Finding My Voice: My Experience Pledging a Black Sorority        
Written By: Stacey Pratt

Before college, I never concerned myself with joining a Greek organization. I grew up with three older sisters, in addition to gaining a strong support network of friends through my extracurricular pursuits as a high school student – I thought I had all I needed. However from my first week at my new university community, I received pamphlets of information emphasizing the more than 20% of the 40,000 University students who joined Greek organizations in order to better serve the community. During the overexposure period to campus student groups, I began to reframe my standing in the sea of 40,000 I'd just entered: I graduated from a Detroit Public High School – one of the worst academically prepared school districts in Michigan. Arriving at a predominately white university nearly an hour away from home further drove a wedge between my high school friends and family who remained in Detroit unaware of the social struggles I now faced. I became one member of an incoming class of 5,000 students with no friends, no knowledge of the campus, no academic support, and no family nearby. That is when the Greek community began to look appealing to me.

During my first years at college, I refrained from joining one of the historically Black sororities and made friends through other social circles, after all, my goal for attending college centered on academic success and diversity, not becoming popular and joining groups with members who looked just like me. But I was steadily gaining information about the Black Greek community, their social events, network for members, and their secrecy. I remember seeing my first “probate” show – an event where pledges exhibit their command of their prospective organization's history, songs, and steps around the time when those aspirants “cross” and socially become full-fledge members. It amazed me how dedicated and passionate each pledge seemed as they shouted pieces of their respective Greek organization's history in sync. I watched as members of the crowd cheered on specific pledge members, encouraging them to “Be out!” and perform their best for the sake of their fraternity. As the pledges left their audience that night, I could not help but wonder what challenges they had faced to arrive as probates.

The esoteric nature of the pledging process, coupled with the social network one can gain upon receiving membership, made the organization appealing not just to me, but many who sought acceptance by enlisting in Membership Intake Processes for the eight BGLOs on my campus (Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. was removed from our campus for ten years due to hazing). I looked on national websites for information about each of the three historically Black sororities for my campus to gain a sense of what made them different from each other. Surprisingly, I found little to distinguish them by values – all of them endorse scholarship, sisterhood, and service in some capacity. I decided that if I was still interested in joining after taking a year away to study abroad, then I would pursue membership for a sorority that best fit my personality.

Once I returned from study abroad, I realized how lonely I'd become. Not only were most of my friends busier than ever due to graduation that year, the few close friends I did have were no longer close to me after a year of minimal communication. I felt like the person I was when I entered college again, and in order to start building new friendships, I kept my promise to myself to pursue sorority membership.

We started with a roomful of people at the interest meeting. I still had in mind the scholarship, sisterly love, service, and finer womanhood values the sorority professed to practice on their website. From all of my past experiences asking people about pledging for one of these organizations, I heard that people did it to gain respect. I'd considered waiting until graduation to pursue a graduate chapter, however the idea of “gaining respect” through a pledge process was strangely appealing. I submitted an application to begin “Membership Intake,” - and the underground pledge process as well - in order to gain respect and a group of sisters devoted to me through friendship; however what I was about to experience changed the way I view pledging practices.

I pre-pledged for two months, during which time I entered into the first stage of the underground pledge process. We were required to memorize sorority history, as well as any rules given to us by our dean. If we failed to remember that information, or if we lacked unity in reciting rules, history, or anything commanded of us, we would be punished by our assistant dean, in addition to any other sorority member present. Punishments sometimes included physical activities such as “wall sits” – making a “human chair” out of the body and sitting as someone would against a wall, all while holding that position for as long as the sorority members wanted – or more intense punishments like getting slapped in the face, whacked in the back, or even paddle beaten. Despite experiencing intense physical pain, the verbal degradation was far worse. I cannot remember how many times they called me fat, weak, stupid, and ugly, and as a result, my self-esteem dropped to an all-time low. All of our grades dropped while pledging because we spent all night in pledge events. I entered the actual pledge process hoping that despite these things, I could gain peer acceptance from my four line sisters and the chapter members for my tenacity, but my physical and emotional pain escalated beyond my imagination.
   
I had difficulty doing the exercises my assistant dean and others demanded us to do, so not only were we punished for “lack of unity,” my line sisters began to criticize me for making the process more difficult on them. I never thought I would feel as lonely as I did while pledging. I thought my line sisters and I would be close, but even after pledging eight weeks, one of them told me during a heated argument “I wish you would just die!”  We became close to one another by circumstance and through pain, which didn’t necessarily make us friends.

