Cowboy Haze Continues the Ivy League Rodeo

All the stories below take out the other aspects of brotherhood and methods to develop this pretty fucking terrific thing called fraternalism. These fraternities are trying to produce a an invaluable commodity, the type of men who are needed in highly competitive and risk-laden environment, which is the environment that all of us will live in in one way or the other.

Putting aside the gross shit in the article, we know why they do what they are doing, and understood from that perspective it isn't as irrational as it is made out to be.  Liberal hypocrisy and intellectual perversity instead drove these things underground but could not eradicate the (individual and societal) need or organic reemergence of a process to fulfill this need.

They are selecting guys from shared values and background, encouraging totally commitment through bonding by ordeal, shared challenge and intimacy (pause); and instilling values such as discretion, discipline, perseverance, accountability, fearlessness, confidence and mind over matter.

By HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press – 1 day ago  Ivy League senior: Frat pledges swam in vomit

HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — Things have only gotten messier at Dartmouth College in the weeks since a former fraternity member went public with allegations of hazing that involved swimming in and eating vomit.

Senior Andrew Lohse raised the issue in January, when he wrote a column in the school newspaper describing "dehumanizing" experiences he witnessed at Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

According to Lohse, the fraternity pressured pledges to swim in a kiddie pool of rotten food, vomit and other bodily fluids; eat omelets made of vomit; and chug cups of vinegar. He called those activities the norm rather than the exception on the Ivy League campus, and he criticized the administration for not doing enough when he made anonymous complaints last year.

The week after the column was published, more than 100 faculty members wrote to the administration, describing hazing as an "open secret" and calling on the administration to set up an independent commission to address it. The college has since formed a task force and brought hazing charges through its judicial affairs office against the fraternity and more than a quarter of its members, including Lohse.

As for Lohse's graphic allegations, "None of these practices, and nothing remotely close to hazing, occurred at our pledge events in 2011," Mahoney said in an email to The Associated Press.

Lohse did not specify in his column whether all alleged abuses occurred in 2009 or later, and he declined to comment Monday, citing an agreement with another publication.

Dartblog.com, a blog written by former students about the college, obtained a copy of the letter notifying Lohse of the charges against him. According to the letter, Lohse is accused of threatening physical harm to new fraternity members, putting other students in fear for their safety and/or engaging in hazing during the fall 2011 term. He also is accused of providing alcohol to underage students, providing drugs and/or providing alcohol to obviously intoxicated individuals during the same time period.

The charges filed were identical for the other individuals, "even though Lohse's tale does not describe them as engaged in the same activities," said Mahoney, who said students have been charged "without a shred of real evidence." Administrators, he suggested, are panicking in the face of bad press.

"We do know that Dartmouth has come in for a lot of bad publicity because of Lohse's allegations. We hope Dartmouth's administration will focus on the evidence rather than on a public relations strategy," he said.

Johnson, the college administrator, strongly denied both Lohse's allegation that the college failed to act on his initial complaints and Mahoney's suggestion that the recent charges were brought to quell criticism.

"When we get detailed, specific information regarding hazing or any other violation of our code, we act," she said. "This isn't a witch hunt, nor are we sitting on our hands."

She said the administration already had been working hard to tackle the issue of hazing and was not simply responding to the recent allegations and faculty pressure.

For example, the college hired a new director of Greek organizations who had been credited with turning around the fraternity and sorority system at another college, has hired two sexual assault coordinators and is in the process of hiring another alcohol and drug abuse counselor.

"Clearly we put our resources where our mouth is," she said. "This idea that we have somehow thrown up our hands, said there's nothing we can do about hazing or other high risk behavior going on on college campuses is a complete mischaracterization."

Johnson also said college officials did everything they could when Lohse made his anonymous complaints, but the tips he provided didn't pan out.

Hanover Police Chief Nicholas Giaccone, who also investigated at the time, agreed. Based on information Lohse provided, police set up a stakeout in a wooded area in December 2010 but nothing they witnessed among pledges and SAE members amounted to hazing, he said. Police began investigating again after Lohse's column was published, but criminal charges are unlikely, Giaccone said, in large part because Lohse is not cooperating with police.

"We also realized that based on his past history with us, that he may be a witness that would have credibility issues, and it may hard to rehabilitate him in the eyes of judge or jury if we ended up going that route," Giaccone said.

Those credibility issues include Lohse's 2010 arrest and conviction for cocaine possession and witness tampering and a 2011 disorderly conduct conviction, following a confrontation with a security officer during Homecoming Weekend festivities.

