Author: Hank Nuwer

Here is the link

Excerpt:

Under the guise of initiation or acceptance, certain firehouse practices can be demeaning and even dangerous. Hazing often involves unnecessary, unpleasant or extremely difficult work, which supposedly tests a person’s character or endurance. This “testing” may range from joking to taunting and nit-picking, or from work obstructions to demeaning tasks.

Although hazing is purportedly meant to test a new member’s commitment, it may really serve to provide the perpetrators with a bit of demented amusement. The new member must decide whether acceptance by this group is sufficiently worthwhile to endure the discomfort and humiliation.

Creating a gauntlet of fear and humiliation should legitimately be termed harassment, which is illegal in the workplace. But when does hazing become harassment? There is no clear line.

To make matters worse, an insular culture exists that people outside of a firehouse rarely, if ever, witness. You’ve probably seen the Las Vegas promotions that tout, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” In this case, “What happens in the firehouse stays in the firehouse.”

The “final exam” in an initiation is complicity-by-silence. The rookie cannot disclose to anyone outside of the firehouse what happened, on penalty of rejection; a squealer will be ostracized immediately. This is the most insidious aspect of hazing; some perpetrators are exploring whether the rookie can be trusted to keep quiet about questionable and inappropriate activity. “Do you have my back?” goes beyond job commitment and, in the realm of firefighting, includes a vow of silence should a group member face accountability for bad behavior…..

….Testing the commitment and courage of new team members is certainly reasonable. Respect for each other and for all humanity is the foundation upon which fire service skills are built. Our leaders must understand this.

Further, fire service leaders are learning to appreciate and seek diversity in our teams and organizations. But when we perpetuate the inappropriate traditions of hazing and harassment, we encourage talented and capable people to avoid or prematurely leave the fire service. We must stop behaviors that promote inappropriate behavior in the workplace so we can all learn and work together in a respectful environment.

Excerpt and Video:

ELLIS COUNTY — Five volunteer firefighters are off the job in Ellis County. They and one other person face serious charges for what investigators say they did to a recruit.

The Texas Rangers investigated what’s described as a hazing incident and sexual assault that happened in January at the Ellis County Emergency Services District No. 6 Volunteer Fire Department outside Waxahachie.

Rangers said the sixth person arrested in the case recorded the act on her cell phone.

In a community where volunteer firefighters are held in high regard, people here were caught off-guard by these allegations. Court records paint a picture of a party-like atmosphere at the station house while members of the department sexually assault a new recruit.

After being arrested Monday night, five Ellis County volunteer firefighters woke up in jail Tuesday morning. Each faces charges of aggravated sexual assault. All but one have bonded out.

Essay by Reina A. E. Gattuso

Excerpt follows:

It’s going to be that time soon.

Rumors abound. Sometimes you are given a key to a secret door, or asked to sign a book based on political affiliation, or blindfolded.

Sometimes the rumors are worse: You don’t sleep for a week and you’re forced to wear stupid clothing. Or you serve older members at events. Or you ridicule yourself and each other.

And worse still: Who has burned a dollar bill in front of a homeless person? Who has pretended to hawk Spare Change News? Who was concussed and prevented from going to the hospital? Who has been sexually assaulted?

I’m talking about initiations. Here’s how they work. All semester, we go through a comp, or a punch, or a rush—a process of competition, selection, and training for one of many exclusive organizations on campus. Sometimes, these processes are educational and fun. Sometimes, they entail a certain level of dickishness, calculated to make applicants feel small. But almost unanimously, these processes rely on hierarchical divisions between members and compers, inside and out.

If and when we get on, we are initiated, and the hierarchy is leveled. During a climactic evening or day or week—often chemically-altered, often somewhat mysterious—we participate in rituals of belonging. Sometimes these rituals are silly and fun: We go on scavenger hunts and dance to Beyoncé.

The magazine cover story asks “Is the Party Over?”

Excerpt:Following a night of drunken revelry, Homer reports, Elpenor — one of Odysseus’s unhappy and rapidly dwindling band of brothers — climbs atop the roof of the house where they are staying to sleep off the booze. Awakening in the morning, he proceeds to tumble off the roof, fatally breaking his neck in the landing. Thus was born the first frat bro. Falling from height seems to be a regular part of life among 21st-century college fraternities. Fraternity-house residents and their guests regularly fall off roofs, porches, decks, and fire escapes, out of windows, through skylights, and down stairs. This March, at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, some three-dozen people — business majors, apparently — clustered atop a garage to celebrate “St. Fratty’s Day.” Predictably, the garage’s roof gave way, sending 40 Solo cups to the earth and eight people to the hospital, including one impaled through the thigh. The incident occurred a little before 6:30 a.m.

Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/415673/party-over

John Belushi in sweater on the cover. The magazine pins much blame on Faculty of 50 and 40 years ago: “When the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s struck America’s campuses, administrators and professors keen to be groovy abdicated most responsibility for moral instruction in the lives of their students, reimagining the campus as a four-year getaway in which self-discovery, not intellectual formation, was paramount.”

Moderator:  Please note that SUNY Albany has TWO Zeta Beta Tau chapters. One is a national and is recognized by the university. It played no part in the recent hazing death.

A second, unrecognized Zeta Beta Tau has been connected with the death of a pledge.

Thanks to Dean Harwood for this headsup:

The Albany Student Press has a story indicating that this was part of a big/little brother night for an underground version of ZBT – http://www.albanystudentpress.net/big-brothers-at-underground-zbt/. It also looks like five people were hospitalized as a result of this party – http://www.albanystudentpress.net/ualbany-student-in-critical-condition-at-albany-medical-center/.

UAlbany appears to have a recognized chapter of Zeta Beta Tau, and I wonder how this might fit with them.