I ultimately pledged for 11 weeks. The dean demanded me to attend a pledging session alone, and in an apartment filled with sorority members, I was beat, and told how horrible they would make things for me because I was a liar, fat, and smelly. They told me that even if I should endure it all and by some miracle “cross,” I would not be acknowledged by the chapter in any way, and they would socially black-ball me. In essence I was told that I didn't fit the mold they wanted for us, and therefore I needed to leave quietly or they would make me leave painfully. It was one of the worse nights of my life because I was broken emotionally so much during that process, and now I had nothing to build myself back up again. My line sisters crossed into the sorority a week later.

It's been two years since I pledged and I still cry at the thought of what I endured for the chance at gaining friendships. I have experienced severe depression and other problems as a result. I think about the pamphlet I received freshman year and the more than 20% of Greek students on my college's campus; but I consider now the thousands of students like myself who are not in the brochure - those who pledged alongside others without being accepted into membership. What upsets me most is the unspoken shame and embarrassment associated with not becoming a member after enduring the underground pledge process. That is why voices like mine sometimes take years to speak about the pain, emotional toll, and embarrassment from the hazing experienced during these illegal pledge processes. I learned to love the sorority so much that it hurt to face the ugly nature of what I was put through by a group of its members. I tell my story to encourage others, and maybe the person reading this article, to share their pain to prevent one more college student from feeling like they need to “earn respect” by losing their self-esteem, academic achievement, money, and peace of mind through hazing. I did not think I could make a difference the way that Greeks have in society; but finding my voice again has shown me that sharing my story can not only improve the Black Greek community, but the lives of those who have been severely damaged by the results of pledge process hazing. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Overcoming the Evil of Hazing
Chad Ellsworth

Coordinator, Office for Fraternity & Sorority Life
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

At the beginning of the week, 24 college students descended into a basement that for them became the bowels of Hell. They were dehumanized, humiliated, and ultimately broken. The process began with the stripping of their clothes, their identities, and their privacy. It ended after six days with their dignity, humanity, and well-being having been taken away. In between, the students were awoken repeatedly throughout the night, were forced to simulate sexual acts with others, and had bathroom and eating privileges restricted.

The words above could have described a fraternity-related Hell Week experience. But in fact, they are in reference to the landmark Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971. Prior to the experiment, Philip Zimbardo and associates meticulously screened a group of students at Stanford University. On all emotional and psychological measures, the students scored between the 40th and 60th percentiles - they were average people. They were randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners. The experiment was scheduled for 14 days, but in less than a week, the guards had become so intensely sadistic and the prisoners so strikingly submissive, that the experiment was halted for the sake of the safety and well-being of everyone involved. So, what caused a group of average, ordinary students to internalize and radicalize their roles in such a brief period of time? And how does the Stanford Prison Experiment inform our work with hazing prevention?

Zimbardo argued in his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil that powerful social forces can alter the behavior of ordinary people (Zimbardo, 2007). In his own experiment, good people suddenly became perpetrators of evil as guards or pathologically passive victims as prisoners as a result of the powerful situational forces acting on them. As people we tend to believe in the “essential, unchanging goodness of people,” (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 211). That is, there is a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil. Bad things are done by bad people. Good things by good people. The Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated that situations matter, and that the line between Good and Evil is more pliable that we may realize. It is possible for social settings to exert a significant impact on the behavior and mental functioning of individuals and groups.  Remember the 1983 Eddie Murphy movie, Trading Places?

Zimbardo (2007) is careful to point out that individuals are not absolved of their actions, but in affecting positive changes in human behavior it is important to understand the effects of situational, social, and systemic forces.

Some of these forces include:

•    Authority – The ability of roles and rules to control behavior and culture by delineating not only what is rewarded and punished, but also who is responsible for distributing those rewards and punishments

•    De-individuation – In which the perpetrator becomes anonymous, reducing accountability, responsibility, and self-monitoring

•    De-humanization – In which the victim’s humanity is minimized, setting the stage for treatment of the victim as less than an equal human being

•    Sleep deprivation and time perspective – In addition to the disruption of the sleep cycle by abbreviated or intermittent opportunities for sleep, menial and tedious activities encourage perpetrators and victims to immerse themselves in the present situation and restrict their ability to see beyond the current role

•    Social approval – In which individual needs for acceptance and respect combine with pressure from others to be a “team player” to conform to emerging group norms or risk the fear of being left outside
Particularly in our work with institutions or organizations with cultures of hazing, it is easy to find examples of parallel forces and systems.

