The Hazing Reader

The Hazing Reader

The Hazing Reader

The Hazing Reader

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Overview

Despite numerous highly publicized incidents and widespread calls for reform, hazing continues to plague many of the nation's institutions. In this volume, noted hazing researcher Hank Nuwer presents 15 classic or never-before-published essays that can help all of us, parent and professional alike, better understand the culture of hazing. The collection, which includes contributions from such experts as Michael Gordon, Walter Kimbrough, Stephen Sweet, and Lionel Tiger, looks at hazing behavior in fraternal organizations (including sororities and traditionally black fraternities), high school, the military, and sports. There are also chapters on hazing and the law, hazing injuries, and hazing and gender. Lastly, the book lays out steps for transforming a culture of hazing and offers suggestions for further reading.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780253216540
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Publication date: 01/29/2004
Pages: 344
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Hank Nuwer is Assistant Professor of Journalism at Franklin College and Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. His books include Wrongs of Passage: Fraternities, Sororities, Hazing, and Binge Drinking (IUP, 1999) and High School Hazing: When Rites Become Wrongs. He lives in Indianapolis.

Read an Excerpt

The Hazing Reader


By Hank Nuwer

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2004 Indiana University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-34370-3



CHAPTER 1

Understanding Fraternity Hazing

Stephen Sweet


Editor's note: Stephen Sweet worked at New York State as a sociology professor in 1997, when a 17-year-old pledge for Theta Chi fraternity died during an initiation ritual involving the drinking of tremendous amounts of alcohol. Sweet, who was personally and professionally interested in the case, applies symbolic interactionist theory to hazing rituals in an attempt to make intellectual sense of a tradition that appears senseless to people outside the hazing fraternity.


Sometimes students behave in ways that, on the surface, defy logic and reason. In many circumstances these behaviors can be attributed to immaturity and require little response from college counselors and administrators. In other circumstances, such as the events surrounding fraternity hazing, these behaviors are not so easily dismissed. In this chapter, I take a bit of methodological license and offer a rich account of how symbolic interactionist theory can be used to make sense of student life, using fraternity hazing as a means of illustration. The insights of symbolic interactionism reveal that fraternity hazing is not illogical, beyond reason, or the product of immaturity. I suggest that hazing is the result of group-interaction processes that are linked with students' need for belonging, their isolation from other social relations on campus, and subcultural definitions that legitimate hazing events as a necessary component of fraternity initiation rites.

This chapter is designed to operate on two levels. One level is specifically directed to fraternity and sorority advisors or administrators dealing with fraternity hazing problems. Although a complete set of prescriptions or policies to prevent fraternity hazing is beyond the scope of this chapter, I offer a theoretical explanation of the elements of the fraternity subculture that perpetuate hazing. My hope is that once this is understood, this information can be used to creatively work with students to minimize the problems that are endemic to some of these organizations. Although much of the following is critical of fraternities, please understand that my intent is not to muckrake or cast aspersions on these organizations. Fraternities and sororities do many positive things on and off college campuses. My concern is simply to offer information and a perspective that can help advisors ameliorate one problematic aspect of fraternity life.

On another level, this chapter is about symbolic interactionism, a perspective commonly used by sociologists who specialize in the study of face-to-face social encounters. Although some terms have migrated to mainstream discourse, relatively few individuals outside the fields of social psychology and sociology recognize the wide-ranging implications of this perspective. Therefore, as I explain the origins of fraternity hazing, I focus discussion on symbolic interactionist concepts, defining key terms and identifying the work of theorists central to the development of this perspective. Once they are conversant in the rudiments of symbolic interactionism, I hope that counselors and administrators find it a useful means of comprehending and addressing other aspects of student social behavior on campus.


