity. I hadn’t told anybody, but he knew. If someone wants information, there is no way of stopping it. Secretaries saw me walking in and out [to register a complaint at the school], and half of them were students who knew I had an appointment there.  He said, “Pledge, if I had all the concussions you’ve had, and they’d done the same thing to me, I’d do the same thing you’re doing. I don’t hold anything against you.” When I look back now, I can’t believe he actually said that. That took a lot of guts to say that. He said there were two of his best friends and another guy in the house who will basically make your life a living hell. I was shocked. He said, “Sorry, I wouldn’t do anything.” I cleaned out all my stuff, and I left. I came back over Thanksgiving to pick the rest of my stuff up. On the other hand I couldn’t go back to my family. They had no understanding of what it was like...Yes, the fraternity did get kicked off, but other than that, nothing has happened, no apologies...I feel like I haven’t gotten any justice over this...I know my dad felt bad for recommending [fraternities] to me...I was adrift. I couldn’t go back to my family.... And so I transferred... and now once a week at least I think, I’m at a school I hate because of the brotherhood.... Because of this fraternity, I lost the school I liked going to, and professors who were well known in philosophy for which I wanted to go to grad school, I sacrificed that. I had one great professor, and if I was there I’d be his right-hand man now. I lost that. I lost two best friends in the house and we’d gone fishing—fishing! —That’s a bond. (laughs ironically) ...If you talk to my parents, they’ll tell you that somewhere along the way I lost my compassion for other people...It’s changed the way I view people. Before, I always thought there was something good in people. Now I tend to think there is something wrong with people.


Nuwer: This is speculative but have you envisioned what you might be like had you gotten in? Would you have hazed somebody else?

Pledge: You know, I would love to say that I wouldn’t have done this to someone else. You always want to be the bigger man. The truth is, I couldn’t tell you. When it was happening to me, I thought, This is wrong, and I hate it, and if it was me, I wouldn’t do it. Of course, I know on the other hand that it’s this huge adrenaline rush to be feared—to have people quiver under you. In wrestling, I was ranked in the state and it’s kind of a rush, and I can see that going to people’s heads.

Nuwer: What I wonder is whether something actually changes in a person that goes through the hazing so he then it becomes [likely that he reciprocates].

Pledge: Yeah. Something does change in you. It’s like when you’re running a mile or any distance, it really hurts when you’re doing it, but then when you’re done, you don’t remember it. When people go through hazing, it’s the same: They hate it, they hate it, they hate it. There are two camps I saw...with nobody in the middle. They either go all the way and be Super Hazing Man or they’re not going to do anything. That’s how they picture themselves when they’re [pledging], but when they are out, I tell you, it’s a flip of the coin as to who is doing it and who isn’t...At my new school, you find out [who the hazing groups are]. If you want to find something out [about who the hazers are on campus or anything else], you can—you must be observant and listen. I told [some Greeks], “Hey, I’m not coming to this school for any trouble. I had a bad incident with a fraternity, and I just ask you respect the pledges—the song and dance every one of them all gives—and never send a pledge over to me [doing favors or other acts of servitude] to ask, “What are you doing tonight?” I told them, “Never do that to me.” A girl at school who had a crush on me actually sent her sorority pledges to me, and I went to talk to her. I realize that I have a lot of anger because I set out to lay it all out analytically, and before I knew it, these words were coming out of my mouth: “If you ever send over a pledge, guy or girl, I will beat the shit out of you.” And...I’ve said to pledges...in passing, “You’re a human being. Nobody has the right to make you their slave.” I mean, it’s so culturally accepted that I’ve got to watch this being put in my face.

Nuwer: From what you’re saying it seems to be that hazing which is cultlike is the worst—

Pledge: —It is. It’s such a cult, and it’s accepted. It’s accepted by the people in it. It’s accepted by the people around it—other college students, it’s accepted by the administration, it’s accepted by the community, and on the whole, it’s accepted in the United States.” That’s what it runs on. No one ever steps up to say no.

Nuwer: It’s like the tacit approval that used to be given date rape, it—

Pledge: —It is to an extent. People who went through it will say after, “Oh, it really wasn’t all that bad.” It’s so accepted and you get so brainwashed into a way of thinking, even if you fight it and spit into a cup as a rebellion, eventually you go along and man, this goes and gets you, too. You get sucked into it—it is a cult.

Nuwer: I hope people reading this finds that what you say demystifies [hazing]. You have a certain credibility because you’ve gone through this. I think it helps people in Greek organizations who say hazing isn’t so bad because their [own] chapters didn’t haze.

