Fratricide or Discipline?

While it is clear that since their founding African American fraternities have had tremendous success in producing leaders and building communities, that legacy may be in jeopardy because of excesses in the pledging process.
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Fratricide: African American fraternities beating themselves to death? - includes related short piece on the National Pan-Hellenic Council (Pictures are links)

"They took him into a room and five members of the fraternity attacked him. They punched and kicked him. I asked if he ever got the urge to swing back and he said, `We can't.' He said."

This recollection comes from Felicia Taylor, the former girlfriend of Michael Davis who died in February of 1994 after being beaten to death while pledging Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity at Southeast Missouri State University. (Left Alpha Phi Alpha 1959. All pictures are links.)

The day after this conversation, Davis collapsed after submitting to another beating at the hands of his fraternity brothers. Had they called an ambulance, he probably would have survived. Instead, they stopped to get some food at a Taco Bell directly across the street from a hospital, then drove the unconscious boy home and put him to bed. At 1:30 in the afternoon his roommate, another pledge, saw green foam coming from Michael's mouth. After finally calling 911, the fraternity brothers lied to the rescue workers by telling them that Michael had been injured playing football. After the police and ambulance left they tried to remove all fraternity-related evidence of the hazing from the apartment.

However, when the coroner removed Michael's clothing during the autopsy, he found a small red spiral notebook hidden in Michael's underwear -- a notebook Michael had on him the moment he died which contained the unintentionally ironic notation, "Hazing is the physical conditioning of the mind."

According to the office of the prosecuting attorney, Davis had "broken ribs, a lacerated kidney, a lacerated liver, and bruises all over his chest, neck, back and arms. He died from internal bleeding in his brain."

Four other pledges were badly bruised and sore from the continual beatings they had received over the week before Davis died. As a result, sixteen defendants were charged with hazing. Seven fraternity brothers also either pled guilty to or were convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Most of the seven served short jail sentences.

Although the criminal cases were concluded in 1994, the Davis family's civil suit was not resolved until recently when Kappa Alpha Psi agreed to pay $1.4 million dollars to settle the suit against the national organization and its officers. Members and faculty advisors of the local chapter where Davis pledged had previously settled for $850,000. All had known about the brutality.

Davis's death has made it very clear to fraternity officials, faculty advisors, and researchers across the country, that the beating of pledges continues to be a serious problem in Black fraternities. Other lawsuits involving charges of hazing demonstrate the ongoing threat that pledging poses to predominantly Black fraternities. For example:

* In March 1997, an Indiana jury found the national organization of Omega Psi Phi, the fraternity's chapter at Indiana University and several individuals who were members of the fraternity liable for $774,500 in damages in the February 1994 beating of former Indiana University student Kevin Nash, who was hospitalized for injuries he received while he was being pledged. Nash, who suffered from injuries to his kidneys, face, neck and chest, was paddled and hit with open fists and slaps to the body according to Nash's attorney.

* A former University of Georgia football player has sued the national organization of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, the fraternity's chapter and three individuals who were Phi Beta Sigma fraternity members at the University of Georgia for damages resulting from an alleged September 1996 hazing incident. Rod Perrymond, then a reserve running back on the football team, was treated at a hospital in Athens, Georgia, for bruises to his buttocks and torn blood vessels after he was allegedly paddled. The three fraternity members charged were arrested and pled guilty to hazing and battery charges, according to news reports.

Going Underground

Officially, the Black fraternities cracked down on hazing in 1990 in response to a death of a student who died while pledging Alpha Phi Alpha at Morehouse College. The boards of the Greek organizations belonging to the National Pan-Hellenic Council instituted the "New Member Intake Process." As a result, pledging by undergraduate members of fraternities and sororities was supposed to end altogether. The new process was intended to give national and regional fraternity and sorority officials control over the selection of new members.

