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Controversial Dartmouth column by Andrew Lohse

http://thedartmouth.com/2012/01/25/opinion/lohse

 

Administrators failed to adequately respond to November 2010 allegations of “dehumanizing” hazing at a campus fraternity, Andrew Lohse ’12, the student who made the allegations, said in a statement to The Dartmouth. College administrators, however, said Lohse’s failure to provide adequate evidence and speak on the record about the hazing at Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity limited their actions to contacting the national organization and alerting the Hanover Police Department of possible “Hell Night” activities during the 2010 Fall term.

Associate Dean of the College for Campus Life April Thompson said the administration took every possible action when Lohse presented the allegations a year and a half ago, but could not do more given Lohse’s insistence that his complaint remain anonymous.

Lohse first spoke to Thompson directly about hazing in November 2010, a year after his own pledge term, Thompson said, though they spoke “informally” before that time. Lohse requested anonymity and did not provide physical evidence, Thompson said.

“I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool full of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beers poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks; and vomit on other pledges, among other abuses,” Lohse told The Dartmouth.

By Hank Nuwer

Journalist Hank Nuwer tracks hazing deaths in fraternities and schools. Nuwer is the Alaska author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives; Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing, High School Hazing, Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader. In April of 2024, the Alaska Press Club awarded him first place in the Best Columnist division and Best Humorist, second place.

He has written articles or columns on hazing for the Sunday Times of India, Toronto Globe & Mail, Harper's Magazine, Orlando Sentinel, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His current book is Hazing: Destroying Young Lives from Indiana University Press. He is married to Malgorzata Wroblewska Nuwer of Warsaw, Poland and Fairbanks, Alaska. Nuwer is a former columnist for the Greenville (Ohio)Early Bird and former managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska.
Nuwer was named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists columnist of the year in 2021 for his “After Darke” column in the Early Bird. He also won third place for the column in 2022 from the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He and his wife Gosia, recently of Union City, Ind., have owned 20 acres in Alaska for many years. “The move is a sort-of coming home for us,” said Nuwer. As a journalist, he’s written about the Alaskan Iditarod sled-dog race and other Alaska topics. Read his musings in his blog at Real Alaska Daily--http://realalaskadaily.com and in his weekly column "Far from Randolph" in the Winchester Star-Gazette of Randolph County, Indiana.

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