Pledge: Yeah. My friend Derek goes to the University of Virginia, and he’s in a fraternity...I’m kind of a big guy, and he told his friends, “Don’t bring up fraternity [hazing] in front of him because he gets angry...” I see that basement [where he was hit] in my mind sometimes, and it makes me angry. I lost a lot, and I lost it as you say, because I got sucked into a cult[like] mentality...You don’t ever want to be cynical, and you hope it will change, and I hope, I hope the fact that I got the fraternity closed down means someone there won’t get closed in the future. That’s the thing that won’t ever change—that cult status. The only people I think who can stop this is the school administration. But they protect themselves. The [hazing] at [my old university] could have been ended a long time ago. And, while I don’t know this for a fact, I think [hazing] could end at any other college if the administration there would only take another approach to it. It’s like drugs. It’s like under-aged drinking. Everyone knows it’s there, but nobody says anything. If [the administration] wants to find it, they can find it, but no one ever does anything or disciplines people. It’s the same thing with fraternity [hazing]—it’s on the same level.

Nuwer: If a college professor ever treated students the way a fraternity treats students, he’d be out of a job [as an abuser].

Pledge: Yeah, but because it’s a fraternity.... it is a mystery, and you [as a student] want to be involved in it so you get sucked into it.

Nuwer: [A cultlike group] is a sort of self-indulgent little kingdom.

Pledge: Yes it is. It is the crown jewel of hedonism. This is the same house where I watched brothers drink until they pass out and vomit on themselves, and then I had to clean up the bathroom half the time. The old timers who went through the Greek system...? They love it now because they think it’s the same [as it once was], but it’s not.

Nuwer: I [see] a need for realistic [quantifiable] research surveys of hazing to determine how many people actually haze—

Pledge: —Yes, I know that in the house I was in, it’s “protect the brotherhood at all costs.”

Nuwer: What about the national headquarters? Didn’t—

Pledge: --They had an adviser there. Now the pledges were told by the brothers that the adviser didn’t know what was going on. Well, if so, I’ve come to the conclusion that he is retarded, or he chose to look the other way. They had the adviser there because incidents had been reported before...There was no way he couldn’t know what was going on—no way.

Nuwer: Did he see under-aged people drink?

Pledge: Yeah, he’d come into a room, and we’d be having a beer. Everyone would be having a beer. It was more like a “walk by and scoping of everything out.”


Nuwer: The one argument for keeping fraternal groups going is community building, but [cultlike groups] are anti-community.  It’s really in the Greek system’s best interest to get rid of criminal behavior.

Pledge: Yeah, but the mentality is that if you’re ratting on one fraternity, you’re ratting on all of them. I wish I had thought of “cultlike group” myself to describe it, because it’s perfect, because everyone wants to be in on that little mystery that no one else knows about...It’s the fact that you’re involved in something that no one else knows about—it might be a little counterculture because you’re not a conformist. Then here you go over to this fraternity with the biggest conformists.


Nuwer: At DePauw there was a sorority where the pledges were given brands on the thigh, ...and [the larger sorority chapter] was broken into families. They had family secrets, family words. At IUPUI I was part of a program where African-American fraternity members invited in gang members and they compared rituals. Some were pretty similar—


Pledge: --Yeah, when I was in it, your pledge brothers were your brothers. Until you became a full-fledged brother your pledge brothers were your family. You dealt with your problems internally, and in it there were leaders and followers.


Nuwer:  You were a wrestler, and now we’re seeing hazing with sodomy...and sexual stuff [initiations], but you want close bonds with your teammates and—

Pledge: Yeah, but our wrestling coach never allowed any hazing, and he openly said one time, “If I see you harassing a freshman, you’re off the team.” He said, “Beat...him when you’re wrestling if you want to show you’re better than him.” He was adamant about no hazing, and there was a strict no-hazing policy on the wrestling team.  But because you wrestled, and took turns with some of these guys who were freshmen, you sweated in the same room and there was that bond. It was the same bond they tried to bring about in the fraternity through beatings. It was mind games, and even the beatings played into the mind games.

Nuwer: Can you reform a group like this? If you have a problematic group like this, you simply have to do away with it.

Pledge:  You have to.  You can’t put an adviser in there; you can’t give a slap on the wrist. You have to get rid of them...If anything, you have to understand the idea of “Protect the brotherhood at all costs.” It was stressed over and over again: “Protect the brotherhood at all costs....” I compromised the brotherhood and they all turned on me.