"The opinion of most students is that he has a bone to pick with both the college and SAE," said Stephanie Pignatiello, a senior who said that while she believes hazing happens, she thinks Lohse's claims are greatly exaggerated. But she also agrees with him that the college hasn't done much to solve the problem.

"They seem to be largely absent," she said. "I don't think much will change at the administrative level."

Sophomore Stuart Ghafoor said reading Lohse's condensed description of hazing was "gross," but not a surprise. He thinks SAE is being scapegoated so the college can appear to be doing something to address hazing.

"But if the administration goes after it, it could make it even more underground, which would be more dangerous," he said.

-------------------------------------------

In the Hot Seat: Hazing at Princeton

One night during the fall of his freshman year, John Burford ’12 found himself at the Show & Tel strip club on the south side of Philadelphia with  other Princeton freshmen. All were pledge brothers in Princeton’s chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and they had made the 45-mile trip south because Burford had specific instructions from the older brothers in the fraternity: Make a visit to “the hot seat.”
Surrounded by his pledge brothers and 40 other club patrons, Burford climbed onto the stage and selected a stripper. She removed his shirt, handcuffed him to a tall metal pole in the middle of the stage and began to beat him with a thick leather belt volunteered by one of his pledge brothers.

“Then they put me in this chair and handcuffed my hands behind my back,” Burford said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “She would give me a lap dance and then hit me. And then she bit my nipple, really hard. I had a black, bite-shaped bruise there for three weeks.”

Burford’s trip to the strip club was only one of several pledge tasks he needed to complete before he could become a full member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, though he ultimately decided to drop the fraternity rush during the winter of his freshman year, before the pledge period ended that spring.

Though fraternity hazing exercises may violate both University rules and state laws, often combining heavy drinking by minors with other illegal activities, the University neither officially recognizes nor actively engages with any of the Greek organizations on campus. Former fraternity members interviewed for this article told the ‘Prince’ that the University’s lack of oversight exacerbates these activities, but President Tilghman said she does not think recognizing Greek organizations would help the administration significantly influence members’ behavior.

The fraternity Burford rushed, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, is one of at least 13 Greek organizations — three sororities and at least 10 fraternities —at Princeton. But University administrators have long maintained a policy of not recognizing these groups.

“I fundamentally believe that it’s impossible to regulate the very things that we are most concerned about with fraternities … which are the excessive alcohol and the hazing,” Tilghman said. “The notion that recognizing them will fix that — all you have to do is look at episodes that happen all over this country at universities that have recognized their fraternities and sororities to know that this is chasing fool’s gold.”

Though fraternity hazing is by no means unique to Princeton, some students and alumni said they believe University recognition might improve the situation on campus.

“Hazing was a problem for fraternities at Princeton. This is in large part due to the lack of recognition and regulation from the University,” said Evan Baehr ’05, a former member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity. “By not recognizing the fraternities, it leaves the officers of the fraternities to have zero oversight.”

The University’s “Rights, Rules, Responsibilities” (RRR) guide outlines an even more specific hazing policy, prohibiting “a broad range of behaviors that may place another person in danger of bodily injury or behavior that demonstrates indifference or disregard for another person’s dignity or well-being.” Examples of hazing listed in RRR include forced ingestion of alcohol, food, drugs or “any undesirable substance,” as well as mentally abusive or demeaning behavior, acts that could result in physical, mental, or emotional harm, and physical abuse in the form of whipping, paddling, beating or exposure to the elements.

Fraternity rush activities at Princeton run the gamut from harmless, silly tasks to more serious, potentially dangerous challenges. Some of the most visible examples include pledges from various fraternities streaking through large lecture classes and Kappa Alpha pledges standing outside McCosh Hall all day dressed as Secret Service agents.

Sororities tend to have tamer pledge requirements than fraternities. Frances Schendle ’06, who joined Kappa Alpha Theta when she was a freshman, recalled that new members were required to be “on call” one night per week to run errands for the older sisters.

“Older girls could call on us to do things like go to Frist and buy a bag of candy and come eat it with them while watching ‘Sex and the City,’ ” she said. “The activities we had to go through as a pledge were meant to foster bonding as a class.”

One senior, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, recalled his experience rushing, explaining that pledges were required to make trips to Philadelphia, where they had to complete tasks like peeing on the University of Pennsylvania’s famed “Split Button” sculpture or receiving a lap dance from a black stripper. Other pledges, the senior said, were forced to crawl around in the Mathey Courtyard and pretend to be cows by eating grass and mooing loudly.

Some fraternity pledge tasks, however, are more dangerous, often involving underage binge drinking.
“Usually I was drunk three or four nights a week — not really that often, I guess, compared to some people,” Burford said. “On average, I threw up once a day for my entire first semester... not every day, but once or twice a week, I would throw up multiple times.”

