I told other pledges I wasn't going to activate and be part of such a vicious group. OK, pledges, back to your dorms."Īs much as I hated that night, I hated the aftermath more. The pledge master says, "Knock it off, both of you. "Surely, you won't make him go through this again." "Pledges, report back at 10 in the morning for the initiation ceremony. The dirtbags are celebrating behind us while we stand - bruised, muddy, soaked - listening to the pledge master declare hell week over. I'll sucker punch them one day.īack in the meeting room, they remove our blindfolds. "Gracie one, Gracie two." But I can't keep up. Fortunately, I'm wearing jeans outside cotton pants, and the denim doesn't tear. Shifting positions chafes my inner thighs. I yell "Gracie" as loud as I can to disregard the pain. In front of you is a big log named Gracie. We scramble up a slippery, muddy slope while they whip us. The rest of you follow me to the next station."
I stifle a yell and mutter under my breath. They drag him up the bank and drop him next to me. He freaks out, crying, screaming, splashing into the water, begging them to stop. I barely hear the next two pledges struggle through the ritual. Silently, I call them every cuss word I know.ĭid these guys look forward to beating us? Who invented this crap? Why do they propagate it? Do I want to call this scum "brothers"? One, a guy I admired, surprises me with his viciousness. TO SAVE A LIFE': Parents, frat leaders launch national anti-hazing effort Whips rain down.īack on level ground, I scamper forward. I stand and wade toward the voices at the shoreline. My face plunges into cold, muddy water, gagging me. I lunge forward, hoping to stop the whipping, but they keep it up until the leader says, "OK, Murtha, turn around." One lash wraps around and catches my stomach. I smell beer on his breath when someone leans close to taunt me. I scramble downward, bumping through knees and feet. (Later I learn it's a length of garden hose.) Again.
You know the rules: down the bank, into the water, then back. The moans get louder, from both Johnson and Franklin.įranklin sniffles, trying to catch his breath.
A quiet guy in my math class and chem lab who had a hard week. The pledge next to me moans, echoing Johnson.īut he can't. Johnson moans, then splashes into the water. Johnson yells, "Ouch." They tell him to shut up. TOXIC CULTURE?: Is a new 'masculinity' program at UT wrong about men?Īmid the actives shouting, I hear whacks. You crawl between them down a bank into a shallow creek, then turn around and crawl back. Johnson, you're first." The upperclassmen hoot and holler. Voices from the other two groups trail off.įinally, our leader speaks.
I'm in a movie with a bad script, scared, afraid of stumbling, worried about what lies ahead. "Now we'll see who the weak sisters are." That got some jeers. You'll walk to three performance stations. "He's OK."īirds chirp in the light October breeze. Someone shines a flashlight under my blindfold. Guided down a dirt path toward voices in the distance, I stumble on a rock, but keep my balance. That evening, they blindfold us pledges for the drive to the "sacred site." Twenty minutes later, we turn down a bumpy, windy road and stop: "Everybody out." We were in the final stage of Hell Week, the aptly named hazing period.
In 1956, along with a dozen or so classmates, I had pledged Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. Although I had nothing to do with fraternities, their reputation for alcoholic-infused antics was common knowledge.īut my interest in the Atlantic articles and the NPR interview was kindled by a previous, more personal experience during my freshman year at Marietta College, a small liberal arts school in Ohio. I started writing with Tim's death still fresh in my mind, in part because in the late 1970s, at age 40 I spent a sabbatical year at Penn State, retraining as a petroleum engineer. Incidentally, there were 40 campus hazing deaths in the past 10 years. I began this account in October 2017 after listening to Rachel Martin's National Public Radio interview of Caitlan Flanagan, then reading Flanagan's and Meghan McCarthy's hazing pieces in The Atlantic, the most recent of which chronicled the high-profile fraternity hazing death of Tim Piazza at Penn State in February that year.