Nuwer: In the black fraternities, you can either be a “paper member” who gets in with the [legitimate] rituals imposed by national headquarters, or a so-called “devil” member who goes through hazing to get secret sounds, words, and poems. If you don’t go though hazing you’re not a real member.

Pledge: You’re taught that all the other fraternities on campus are powder puffs.

Nuwer: One thing I wondered is if an initiation done in Georgia by a national is the same as an initiation done by a chapter in Pennsylvania. Is the ritual pervasive in a single fraternity or not?

Pledge: Fraternities differ from campus to campus. It’s hard to know where these more violent ones spring up...At [name] College, anyone who wears a[n] [name of fraternity] shirt is basically a coward thug. He fought in numbers and was a half step away from being a date rapist...Their sense of loyalty and what is right are now so skewed. I’m not saying that these people are going to go out and commit mass murder, but their views on what is good loyalty and bad loyalty is now skewed.

Nuwer: Were you asked as a cultlike group to sleep in small rooms all together?

Pledge: On certain nights we all had to sleep in the house. We didn’t have to sleep [together] in a big room, but you had to sleep in your big brother’s room. If it was after a hazing or a party, you usually slept with two or three pledge brothers in your big brother’s room on the floor or on the couch. After parties you couldn’t leave unless you had a good, viable excuse.

Nuwer: But if it was with your big brother, was that to isolate you?

Pledge: Yes, we were isolated in that we were forced to stay in the house. We couldn’t leave the house at certain times—like the night of a party or during hazing. We were stuck in the house, isolated from everyone else...You feel different from half the campus. You can’t tell Joe Blow sitting next to you on campus who asks what you did last weekend, “Well, I went down to a basement and got the shit beat out of me. Then I had to do all these pushups and calisthenics and then I got beat up again. And then I had to clean an entire house. All that doesn’t lend itself to talk, and so you do get isolated.

Nuwer: What about alcohol and the addictive side of fraternities?

Pledge: The funny thing is that before I pledged I’d been told,  “When you pledge, don’t drink.”  About the addiction, we as pledges weren’t allowed to drink. We had to stay alert. But people still did. I remember the first night of hazing that three kids ran out, throwing up. [Name of veteran member] told us, “As a pledge I wasn’t allowed to drink. You guys aren’t allowed to drink. But I know some of you are going to drink. Just be sure you can handle it. If you have to run out to throw up, you’re going to do more stuff. I decided not to drink [to intoxication] because I didn’t want to throw up. The most I had to drink was that an alumni brother made me chug one beer—that was it. But a lot of brothers did drink and a couple of pledge brothers were doing Ecstasy. But on the whole, the not-drinking thing kind of bound us a little. We knew we were going to have a few drinks to "bound" us together, but you would think making us drink would bond us, but not making us drink was a hardship and that brought us closer together. The addiction part was still there because I was 21 and older than half the brothers. Who do you think went out and bought all the beer? It was addiction in the sense that I and another kid with fake ID when we went out, we’d get like $500 worth.

Nuwer: But if someone were to die, you would be liable.

Pledge: I would be so liable. That’s why they sent me to do it. When I said we didn’t have to drink, it’s not like alcohol wasn’t the most important thing. It still was. You just weren’t allowed to drink unless you could handle it. It was huge there. You always had to keep the beer cold. You always had to have a pack of cigarettes on you in case somebody wanted one. It had to be the right brand. Everyone in the house either smoked Camel Lights or Marlboro Lights, and then it got decided that all pledges would walk around with Marlboro Lights.


Nuwer: Did you have to know “pert” [pertinent information] like their favorite drinks?

Pledge: Not really. You had to know their pin number, their name, where they lived, and their major. But they would lie to you. They wouldn’t give you the right answer. So you’d get into more trouble. They wanted you to get to know the brothers and to have one-on-ones with the brothers.

Nuwer: Were there kidnappings...?

Pledge: We were sent on missions. The day after I got hit I was assigned [to go] but I was allowed not to go. They would call you up in the middle of the night and you had to run out to some location and run back. And if you could steal anything from another fraternity house or sorority house, that was gold. You were to break in anyway you could and steal, but don’t get caught.

Nuwer: Did you have to keep pledge books [forbidden by most or all fraternity headquarters]?

Pledge: Yeah. In it you had to have the names, the history. The best book to get was [name of member who hit him] the [former] number one pin because his pledgebook had everything.

Nuwer: Did you have demerits?

Pledge: No, but if one screwed up, everyone screwed up. That was the mentality. If you were the [pledge class] president and someone screwed up, you got it the worse and then everyone else got it. He got hit more than anyone else.