At the Interdisciplinary Institute for Hazing Intervention in June, the conversations about changing the culture of hazing in organizations revolved around the Higher Education Center’s A Comprehensive Approach to Hazing Prevention in Higher Education Settings (Langford, 2008). Specifically, the Higher Education Center endorsed a set of principles for hazing prevention that takes into account the unique cultures of different institutions. These principles for guiding hazing prevention strategies are: prevention-focused, comprehensive, planned and evaluated, strategic and targeted, research-based, multi-component, coordinated and synergistic, multi-sectoral and collaborative, and supported by infrastructure, institutional commitment, and systems. (More details and information about each of these principles can be found online at: http://www.higheredcenter.org/files/violence_briefs/hazing.pdf ) Specifically, two of the Higher Education Center’s key recommendations include:
•    Identifying and addressing multiple contributing factors; and
•    Including prevention, early intervention, and response components.

By addressing an array of contributing factors, including individual, peer and group-level, institutional, community, and societal factors, we can deal with the convergence of these factors that create a culture of hazing. On each of these five levels, from an intrapersonal level to a societal level, we can tackle issues such as authority, de-individuation, de-humanization, time perspective, and social approval. Likewise, strategies should include prevention, early intervention, and response elements. So, in addition to responding to an incident or injury, initiatives must include efforts for intervening early in hazing behaviors and for stopping hazing behaviors altogether. Prevention efforts can create safer environments and target underlying causes, and early intervention efforts can empower students to speak up about “little h’s” before they become “big H’s.”

Changing a destructive culture can be extremely challenging. However, while such destructive cultures can force people to become bystanders to Evil, empowering them to alter circumstances can bring out the inner heroes in ordinary people. For that reason, Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo (2006) invoked readers to cultivate heroism in response to the Evil transformations they had witnessed in the Stanford Prison Experiment, Abu Ghraib, Nazi Germany, etc.

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the guards who were perceived positively by the prisoners never complained or intervened to stop the “bad guards.” In short, they succumbed to the Evil of inaction. But, by failing to attempt an intervention, they were complicit in the bad guards’ behavior. Instead of the bystander falling victim to the Evil of inaction (“the bystander effect”), the bystander can be empowered for Heroism. In prevention and early intervention, the pivot point is winning over bystanders from inaction to action. Efforts should focus on how to encourage action, including specific suggestions for acting during all levels of hazing behavior.

Franco and Zimbardo (2006) identified five practical steps for empowering individuals toward Heroism. The first step is to encourage a critical evaluation of each and every situation. Franco and Zimbardo (2006) refer to this as the “discontinuity detector,” which is an awareness of things that are out of place or do not make sense in a situation. By doing so, individuals can separate themselves from a dangerous or inappropriate group norm. They can begin asking questions of themselves, such as “Why am I doing this?” “What does this say about me, about my friends, and about the group?” and “How does this fit with my personal values and the group’s values?”

Secondly, the authors also encourage us to embrace interpersonal conflict, while developing the strength to hold onto personal principles and values. When individuals become cognizant of activities or behaviors that are “discontinuous” with personal or group values, they can challenge others to align their behaviors with their own personal values, group values, community values, and human values.  Almost any organization that a student is a part of on campus has a set of stated values or a public purpose against which behavior can be measured, and if the group itself doesn’t, the institution certainly does.

The third component is an awareness of the extended time-horizon, in addition to being engaged in the current situation. This consciousness allows individuals to imagine alternative future scenarios and maintain connections to past lessons and values, which broadens the available information in decision-making beyond the present situation. For example, an individual can call on memories of difficult past situations or lessons he or she has learned from parents and mentors, or he or she can imagine how family, friends, mentors, teachers, employers, and others may react if those others found out how the individual had betrayed a set of personal values by mistreating others or participating in such behaviors. In short, the individual resists compartmentalizing dangerous and inappropriate behaviors, and is aware of deeply held attitudes, beliefs, and values. Discussions with individuals or small groups of student leaders can ask for comparisons of the current scenario to others they have faced before and apply lessons learned.

The next step is to normalize action and resist rationalization. Challenge norms that inhibit and prevent independent thinking and action. Do not go along to get along. Do not let the ends (real or imagined) justify the means.  Practioners can help students understand the pitfalls of groupthink, and share specific examples of times when individuals’ succumbed to the group dynamic with dangerous outcomes.

Finally, we can and must help students look beyond immediate negative consequences and obstacles, and encourage them to transcend the very real challenges and fears they face to achieve the cultural change and positive outcomes they yearn for.

As educators, we must organize across institutions and organizations in challenging a culture of hazing through the Higher Education Center’s model, and champion heroic acts by individuals in order to win the battle against the Evil of hazing.