Burford was not the only member of his pledge class who was forced to consume excessive amounts of alcohol.

Brandon Weghorst, the associate executive director of communications for the Sigma Alpha Epsilon national organization, said the fraternity maintains “strict regulations” for its more than 200 chapters across the country.

“Each group creates its own pledge program for new members, but our Fraternity Laws spell out stringent guidelines in order to provide the best experience possible for our new members,” Weghorst said in an e-mail. “Sigma Alpha Epsilon does not condone hazing or any other illegal activity and provides educational resources for all of our members to combat hazing or inappropriate behavior.” Weghorst declined to comment on specific allegations about the Princeton chapter.

Kyle O’Donovan ’11, who is listed on the website of Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s national organization as the official contact for the Princeton chapter, declined to comment for this article.

Tilghman said hazing and binge drinking in fraternities have long been major concerns for University trustees. “[In spring 2005] one of our trustees said something that has certainly lingered in my mind and in the minds of the trustees: ‘Would we be having a different conversation if a student had just died?’ ” she recalled.

Burford explained that Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s hazing activities during his four months of rush were crazy.

“There was stuff that was crazy … and sometimes illegal that they made everybody do, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. I didn’t mind that much,” he explained. “Then there’s the category where it was just completely humiliating, and they were definitely singling me out and trying to hurt me. That was not cool.”

And it wasn’t just physical. “Not only do they haze you physically, but they also haze you mentally,” he said. “We would do something exactly right, and they would make up something that we did wrong and haze us over it. You get worried that every time you’re gonna do something, you’re gonna get yelled at. Even now, I still don’t really like to check my e-mail.”

Well into the rush process, Burford wasn’t completing his tasks as well or as quickly as his pledge brothers, and he often got sick from his frequent vomiting. That meant he was regularly singled out by the fraternity’s older brothers.

One night in early December 2008, it all came to a head. The older brothers took the pledges to Springdale Golf Course, behind Forbes College, and gave each a gallon of milk. Except for Burford.

“They gave me a doughnut and a hot coffee,” Burford recalled. “They told me, ‘Burford, sit down, just relax, enjoy yourself. You’ve been fucking your other pledge brothers over, just sitting on your ass while they’re doing all the work, so this is just one more example of that.’ ”

The older members then made the other pledges chug milk and run wind sprints repeatedly across the golf course.

“They threw up, like, 15 or 20 times,” Burford said of his pledge brothers. “And they said specifically, ‘Guys, when you’re feeling like shit right now, remember: It’s Burford’s fault.’ ”

Then one of the senior brothers, known within the fraternity as “the pledge educator,” who was chewing tobacco turned to Burford and offered him a chance at redemption, handing the freshman a Dr. Pepper bottle with tobacco "juice". “Burford, if you chug this thing in one go, everybody can go home,” Burford recalled the senior brother saying. “We’ll put all this behind us. You’ll have redeemed yourself.”

“Swallowing chewing tobacco pretty much instantly makes you throw up … so none of them thought I could do it,” Burford said. Still, he took the bottle and managed to drink all of its contents in one chug. “Then [the senior brother] was just, like, ‘Psych!’ and he made them continue,” Burford explained. “And I was just, like, ‘This is so fucked up.’ ”

The entire event — and Burford’s physical illness when the nicotine reached his bloodstream minutes later — marked the first time he considered dropping out of the rush process. He didn’t quit, though, instead using the three weeks of winter break to rest and recover at home from his first semester of Princeton life. When he returned to campus in January 2009, he felt ready to see the rush process through to the end.

Soon after their return, Burford and his pledge brothers were told to strip naked and go swimming in an icy pond at the same golf course behind Forbes.

“We had to break the ice on the pond,” Burford recalled. “We almost got hypothermia.”

But the older members warned the pledges that the worst was yet to come. One January night, the pledge brothers were blindfolded and taken into a small dorm room in Cuyler Hall, where they were forced to sit silently, listening to a death metal song blasting on repeat.

“They put us in this room, and they were, like, ‘Don’t move, don’t say anything,’ ” Burford recalled. “They put on this death metal, and it was also really hot, and we still had on all our cold weather stuff. So, of course, we’re burning up. And every five minutes, one of them would come in and pour beer on us or kick us or throw a beer can at us.”

Tilghman said she doubts that the administration could successfully regulate Greek organizations, even if it recognized them.
“[Because we don’t recognize Greek organizations] we lose the potential for regulating the behavior that most concerns us,” she said. “Because I’m a skeptic, I think that potential is a low potential. But it’s not zero.”