Author: Hank Nuwer

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.

Here is the link.  The school is investigating whether the team’s coach instigated the ritual in which rookies licked the dirt on their diamond to show loyalty.

From Moderator Hank Nuwer:   While I wish retiring University of Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman well, and commend him for accomplishments in academics and athletics during his long tenure, I respectfully and strongly must speak out against his defense of a UNL tradition that certainly qualifies as a hazing practice.

Perlman recently defended the senior UNL society known as the Innocents Society, a group that “welcomes” select newcomers each year with a “voluntary” tackle on an open field. (Video link)

“Tackling somebody in an open field when they know it’s going to happen, and happen once, is just not the definition of hazing as we define it,” Perlman told media representatives.

Why yes it is. And every time an organization gets caught in an initiation that is stupid, demeaning or dangerous, there is sure to be a fool from that group saying, “This doesn’t meet my definition of hazing.”  I’ve come to expect that of an undergraduate, but from a chancellor in the twilight of a long career? It boggles the mind.

Because actions like tackling a new member standing with head bowed is stupid, demeaning and dangerous, I suggest that Mr. Perlman revisit his limited and ignorant view of what constitutes hazing. Because such an act doggone well IS hazing is why many sports teams have gotten rid of such barbaric and dated customs as “Freshman Kill Day” for soccer and “Senior Hit Day” in football.

Like all hazing acts, there is real peer pressure on the newcomers and veteran organization members alike to continue the status quo. And for overseers like Perlman to poohpooh such practices.

I, for one, wonder if school and team insurance would cover a crippling injury should an “Innocent” newcomer or old timer suffer a concussion or a broken leg…or worse. Almost certainly, the university that Perlman has represented would lose millions in a civil lawsuit should a life-threatening injury to spine, head or neck occur.

Don’t get me wrong, I heartily applaud such distinguished service organizations such as the Innocents, and their long distinguished history and all the now-distinguished members who now are alums.

But tackling someone to get into an organization is risky, wrong and absolutely an act of hazing. Let us remember that Theta Chi pledge Harrison Kowiak died of a similar long-standing initiation when he was tackled hard to the ground and his head struck hard earth.

That ritual needs to retire along with Chancellor Perlman.