Nuwer: How did you choose the [pledge] president?

Pledge: It was the first day. It was like an initiation ritual. We’ve got to sit down and pick people. I got the idea right away that they were eyeing us. I got the feeling right away, There’s something hidden here. This is not a prestige thing. So for the president, everyone voted while we sitting around a table. I was like, “Who do you think should be president?” A couple would raise their hands. “Him or him—OK, it’s good.” And that’s how our [president] was picked.

Nuwer: How is the chapter president picked?

Pledge: By voting. The number one pin though can never be the [chapter] president, because there is too much liability.

Nuwer: Did any faculty member ever come to the house?

Pledge:  Not when I was there. It had a bad reputation when I was there. It was one of those things that everyone knew something was there.

Nuwer: I’ve been to the campus. Didn’t anyone ever hear [outside] what was going on in the house?

Pledge: Oh, you couldn’t hear what was going on in the basement. They were clever little shits. They know what they’re doing to get away with it. They knew every trick in the book to make sure we wouldn’t get caught.

Nuwer: Supposedly [headquarters] thinks you are learning fraternity values, but you’re learning about deception, brutality and—

Pledge: --Brutality! What I learned was rebellion. None of them ever said you couldn’t cheat—on anything. So I used to cheat on anything. You’re supposed to go down to the basement and tee shirt and shorts for hazing. I always went down in a sweatshirt—why? For the padding on the elbows. There were things you could get by with like that. Or if a brother had his pledgebook lying around in his room, I’d take it and copy everything down I could. When I went to bed I was prepared, for rest assured, [chances were] I’d be woken up that night.

Nuwer: If you were on this side of the microphone, what questions would you be asking? What am I missing?

Pledge: I think you hit most of the questions [but] the one thing-- Remember, [you] talked about how hard it is for people [school administrators, Greek advisers, headquarters liaisons] to get in on the inside of fraternities? I have a different view of that, I really do. I could go to any strange fraternity and find out any information. I’d tell anyone, this is my recommendation, don’t take [your charges of hazing] to the school—take it to the cops. Schools will hide it. The best thing is going to the cops. When I walked into my judicials [school judicial hearings], they [members charged] were all cool as could be, but I knew they were terrified of me, because I knew what they did. I was right, and they were wrong. Those kids, if you get them as a whole roomful, they’ll sit there and they’ll deny everything.  Except like the president [names him] who got expelled, the core group would lie on its own. You take those two wrestlers I was talking about. Yeah, maybe the one was hardcore [and would deny everything], but the other? You couldn’t sit in a room with him for twenty minutes before he’d tell you everything I was saying was correct. Like I said, they are cowards...They fight en masse, they hide en masse. You make the right one understand that there are consequences if he lies, and you’ve got them [all]. There are, as I say, the hardcore guys, so you’ve got to root around.

Nuwer: The word “depraved” comes to mind...In so many of the fraternities where there were deaths, they did something stupid and inane—like they exchanged bottles [between big brothers and pledges] and a kid would drink the whole thing. It’s almost like I can understand it, though not tolerate it, but such people can be educated. I think you can teach them what happens if you drink two bottle of alcohol, and they can understand [the danger] and change. But this is calculated, barbaric, unethical as can be, and all within an educational system. This is anathema to an educational system. I am not making light of a death, and they bother me an awful lot, but this bothers me more because I don’t know how to stop—

Pledge: --It isn’t just one [national] fraternity. Every campus I have ever been to, it’s always a little different. At my school, [his former fraternity] may be the jocks, and at another school it might be the chess team. I’ve heard about animal abuse [at chapter houses], but I never really sat around and thought about it.

Nuwer: [A pledge] raised a hamster [at a northern Maryland university], and then squashed it [on the order of members].  

Pledge: This is all like a badge of courage—how much can you take? There are the physical beatings along with the mind games that they play, and you get sucked into it because you don’t want to lose. It’s the randomness too. A pledge on one side of the room gets asked a question and answers it wrong, nothing happens. A pledge on the other side gets it wrong and he gets punched in the mouth. The whole thing gets into your head—the violence, the air of violence. A lot of the brothers, I can’t say all, did it because it had been done to them.
We had paddles, you and your big brother, but they were never used [for paddling] because they were symbolic. [The statement trumpeted by members] “We don’t paddle” was supposed to be a huge advancement.

Nuwer:  It was another form of justification. What we are doing must be okay.

Pledge: Yeah.

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Copyright by Hank Nuwer