Method

Studying fraternity hazing is methodologically problematic for a number of reasons. Greek organizations are secretive by nature. Members are reluctant to reveal information regarding initiation rites, according to Thomas Leemons (1972) firsthand observations of a fraternity house. As a consequence, survey methods are not especially useful, and the responses those methods use are likely to be of questionable reliability. To seek formal interviews with participants involved in a fatal hazing is also ethically problematic, given the resulting trauma of these events and the ways in which responses could affect the subjects' well-being in lawsuits that commonly follow. Participant-observer methods are also not feasible, due to the ethical and time constraints that prevent researchers from situating themselves in a participant-observer role to gather information on the circumstances leading up to a hazing event. Content analysis of existing journalistic sources are also of limited use because these tend to reconstruct hazing events to fit familiar narratives. Although police reports can offer descriptions of hazing events, they offer little in the way of a cultural understanding of the context in which this behavior occurs. Another methodological concern is that these sources tend to focus solely on the immediate circumstances of the incident and therefore lack important information on events that precede the hazing incident by days or weeks.

Lacking the opportunity to study fraternity hazing with traditional methodology, I have been forced to adopt a piecemeal approach and have gathered data from a variety of sources to identify the contextual features that surround these events. The sources of my data (loosely defined) are informal unstructured interviews with approximately twenty current and former members of Greek organizations. Some of these individuals were students indirectly connected with Theta Chi, a fraternity that experienced a hazing death in February 1997, while others were members of other fraternities and sororities inside and outside the community of Potsdam, New York. This group constitutes a sample of males who willingly discussed their experiences in Greek organizations. Other information comes from my participation on the SUNY Potsdam Greek Life Task Force, a committee consisting of faculty, administrators, fraternity and sorority members, and representatives from national fraternity and sorority organizations. The remainder of my information comes from scholarly research on fraternity culture, which I reframe within the lens of the symbolic interactionist perspective. The obvious limitations to this "methodology" are that I do not have a representative sample of fraternities or fraternity members. This being said, I am confident that sufficient data were collected to provide robust analysis.


Results

Frequency and Types of Hazing Events

On February 10, 1997, 17-year-old Clarkson University freshman Binaya ("Bini") Oja, along with twenty other students, began pledging Theta Chi fraternity in Potsdam, New York. As part of their initiation, the pledges gathered in a semicircle around a bucket and were instructed by fraternity members to take turns drinking hard liquor. If any pledges did not drink the liquor fast enough so that bubbles were seen rising in the bottles, they were instructed to guzzle a full glass of beer. The point of the game was simple: each pledge was expected to drink until he vomited. Bini drank a lethal amount of alcohol and was carried upstairs. The next morning he was discovered with his feet up on a couch and his face on the floor next to a garbage can. An autopsy determined that he died by inhaling his own vomit.

Students connected indirectly with the Theta Chi fraternity informed me that the fraternity brothers actually tried to stop Bini from drinking when they saw him "overdoing it." Newspaper accounts, on the other hand, suggest that he was pressured very strongly to drink heavily. One of Binis fellow pledges reported in a police statement "[Bini] seemed to be drinking more than the others, and I think he wanted to impress others that he could drink a lot." Taking all of the information available, it seems clear that Bini deliberately and willingly engaged in actions that he thought would draw social approval from the people whose opinions he valued highly.

Binis experiences conform to other hazing deaths documented in the most detailed descriptive study of fraternity hazing to date, Broken Pledges (1990). Flank Nuwer reveals hundreds of cases of pledges placed in, and willingly submitting to, psychologically and physically punishing conditions. A few case examples taken from his book reveal the creativity of fraternities and the compliance of pledges in this regard:

1974: Monmouth College, West Long Branch, New Jersey; Zeta Beta Tau

Members ordered five pledges to dig six-foot "graves" on a sandy beach on the Atlantic Ocean. The five then lay down in the graves while members threw handfuls of sand atop them. The grave of William E. Flowers Jr. collapsed, and he began inhaling sand. He died of asphyxiation. A grand jury called the death "accidental," clearing seven Zeta Beta Tau members who had been arrested on charges of manslaughter.