References
Franco, Z. & Zimbardo, P. (2006-07, Fall/Winter). The banality of heroism. Greater Good, 30-35.
Langford, L. (2008). A comprehensive approach to hazing prevention in higher education settings. Newton, MA: U.S. Department of Education’s Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention.
Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House.

Hazing: Here to Stay?
By  Jayson Gaddis, Revolutionary Man 

“Where ritual is absent, the young ones are restless or violent, there are no real elders,
and the grown ups are bewildered.”   -Malidoma Patrice Some

I was hazed. Hard. And I liked it. My attitude was “bring it on, is that all you got?” There were many men like me. We wanted to be hazed. We wanted to have to “earn” our way in. My hell week was amazing. Powerful. Then, once initiated, I turned this new-found excitement upon those that came after me and I hazed them. And, at some basic level it met a need I didn’t even know I had. Yet, as I reflect back upon my four years in the fraternity, it had all the underpinnings of a very abusive situation and was rife with trauma.

I grew up with a father who taught me to be tough and to “suck it up,” to hold back tears and, under no circumstances, act like a girl (I had no idea until recently that to be a man in this culture, meant to practice misogyny overtly). After my upbringing, hazing was not a big deal. I was used to being emotionally and verbally shamed. My skin was thick and I could take it. Underneath of course, I was a super sensitive boy, insecure and afraid of not getting the approval I needed so badly.  In college it became some moral challenge for me to “take it” better than my fellow man, to prove myself. There were many men like me.   Not just in my fraternity, but in college, in high school, on sports teams, in gangs---all wanting the same thing: to go through an extremely hard experience and then to come out the other side, somehow different, better, altered, changed forever.

My initiation week was complicated and involved us crossing the five rivers of hell as outlined in Dante’s Inferno. We had to pass numerous psychological and physical tests. We were not Betas. We were made into Betas. We were forced to let go of our known identity so that we could become a well-respected active brother in the fraternity. We had to “take it like a man” to become men. This, of course meant that we all must act like tough guys and be the stereotypical, disconnected male, stuffing his feelings and his sensitivity to conform to the group ideal. Young men that didn’t make it or struggled were judged as weak, not worthy to wear the badge that set us apart from other men and other fraternities. This is where my shadow and the shadow of my social group emerged.

Joseph Campbell, a mythologist who did a renowned series of interviews with Bill Moyers on The Power of Myth, outlines what he calls the hero’s journey. George Lucas drew from this model when he made the Star Wars epic. The hero’s journey has three basic stages:  severance, initiation, and the return. In the severance stage a person will leave his community or family and begin a journey, often alone. In some cultures, the person is kidnapped, kicked out of the tribe, or he may leave the community voluntarily. During initiation, a man will go through a ritual of some kind, which may involve death and rebirth of some part of themselves. Here the initiate might be taught something by a teacher or spirit (Raphael, 1998). This is followed by a test or an “ordeal” the initiate must go through to test the waters of his newfound self (Hollis, 1993). The return symbolizes the man coming back to his community, his people, as a new person with new insights. Perhaps the boy leaves a child and returns a man. Essential to the return is being witnessed and received by community and/or elders. Campbell asserts that all cultures across time have one thing in common—a ritual marking some kind of passage into another life phase, and, in order to successfully move on to the next developmental stage in our life, we have to go through a rite of passage.

Most traditional cultures have specific rites wherein a boy becomes a man. In doing so, a boy receives some kind of training or transmission from the elders of the community about how to be a man in their village or tribe. Not only is the elders’ role pivotal, the separation from the mother is poignant and a necessary moment in a boy’s life. He leaves the safety of the womb of the protective mother and village, and must be tested by the wilderness and the men in the community. As long as humans have existed, boys have been cast into a ritual in order to become a man. How does this all fit into our modern situation? Quite simply, in our culture no such ritual exists.

If it is true that initiation is a necessary step along a man’s journey, what happens if he does not receive an initiation? If it is also true that in this culture there is no formal initiation into manhood, how is he supposed to know that he is a man?  Is it when he first gets drunk? Gets hazed and survives? Joins a gang? Leaves for college? Loses his virginity? Gets his first job? Gets in a fight and wins? Whereas in other cultures, that moment is obvious, known, and acknowledged.

Is it possible then, that men in this culture are unconsciously seeking out initiatory experiences that come from deep within their psyche, and that they actively engage in high-risk behaviors to meet this end? Is it possible that they are longing to be initiated, to be pushed, challenged, forced into an ordeal that would give them meaning, understanding, validation - of themselves, their community and their world? Is it possible the role of the military, a gang, sports teams, and the modern college fraternity has become a place where boys become men through being pushed, challenged, and hazed? Is it possible that we have boys initiating other boys into manhood through fraternity rituals and games?