While some officials believe that adoption of the process has minimized hazing, others believe that the risks for students joining predominantly Black fraternities have increased because pledging has gone underground.

According to Dr. Jason DeSousa, assistant vice-president for student affairs at Alabama State University and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, "The death of Michael Davis shows that the New Member intake Process has been a failure. We just didn't get enough students to buy into the new process at the chapter level. As a result, hazing has been driven underground where it becomes even more dangerous.

"Pledging and hazing are an ingrained part of the undergraduate subculture," DeSousa continues. "In the minds of many members, it makes the difference between being a `Real Kappa' and a `Paper Kappa.' We have situations where members who went through the new process have been beaten by other members and have had their Kappa shirts torn off their backs in public."

Dr. John A. Williams, director of the Academic Intervention Center at Tennessee State University, said he predicted in his 1992 doctoral dissertation on student perceptions of the New Member Intake Process that hazing would continue to plaque African-American fraternities.

"I said then [that continued hazing] was predictable because students never bought into the intake process. The organizations chose to ignore an underlying theme that students wanted a process with rites of passage," says Williams, who is also the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Pan-Hellenic Issues.

However, a number of campus administrators and fraternity officials say some progress has been achieved with the New Member Intake Process.

"I think the new intake process is a good idea," says Thomas Palmer, vice-president for student affairs at Fort Valley State University in Georgia and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

However, deans of students as well as fraternity officials have reported that they have had to discipline predominantly Black fraternity members and chapters for membership intake violations. Nevertheless, some say that the new intake processes have generated far more positive results than bad.

"I know that it's cut out a lot of bad activity," says Dorothy Huston, the vice-president for student affairs at Alabama A&M University who has had to suspend one fraternity and put another on probation for new member intake violations since last fall.

But some experts on fraternity life say that because pledging has gone underground, the violent traditions associated with predominantly Black fraternity rites have largely remained unchanged. Missouri attorney Douglas Richmond spent six years as a student affairs officer on two different campuses. Today, he makes his living defending insurance companies in lawsuits against fraternities.

"In my experience on campus and as a defense attorney it definitely seems like the Black fraternities are much more likely to physically assault their pledges, and to make them perform dangerous tasks" says Richmond. "In white frats you see a lot more forced consumption of alcohol or disgusting mixtures of foods, and more verbal abuse."

Richmond also noted that perhaps because the white frats seem to be more involved in alcohol abuse, they generate a far larger number of charges of date rape and other sexual complaints.

A Violent Tradition

"The number one problem with Black fraternities is violence," says Richmond. "The Black fraternity pledging always seems to involve violence that most white fraternities have long ago abandoned -- from branding to beating each other with open hands or fists and blunt objects."

In the case of physical beatings, which only involve potential members, college administrators are only likely to hear about the most extreme cases where a pledge dies or is permanently disabled. If a pledge survives and is "made," the beating usually becomes a badge of honor and is unlikely to be reported.

Richmond said that white frats used to beat their pledges a lot more often through the 1970s and 1980s. After a few lawsuits, however, the nationals put a lot of pressure on the chapters to end beatings.

"Unfortunately, that effort seems to have missed the predominantly Black fraternities," Richmond says.

From Elite to Inclusive

There are a variety of structural and psychological reasons why young men continue to make physical beatings a part of "crossing the burning” desert.

Tough hazing stems from military hazing from the first half of the twentieth century. Young men of all colors brought these practices back to campuses with them. Black soldiers were often more severely disciplined and this may be reflected in the intensity which hazing takes place in Pan Hellenic fraternities.

Distinguished young African American men willingly accepted the practices, perhaps as a way to solidify their differentiation from the larger body of African Americans, students or otherwise. Getting into college itself was so difficult that it set these men as a breed apart. For many years these fraternities drew from the most talented black college men- those with greatest prestige, whether that be better-off families, the academically gifted, the socially popular or stand out athletes. Indeed each black fraternity became associated with particular prestige factors.