1980: Stetson University, Deland, Florida; Pi Kappa Phi

Several members of the Chi Chapter were expelled from the fraternity for shocking pledges with an electrical device. Seven years later the entire chapter was suspended for one year in a similar incident, possibly involving the same electrical device.

1986: Manhattan College, Bronx, New York; Beta Sigma

On one of the coldest nights of the winter, pledge Michael Flynn, 19, was abandoned naked on an isolated country road in Putnam County, New York. During the drive by automobile to the drop-off point, fraternity brothers poured beer on his feet, ignoring two pleas from Flynn that his feet were freezing. The wind-chill factor outside the car was 35 degrees below zero. Flynn's feet were seriously frostbitten. He was hospitalized for two weeks and suffered permanent health problems. A judge acquitted the four defendants, saying he could not determine that the brothers had knowingly subjected Flynn to frostbite.


In the context of discussions with current and former members of Greek organizations, I learned of toes being broken by hammers in games of "Fear," beatings with paddles, sleep deprivation, submersions in vats of filth, and drinking "games."

On the surface, these acts appear at worst sadistic and at best stupid. These terms, however, are flawed because they focus the sources of these problems within individuals rather than the interactional processes that happen between people. Sadism, for example, implies the existence of a psychological or moral abnormality in the character of the fraternity brothers or pledges. Although published accounts indicate that some hazed pledges had difficulty adjusting to college life, most appear to be normal, healthy young men, according to Nuwer s conclusion. Sadism also suggests that fraternity brothers harbor hostility toward the pledges. In fact, the opposite is true; fraternity brothers tend to care very deeply for their pledges and feel great regret when a pledge is actually seriously injured, as is the case with members of Theta Chi. The term "stupidity" implies that fraternity members and pledges are of below-average intelligence. Data do not seem to support the contention that hazing is a product of low intelligence or ignorance. As indication of this, the Greek Life Task Force at SUNY Potsdam found no difference between the grade point averages of Greeks (pledges and members) and their non-Greek counterparts. The SUNY Potsdam task force also identified that Greek members have a high level of awareness of what constitutes hazing and the legal consequences of infractions against hazing policy. With these insights in mind, apparently the source of hazing problems is not the result of personality or the intellectual shortcomings of pledges or fraternity members.

Despite difficulties in estimating how many nonfatal hazing incidents occur each year and go unreported, college administrators, counselors, and professors are all too aware of the problem of fraternity hazing. A literature review published in Broken Pledges found over 400 documented hazing incidents resulting in serious injury and death from 1900 to 1990; additional incidents are described in Nuwer's Wrongs of Passage (1999). A survey of 283 fraternity advisors revealed that over half of these advisors believed that hazing existed in some of their groups (Shaw and Morgan 1990). Another barrier to estimating the frequency of hazing is that students often do not recognize when they are being hazed or abused (Moffatt 1989). It is ironic that colleges and universities add to the problem of estimating hazing by deliberately avoiding inquiry into hazing incidents for fear of damaging institutional reputations or incurring financial liability to victims (Curry 1989; Nuwer 1990).

The problem of fraternity hazing does not seem to be abating. So little success has been achieved that the Chronicle of Higher Education declared in 1997 that most efforts to address fraternity hazing have failed.

The conclusion I have reached, supported by an extensive literature review on fraternity and sorority culture, is that hazings are quite frequent and are generally not characterized by sadism, stupidity, or even coercion. A full understanding of why pledges willingly participate in their own degradation involves delving into the sources of pledges' identities and their relationships with fraternity brothers. Symbolic interactionism offers a useful path to insights in these processes.