In recent years, anti-hazing groups have grown and have done their best to educate, inform, and reprimand perpetrators of hazing. Organizations such as StopHazing.org do ongoing education and research, helping to pass laws against hazing. However, are we really seeing a decline in hazing? According to Stophazing.org over half of all college students report being hazed and 47% report being hazed before they entered college.

In the most recent research done, the national study of student hazing, Allan and Madden (2007) found that “more students perceive positive outcomes than negative ones (pg 26)” when it comes to hazing. In fact, the study goes on to report that when students who had been hazed were asked “why they did not report their hazing experience,” half of them gave their own explanation. Examples include:
•    “It was no big deal.” 
•    “No one was harmed.”
•    “I didn’t consider the hazing to be extreme or troubling.”
•    “I had a choice to participate or not.”
•    “I knew it would occur and was willing to be hazed. Consequently I didn't feel it bore reporting.”
•    “I was happy and willing to do all of the things I did, I have no desire to report them.”
•    It “made me a better man.”
•    “It made me and my brothers better people.  It was a positive experience!”
•    “Feelings afterward outweighed the pain or stress felt during it.”
•    “It was tradition so I didn't mind.”
•    “Hazing is a rite of passage.  If you can't take it, get out.”

What does all of this suggest? From the research one could conclude that many college undergraduates not only want to get hazed, they do not view it as a problem. This information confirms the responses of the college men I work with each year. For the past seven years I have worked with more than 200 college men in an outdoor leadership setting. Each trip we have a discussion about hazing and I informally survey the group. When I ask them if hazing was helpful to them, nine out of ten men answer yes. Ten out of ten would do it again. Each man comes from a different hazing experience. Many of them describe their experience as “intense,” “brutal,” “tough,” or on the other side, “we weren’t really hazed,” “no hazing took place, but I wish it did.”

Joseph Campbell believes that the hero’s journey has been with us as long as man has lived in community and participated in rituals. Since men today lack a conscious, loving initiation into manhood, they attempt to become men through their own misconstrued, haphazard attempts. In other words, they initiate each other blindly, without intelligently looking into what it is that they are really trying to do.  Many men’s organizations such as the Mankind Project assert that the single biggest problem with men in our culture today is that they have never been formally and consciously initiated into manhood.

Hank Nuwer, hazing expert and author of Wrongs of Passage, states in his book, that “modern psychology” offers some possible explanations as to why hazing exists. He cites that, “The gusto with which some hazers perform activities suggests that hazing satisfies some sort of primitive psychic need to symbolically take revenge for hazing that they themselves once endured.” I agree with the first part of his statement; that it stems from a “primitive psychic need.” The second part of this statement might be true, but it still does not explain why hazing began in the first place. Again I assert that this need is a man’s intrinsic longing to go through something difficult to become the person he needs to become.

Nuwer calles hazers “extremists.” If this is true does it mean that over half our college students are extremists? I don’t think so. Hazers are people like you and me. We may not haze another person, but we share one thing in common---we long for something deeper in life, some meaning, some difficult experience that will define us, make us who we are. I agree with Nuwer that hazing is about belonging—belonging to a group. Most young people are willing to go through something difficult to belong and be accepted in the group. Although this is true, it is only half of the equation.

Nuwer also researches the origins of hazing and points to the fourth century and medieval times where hazing was quite common. He goes on to discuss many tales of hazing mostly in academic settings. There is no mention of traditional cultures and hazing. But the origins of hazing can be found in the roots of human psychological development that spans cultures, gender and time, well beyond academia. If we are really to look at hazing, we must go further than the academic and social institutions and look to the larger, global human situation.

Nuwer does however make an important statement that, “numerous scholars have concluded that hazing in the Middle Ages allowed newcomers to demonstrate that they possessed the stamina and courage necessary to survive symbolic ordeals.”  Then, if we go back to the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell, and look at the male initiate, we realize he must face “trials, tests and enemies” and lastly the crux of his journey is the “ordeal” wherein he must face his biggest fear. In the ordeal a certain part of him dies and a new part of him emerges. The ordeal is meant to call forward an essential part of our psyche that needs our attention. It is in the ordeal where we discover more about the possible roots of hazing. In an authentic initiation, the ordeal is done from a place of love and respect. Unfortunately for us in this day and age, and since “the shadow” is always operating in all of us, many groups such as cults, gangs, religious extremists, the military and yes, fraternities, co-opt the basic principles of the hero’s journey and actually brainwash, manipulate and traumatize individuals with the goal of forging the initiate into a pawn who betrays his own inner integrity and conforms to the group identity. As a result, men remain developmentally immature. Poet and mythopoetic men’s movement writer Robert Bly agrees and calls these men “half adults” (Bly, 1996).