Dr. Antonio McDaniel, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, believes however that Black fraternity hazing reflects a very profound problem in the way Black men have internalized society's treatment of themselves.

"As a people, we have a long history of being beaten and branded and enslaved. So it is simply a sign of extreme nihilism and alienation when we willingly submit to beating, branding and the paddle," McDaniel explains. "When you join gangs, they beat you. If you're supposed to be W.E.B. Dubois' Talented Tenth, show leadership in ways that do not remind us that we were slaves."

Older members from the black social elite proudly display their paddles and say that having had one broken over your backside is a point of pride. Even high profile members of these fraternities such as Andrew Young, David Dinkins, Shaquille O'Neal, Michael Jordan, Emmet Smith and Bill Cosby have made joking reference to the physical ordeals of their pledging process. This tradition can make the national's opposition to pledging and hazing come across more like a wink and a nod. As one Alpha official exclaimed, "I was on line for a whole year, now with this new intake process it's like we're just microwaving them."

The fraternities are faced with a conundrum. The faster someone comes into the fraternity, the less the chance of hazing charges. On the other hand, once a potential member is "made," he has little incentive to go through all the necessary "mental training" required to memorize the fraternity's history and esoteric lore which are heavily emphasized in predominantly Black fraternities.

A significant amount of Black educators are members of these organizations. Most president of HBCU’s as are a good deal of administrators. Even outside of HBCU’s a much higher proportion of Black administrators and faculty are members of Black fraternities. And this extraordinarily high level of fraternity representation is also found among Black male professionals. Because these groups represented one the few outlets for recognition of achievement, social bonding and cooperation the role of the Black fraternity is different. Membership is held less casually after college for Black fraternity men than white fraternity years after graduation. This may limit external and internal criticisms.

At the same time their has been growth of the African American student population there has been a decline in its quality, particularly at HBCU's. Given options the best African American students are more often attending majority White schools. Some African American students are opting for so called mainstream student organizations and not joining African American fraternities. These changes represent great challenges as the African American fraternity must respond to changes in membership.

However tough it was to become a member of a predominantly Black fraternity in the past, it's fair to say that the initiation rites have gotten more physically abusive recently. Many older members don't describe being kicked and punched as a major past of the initiation process. Although Black fraternities often paddled their pledges, many older Greeks report that they were only paddled once or twice, primarily on the night right before "going over" (becoming a full-fledged fraternity brother)

The bottom line is: The same rituals from fifty or sixty ears ago that were daunting when carried out by supervised young men carefully picked from America's Black elite may become deadly when secretly carried out by Black teenagers brought up in a society that equates Black masculinity with violence. As times change current pledges are more familiar with Crips and Bloods than Jack and Jill.

National Efforts to Curb Hazing

As Dr. W. Ted Smith, Kappa Alpha Psi's executive director, notes, "We formally abolished pledging in 1990. In its place we developed a New Member Intake Program that requires pre-screening for someone to become a member."

But he adds, "The bottom line is that there are some very serious questions concerning the management and supervision of some of these chapters."

According to Smith, the secrecy that accompanies the underground hazing has had other negative consequences beside injuries. One is that it further distances the younger members from the national organization. Smith reports that many younger members feel that their loyalty is to their chapter and not the fraternity as a whole. In addition, he suspects that some local chapters are raising money that is not being shared with the national office. In some cases, young pledges new to campus have been hazed and "taken over" without ever knowing that pledging is against the rules. Fraternity chapters that have suspended or revoked charters have even been known to continue to operate, still employing the same methods.

Partly in response to having to pay $1.4 million as part of the settlement with Michael Davis's family, Kappa Alpha Psi has established a Chapter Development and Leadership Program (CDLP) to try and prevent similar horrors from happening in the future. The purpose of the program is to enhance the leadership and educational development of both the chapter and individual members by sending paid professionals called Chapter Development and Leadership Specialists (CDLSs) to visit campuses where Kappa has established chapters.

In describing the program, the fraternity has explicitly noted that the CDLP is "the arm of the fraternity which helps to ensure that undergraduate chapters and individual members understand and respect the rules, policies and regulations of Kappa Alpha Psi."

One of the fraternity's most important rules is that it no longer engages in or tolerates hazing. However, the Davis case proved to many that the national office of Kappa Alpha Psi, as well as many other Greek organizations, has lost control over some of its chapters.

There are a number of complicated reasons why Black fraternities might be having trouble supervising their chapters. One factor has been the success of both the civil rights movement and affirmative action. Simply put, in response to the rapidly growing number of Black students looking to feel at home on white campuses, the Black fraternities have often chartered chapters in places where there were too few adult Black men available to properly supervise them and there is a discomfort among many with having white faculty advisors.

A typical example of this problem involves the permanent expulsion of the Alpha Phi Alpha chapter from Frostburg State University in western Maryland. Johnnie MacTwine of Baltimore was the Alpha Phi Alpha contact with the Frostburg chapter. He says that it was simply impossible for him to keep tabs on the situation.

"There were only about three Black staff members for me to deal with and it was a hundred miles away," explains MacTwine. "Whenever I would go out there, I would give all the potential new members my business card, tell them that hazing was not allowed, and let them know they should call me at any time. But I knew things were going on behind my back."

Although the hazing incidents were not lethal, the Alpha Phi Alpha chapter still got into trouble with the college's administration. The first two times MacTwine was able to prevail upon the Frostburg administration to give the chapter another chance.

"I wanted to keep it going because I felt that the young men could benefit from the fraternity. But after the last situation," laments MacTwine, "Alpha's management told me it was just better to let the chapter go and I had to agree with them."

Harold J. Haskins, director of student development at the University of Pennsylvania, complains that the national fraternities don't seem to express much concern over the rampant underground pledging he sees with African American males at the University of Pennsylvania. "I don't see much support coming out of the nationals," says Haskins.

In addition, the brutality makes it harder for these Greeks to find Black faculty advisors. Debby Connor, acting director of the Student Success Center at Auburn University in Alabama, notes, "We presently have African Americans advising our Black fraternities, but for a long time their reputation for physical hazing made it very difficult for us to recruit non-affiliated Black faculty willing to supervise the these Greek letter organizations."

HBCUs and Housing

It is easy to understand how abuses can take place in badly supervised chapters on predominantly white campuses. However, serious incidents have also occurred at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Again, one factor has been the success of desegregation and the civil rights movement.

During the time of segregation, the towns surrounding historically Black college were often hostile and threatening, which encouraged many Black faculty to live on or close to campus. As a result, they had a lot more direct contact with students.

"Things have really changed at colleges since the days when few students had cars and most faculty and staff lived on or very near the campuses and could keep a closer eye on what was going on" Smith observes.

"But what makes matters much worse," he adds, "is the fact that 90 percent of these violent incidents happen in isolated apartments off campus where there is no possibility of supervision and things get completely out of control. After an incident like this, the media will report that it happened in a fraternity house. But Kappa has no undergraduate housing. A few Kappas may rent an apartment together but that does not make it Kappa house."

Although it may not be immediately obvious, the fact that most of the predominantly traditionally Black fraternities have few official undergraduate fraternity houses is a very significant issue. When fraternity houses exist for these fraternities they are much more likely to be informal arrangements. Conversely most white fraternities have housing on or near campus, which gives them greater administrative and legal ties to both the university and the national fraternity. Fraternity houses make membership and conduct easier to track. The closer events happen to campus, the harder it is to keep it secret -- and the more likely the administration is to hear something about it.