Why is it important to determine where hazing comes from? For me, it is an essential question. As a psychotherapist and coach, I work with a range of people, all of whom have a longing to be who they are. We now know that hazing is prevalent in just about every sector of society and crosses socio-economic lines, gender, and age. I notice the lack of conscious initiatory practices in our culture and hazing is one unconscious attempt to meet this end. What if we brought awareness to this process? What if we understood the deeper psychological and archetypal longing to be ourselves and to become a man/woman?  What if men were aware of the longing that they feel inside but cannot name? What if we attempted to initiate our men in a healthy way? Would there still be hazing?

I assert that hazers are themselves victims, wounded souls who are acting out their own unfinished business. Perhaps we are all hazers, perpetrating upon one another in ways that go against our innermost integrity. We have all been hurt and we have all caused another person pain. To point the finger only at the hazers in this system is not good enough. I believe that the desire to go through something difficult is to be human. The desire for some of us wanting to be hazed is valid. If it is true that men want to go through an ordeal to become who they are, to become men, it makes sense that men haze and want to get hazed. Perhaps it is we that are dropping the ball, refusing the call to initiate our young men. Have we not learned that eradicating hazing is like eradicating war, drugs or violence?  Instead of pointing the finger at those who haze, can we not look at the longing behind the behavior and address it head on?

First, we need to be aware that there is a deeper psychological need in all of us, particularly those in adolescence, nearing adulthood. Next, I believe we need to meet that need with conscious initiatory practices that involve all aspects of the hero’s journey, not just a test. Likewise, the ordeal must be real. It must bring forth a part of us that lays buried within our psyche. Through the ordeal we must help men unlock their soul’s calling. It is not good enough to do a ropes course or facilitate team-building initiatives. Something much more intense and radical is called for. Men also need mentors, older men who have made the difficult journey to become a man, who are willing to show them the way of being “a good man.” These older men must be re-initiated so that they too get the experience of a conscious ordeal. It is not good enough to look to the media and pop culture to define manhood for us. It is time to consciously initiate our young men in a way that includes aspects of a hero’s journey.

Many administrators have done a great job brainstorming potential “hazing alternatives.” However, none has the true aspect of an ordeal. The closest to this is a seven-day wilderness trip done by several fraternities.  We cannot expect a gang member who faced severe trials during his initiation to go rappelling down a mountain with his peers and feel that he accomplished something and is now a man. We need to look well beyond “outdoor activities” toward a new kind of initiation. We also need to look to men that have actually done a real, authentic rite of passage—men like Malidoma Some, a West African Shaman who has written many books on the subject.

Part of the issue here is that an “authentic” rite of passage involves very intense experiences, few of which our modern society might support. That said, a few possibilities that might come close to a real rite-of-passage are: Attending a group meditation retreat sitting still for hour after hour, day after day for 30 days; spending four days and four nights alone in the wilderness in the same spot with no food; spending two weeks alone in a 10x10 foot cabin contemplating one’s life purpose; living homeless for a week in an urban city; going off into the Alaskan wilderness alone like the main character did in the movie Into the Wild; or hitch-hiking across South America alone. It is during these experiences that a man comes face to face with himself and his mortality, and wakes up the part of him that must enter manhood and live his purpose.

So then, we need to ask ourselves, are we in the business of initiating boys into manhood? If not, maybe we need to let go of the notion that it is our responsibility altogether and stick to doing what we do best, whatever that is. At the same time let us realize, acknowledge and accept that unless we drop deeply into the art of initiation, hazing is here to stay and minimizing its risks might be the best we can do.


BIO:
Jayson Gaddis, MA, LPC
Jayson Gaddis is a transformational coach and psychotherapist. He specializes in working with adult men in life transitions. He has led over 25 wilderness rites-of-passage trips for young men, and has been working with college men since 1995.  He founded his own company, innernature, in 2001. Gaddis is also a meditation instructor and facilitates Authentic Man courses in Boulder, Colorado. http://www.revolutionaryman.com

References:
Allan, Elizabeth J. PhD. Madden, Mary, PhD. (2007). Hazing in View: College Students at Risk. Initial Findings from the National Study of Student Hazing. College of Education and Human Development
Bly, Robert (1996). Sibling society. New York: Addison-Wesley.
Campbell, Joseph (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Hollis, James. (1993). The middle passage: From misery to meaning in midlife. Toronto, Canada:  Inner City Books. Canada:  Inner City Books.
Nuwer, Hank. (1999). Wrongs of Passage. Bloomington & Indianapolis. Indiana University Press.
Raphael, Ray. (1988). The men from the boys: rites of passage in male America. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
Some, Malidoma (1996). Ritual, the sacred, and community. In Mahdi, LC and NG Christopher, M. Meade (Eds.), Crossroads: the quest for contemporary rites of passage. (pp. 17-25). Chicago, IL: Open Court.