The threat of lawsuits and the need for liability insurance gives schools and national fraternities a greater measure of control over chapters who officially maintain houses. Fraternity houses must have insurance coverage and the insurance companies know that beatings create lawsuits. In addition, most individual chapters can only afford to buy their insurance through their national organizations. Thus, the national officers of traditionally white fraternities have a very direct incentive to pressure their chapters to desist from violent hazing.

Some say the lack of African American fraternity houses at HBCUs and predominantly white institutions stems largely from economics. Also African American fraternity members have not tried to establish fraternity houses at their alma maters because they see it as a low priority, according to a number of administrators and fraternity officials. College graduates belonging to the Black fraternities are more inclined to donate their money and support to scholarships or community service projects and participation in alumni events. They also use their resources to promote fraternity-wide projects such as national credit unions, policy councils, etc.

Alpha Phi Alpha's Palmer says he knows of groups of fraternity members who rented houses while attending school and then called those dwellings "fraternity houses." But they have never been official fraternity houses, the way some white fraternity houses have been.

The Question of Rape

As is often the case with the two most common problems that go on in fraternity houses -- alcohol abuse and date rape -- victim is usually someone outside the fraternity, such as a young woman subjected to rape or a pedestrian or driver involved in a collision with an intoxicated member. In those instances, the institution is more likely to learn about the incident because the victim will probably sue both the fraternity and the college or university.

However, the reputation for violence that plagues predominantly Black fraternities does not include any widespread charges of rape. In fact, there seems to be much evidence that date rape is less of a problem with the Black Greeks than with the white fraternities. One theory purports that the positive influence of strong relationships predominantly Black sororities makes Black women pledges less likely to see themselves as merely the dates or targets of fraternity brothers.

Another theory for the lower incidence of rape associated with traditionally Black fraternities is that on many, if not most, campuses, there are so many more Black women than Black men that Black men do not need to compete with each other sexually or need to resort to devious means -- such as getting women drunk or rape -- in order to find willing sex partners.

Dr. Patricia Yancy Martin, a sociology professor at Florida State who has studied the problem of fraternity rape, believes, "The difference is mainly the question of what is the primary arena of male-to-male competition. Among white men in fraternities the main interpersonal competition seems to be sexual -- who can score with the most girls no matter what it takes. Among Black men, the main arena of interpersonal competition seems to be withstanding the pain and violence they inflict on each other through their pledging process and re-enforcing their fraternities’ reputations afterwards."

Paying the Consequences

Black fraternities are not the only ones where hazing has had deadly consequences. White fraternities have also maimed and killed pledges. In one case, a pledge choked to death while eating a piece of liver smeared with oil. Pledges have suffered heart attacks while doing hundreds of push-ups or lost fingers to frostbite after being dropped miles from campus in their underwear. In a recent case at the University of Texas, a student drowned after ingesting large amounts of beer and trying to swim fully clothed.

However, as Richmond notes, "An accident like that is much easier to defend before a jury. Because the person was over eighteen, you can argue that they were an adult who willingly participated and thus bears some responsibility for their own choices, and that even though the idea was stupid, no one set out to hurt anybody. However, when someone died and his parents are in the courtroom weeping, it's a lot harder to go before a jury and explain why a pledge died while being punched and kicked around by six men. It looks a lot more like a crime and shows a deliberate intention to hurt someone."

And the legal and financial ramifications resulting from these rites of initiation represent a particularly acute threat to the future of the Black fraternities, which are some of Black America's most important and historic institutions.

According to DeSousa, "Unless we right-size and down-size, there is going to be more trouble. I specifically want to go on the record and say that unless we get control, or end undergraduate pledging, it's only a matter of time until someone else gets killed."

And, if a $2.25 million settlement in the Davis case doesn't deter hazing, perhaps, critics warn, the next victim's lawyers will seek $10 or $15 or $20 million -- which would probably bankrupt many Black fraternities.

Even when no one is injured, the predominantly Black fraternity's reputation for continued and extreme hazing creates its own problems. One is that it scares away some students who should be the most welcome.

"These incidents give fraternities a bad name. Unlike the past we're losing the best and the brightest and the campus leaders," notes Smith. "Students have more options, and many of the most successful ones don't want to subject themselves to the hazing."

Harsh pledging can also mean that fraternities will get fewer of the more academically gifted and studious students, partly because pledging can be devastating to grades.

Says Haskins: "The twelve-week pledging process is absolutely debilitating to the academic progress of young Black men on [the University of Pennsylvania] campus. It's so bad that I've actually advised students to take the semester off if they're trying to pledge. They don't have time to study, they don't get enough sleep, and many of their [grade point averages] never recover from the time they spend pledging -- particularly if it's freshman year. Black fraternities have study hours but they are likely to spend more time with memorization of fraternity traditions rather than class work. The white fraternities have much shorter pledging periods and do a better job of tutoring their members."

Dr. Peter Kuriloff, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that positive changes can be made. "Fraternities need strenuous and difficult initiation rituals as a means of bonding and building trust. The challenge is to make these rigorous but pro-social," says Kuriloff.

Believing that fraternities may have gone too far in trying to ban hazing, he goes on to suggest that Outward Bound and other wilderness survival experiences might be a good tough substitute for beating each other up. Another solution, according to Kuriloff, might be to place more emphasis on the safer physical rigors and the silly but non-violent public displays that Black Greeks also emphasize -- such as (the more reasonable) calisthenics, requiring pledges to shave their heads and eyebrows, marching around campus and learning to ‘step’, perform songs and wearing “scrolls”."

"Rituals and initiation aren't the problem," Kuriloff says "the real enemy is violence and hiding it."

RELATED ARTICLE: A Brief History of the National Pan-Hellenic Council

Blatant racism had prevented many African American students on historically white campuses from joining general fraternities and sororities. Culture and tradition as well as continued racial separation on campuses continue to be reasons for traditionally Black Greek organizations.

Thus, African American students on both historically Black and historically white campuses established fraternities and sororities to enhance their college experiences. These organizations did not then -- nor do they now -- restrict membership to African Americans. Many of the major NPHC fraternities and sororities report having non-Black members. Nevertheless they do all have a distinctive history growing from an era when Black students were compelled to create Black institutions.

These organizations had three distinct growth periods. (Sigma Pi Phi or “The Boule” was founded as a non-collegiate fraternity in 1904.) The first Black collegiate fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, was founded at Cornell University in 1906. Alpha Kappa Alpha, the sister sorority was founded soon afterwards in 1908. The initial growth phase went into high gear following World War I when existing fraternities grew at both historically Black colleges and universities and those historically white major research university campuses that admitted African Americans. By 1922 there were four fraternities and four sororities begun by Black students. In 1930 the NPHC was founded as a coordinating body for Black fraternities and sororities. Alumni chapters established in cities across the United States became civic and service organizations, filling a void left by the fact that racism hampered African Americans participation in general civic organizations

After the Second World War, NPHC chapters proliferated on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Many cultural traditions from white fraternities, Freemasonry, military service and the Black community became embedded and refined within traditional Black Greek culture. Examples of such traditions include regimented public displays on campus that were a part of the pledging process.

The third phase began with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Institutions which had previously denied admittance to African Americans could no longer legally do so. As a result, the number of African Americans and their organizations -- swelled at historically white campuses. Eventually, there were more than 400 undergraduate chapters -- with as many alumni chapters, on average, as undergraduate chapters -- of organizations affiliated with NPHC. Presently, there are approximately 1.5 million members of undergraduate and alumni chapters served by NPHC.

(Featured are the firsts for people of color- elected U.S. Senator, elected Governor, NYC Mayor, Ambassador to the UN, Nobel Prize winner, House committee chair, Supreme Court Justice and the president of Jamaica in the post colonial period; and Martin Luther King- all of the first college fraternity created for men of color Alpha Phi Alpa.)