Hazing Hurts . . .
Recruitment

by Matt Mattson, Phired Up, http://www.PhiredUp.com

You want recruitment results, right?  What do you think is one of the major concerns/fears of potential new members?  Yep, you guessed it… they don’t want to get hazed.  They assume that joining a fraternity or sorority requires at least a week, if not a full semester, of humiliation, hard work, embarrassment, alcohol abuse, illegalities, and other things that they’re not interested in.

So, they don’t join.

I’m not talking about a few people on your campus that aren’t joining because of a fear of hazing.  I’m suggesting that on most of your campuses there is about 80-90% of the campus that isn’t Greek.  I’m suggesting that most of them are smarter than to put themselves in a position where hazing MIGHT happen.

You’re saying, “our chapter is different, we don’t haze.”  Great!  It is important to understand however, that your potential members don’t know that.  And they aren’t joining because other chapters on your campus, in your inter/national organization, around your state, and around the country DO HAZE.  They haze and you pay the price — the vast majority of your campus is afraid of what you MIGHT do to them.

Are you angry yet?  You should be.  I know I am.  I know that many of you don’t haze, would never allow yourself to be hazed, and think that chapters that do haze are just stupid — never mind the “it’s against our values” stuff. You know, just like I do that they’re missing out on the best guys on campus (who avoid them altogether), and they lose many of their best members during their new member period (because they’re smart enough to get out during pledging).

Anytime I think or talk about hazing a couple of memories come up for me…

The first is a new member education exercise I did when I pledged to Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity at Grand Valley State University back in 1996.  One day during our new member ed meeting, the pledge educator took the whole 12-man class outside onto the lawn of the house.  He put us in a circle and did a version of the “crossing the line” exercise.

During that exercise members were asked to step forward if they could relate to a statement.  The statements started with benign things like, “I am a college student,” or “I am a republican.”  As the statements continued, they became more and more challenging and personal, like “I have been angry at someone in this circle,” or “I’ve cheated in school before.”  By the time we got toward the end of the exercise, the statements were very personal and very revealing.  They included statements like:

“I have lost a loved one recently” (several of my brothers stepped forward)

“I have done hard drugs” (a couple of my brothers stepped forward)

“I have been very depressed” (a couple of my brothers stepped forward)

“I have been abused” (several of my brothers stepped forward)

“I have considered or attempted suicide” (3 of my pledge brother stepped forward)

“I have been sexually abused” (2 of my pledge brothers stepped forward)

“I have been raped…”    (one of my pledge brothers stepped forward)

Very few experiences in my life have given me as much insight into the reality that all of us — even the ones you least expect — have had experiences in our life that have hurt deeply.  If I am to be their brothers, and if I am to educate my interfraternal brothers and sisters to be the best members they can be — then I can not stand for us hurting one another (even if it is based on a joke or some “bonding” experience).  Because even a light-hearted, seemingly harmless prank can bring back the pain of those past experiences and losses.

I can’t imagine how painful it would be for my pledge brothers (especially those that had been abused, sexually molested, suicidal, and/or recently grieving a lost loved one) to have been paddled, forced into dark rooms or blindfolds, forced to drink, to have had demeaning things shouted at them, etc.

New members join us often in one of the most vulnerable times in their lives.  They have moved away from their friends and families, they are trying to establish their own personal identity, and they are vulnerable.  We can’t abuse that.  We have to nurture our brothers and sisters especially during their first few months as a member. That is what true brotherhood and sisterhood is.

The other memory that arises for me comes from when I was the president of my chapter.  After one of our Pledge Ceremonies (an initial ritual for new members) in which the candidates were blindfolded, I had one of the new members come to my room at about 2 a.m. in tears.  Now, I wasn’t used to having another guy come talk to me crying, so I was a little freaked out.  He explained to me that he suffered from severe anxiety disorder, and the fact that we drove him around in a car for 30 minutes blindfolded (which we thought was harmless) was deathly terrifying for him.

Two thoughts come out of this scenario for me.  First, it amazes me that he let us do that to him.  But that just confirms how vulnerable we are when we’re new members.  Secondly, I now do some work in the field of mental health and better understand the level of terror that he must have been experiencing.  I also know that somewhere around 1 in 5 of us (yes, your chapter too) live with a serious mental illness (and you hardly ever know who we are).  A good brother/sister wouldn’t kick their members while they’re down, and they certainly wouldn’t terrorize them on purpose.

Am I saying that “blindfolds are hazing.”  No.  I’m saying we need to be aware of the reality of what our brothers and sisters have gone through or are going through, and be sensitive to that.  When they’re new members, often they’re afraid to tell you about these things, so we have to create environments that are extra safe for them — so that they feel safe and want to stick around.

My recommendation is to assume that somewhere in your new member class there is a person who has been abused, who has a mental illness, who has an eating disorder, who is an alcoholic, who can’t read, who was molested, or… who is suicidal right now.  Build a new member education program based on those assumptions — because they’re probably TRUE.

Bottom line: If we’re helping you revolutionize your chapter by using Dynamic Recruitment to recruit a higher quantity of higher quality members, don’t haze them because if they really are higher quality members, they’ll quit, and all of our/your hard work will have been wasted.

Hazing hurts.  It hurts recruitment results.  It hurts people.

According to the NHPW website, since 1970 at least one person has died from a hazing related event each year.  Let’s stop that.

One person can make the difference.  Your opportunity is now here.

“Status Report on Hazing -- National Scene”

by Hank Nuwer
 
Imagine the heartache of a mother and father setting dinner places for the family this holiday season and having to take a plate away.
 
It happened to hazing activist Eileen Stevens after her son Chuck died in an alcohol-related hazing incident for the now defunct Klan Alpine fraternity at Alfred University in rural southern New York, as I reported in my 1990 ground-breaking book on hazing called Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing.
 
Now this holiday season of 2008 there are four suspected hazing incidents under intense police investigations because they involve the deaths of young men coast to coast. Coupled with two other possible hazing-related cases earlier in the year, these four deaths demonstrate that we still have a lot of work to do on this issue.
 
--One possible hazing incident is the alcohol-related death of Carson Stuckey, 18, a pledge of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. Police found him unresponsive and near death the morning of December 2 in a private home.

--The second under investigation is the death of Wabash College (Indiana) freshman Johnny D. Smith, 18, of Tucson, Arizona, whose family attorney charged that the Wabash Delta Tau Delta chapter was out of control with regards to drinking and general rowdiness. Delta Tau Delta immediately suspended the chapter and Wabash administrators yanked its charter.
 
--The third case involves a Salt Lake City investigation into the activities of Chi Omega sorority and Sigma Nu fraternity members following the death of Michael Starks, 18, a Sigma Nu pledge, after he was invited to chug a fifth of vodka in one hour. The family of young Starks charged that he was “captured” by the sorority members at the behest of the local Sigma Nu chapter.
 
--The fourth type of alleged hazing under police review was that “rough hazing” or physical roughhousing played a part in the head injury that resulted in the death of 19 -year-old Harrison Kowiak, a golf team member and Theta Chi pledge of Lenoir Ryhne University in North Carolina last month.

The high number of fatalities had me scrambling back to 1997 and then to the 1970s to find other years that were comparably horrific in terms of student deaths that may have been hazing-related.
 
Other news to end the year is more positive. Author Michael Kimmel’s book Guyland included a thoughtful assessment of hazing and cited my work in particular among attempts to end the practice. And young adult author and former New York Times columnist, Robert Lipsyte  penned a hard-hitting novel called Raiders Night, which exposes the sordid practice of high school athletic hazing.
 
Researcher Elizabeth Allan and her team of hazing experts (disclosure: I am a consultant) continues to unveil findings of interest to all following her extensive surveys and studies conducted with a University of Maine colleague over the last nearly five years. The “Examining and Transforming Campus Hazing Cultures” project most recently focused on the Maine team’s case studies of 18 participating colleges. Allan believes the project will help campuses better understand hazing in order to intervene with problematic athletes, fraternities, bands and other collegiate groups before a death occurs.
 
In Colorado the death of Gordie Bailey inspired his friends and survivors to found The Gordie Foundation in his name < www.gordie.org/>. They have sponsored a film called “Haze: The Movie” which attacks both hazing and the alcohol atmosphere on campus, and makes this issue far broader than just a fraternity or sorority issue. Gordie died from alcohol poisoning while pledging a national fraternity in 2004.
 
Finally, HazingPrevention.Org continues to offer hazing education initiatives such as National Hazing Prevention Week, a national essay contest, and the administration of Anti-Hazing Hero Awards to honor those who have stood up to hazers and possibly saved a life in the process.