Symbolic Interactionist Theory

Probably more than any other individual, Herbert Blumer is responsible for introducing the symbolic interactionist perspective to mainstream sociology in a series of articles, which were later published in his book Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969). Although not the first symbolic interactionist, Blumer was the first sociologist to use the term symbolic interactionism as a way of linking a number of sociological studies into a theoretical camp. Symbolic interactionists are a heterogeneous group, and their perspective has been used to address a variety of social encounters. Although the research interests of these scholars vary, Blumer effectively identified a set of premises that link symbolic interactionists with one another. These premises include:

1. Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings these things have for them.

2. The meaning of things arises out of the social interaction people have with each other.

3. People engage in interpretation in dealing with the things they encounter.


Symbolic interactionists stress that selves are socially constructed and that people play an active role in shaping the direction of their own and each others' behaviors through the use of symbols. The symbolic interactionist perspective challenges many of the beliefs about the self, particularly the notion that people are made up of enduring personality traits. People commonly believe that they are a particular "type" of person, such as an introvert or extrovert. Symbolic interactionists assert that the self is highly malleable and is constantly being shaped and reshaped. To be more accurate, according to the symbolic interactionist perspective, the self is better characterized as a process than an object. Because relatively few outside of sociology are conversant in symbolic interactionism, I focus on a few concepts and metaphors central to symbolic interactionist theory, drawing from classic sociological research and theory, and apply these to fraternity initiation rites.


The Power of Material Selves and Social Selves

One of the most important features of symbolic interactionist theory is the appreciation that selves are constructed. William James (1890/1983) forcefully argued that the self is made up as much of social and material components as it is of inner drives and traits. The material self is constituted by tangible objects that represent who we are as individuals. These objects include things such as the type of car a person drives and a persons clothes, hairstyle, and bank account. These things demonstrate to us and others who we are as individuals and constitute our "identity kits," wrote Erving Goffman (1961).

Greek organizations manipulate the material selves of their members by constructing new identity kits for their recruits. During pledging, students are invariably given some of the following items: pledge pins, T-shirts, sweatshirts, rings, books, and paddles bearing the fraternity's insignia. Pledges and initiates also commonly decorate their rooms extensively with Greek paraphernalia. When pledges surround themselves with these items, it enhances the degree to which the fraternity becomes a part of their identity. A 1997 study of sororities by Arthur revealed that pledges often build their entire wardrobe around the colors and insignias of their organization. The study indicated that the clothing was an essential means by which the initiates and new members bolstered their identity to themselves and others in the sorority.

The social self, according to James, is the set of relations we have with other people, including our friends, relatives, and business associates. James points out that a great deal of any individuals identity is comprised of his or her social relationships. If a member's group experiences success, for example, the egos of the individual members inflate. Being a professor at Harvard, a computer engineer at NASA, or a brother in Phi Chi Epsilon may increase an individuals pride simply through association with a prestigious organization. Conversely, if an individual is socially affiliated with stigmatized groups, they often come to feel mortified and contaminated, observed Goffman. Fraternities deliberately and systematically limit the social relations of their pledges, forcing them to form tight groups with intimate contact. In this way, sociologists accurately describe them as "greedy organizations," noted Arthur. Greedy organizations are groups that set up strong boundaries between members and nonmembers and assert exclusivity. Fraternity initiation rites are designed to terminate or curtail many of the associations that pledges previously held outside of that organization. As the pledge becomes more isolated from other social groups, the identity of the individual becomes ever more closely tied with the Greek organization (Leemon 1972; Arthur 1997). As a consequence, "exit costs" increase because pledges literally lose a major part of themselves by withdrawing through depledging.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Hazing Reader by Hank Nuwer. Copyright © 2004 Indiana University Press. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Exterminating the Frat Rats by Hank Nuwer
A Chronology of Hazing Events
1. Understanding Fraternity Hazing by Stephen Sweet
2. Males Courting Males by Lionel Tiger
3. Groupthink by Irving L. Janis
4. Cult-Like Hazing by Hank Nuwer
5. Hazing and Related Drinking in an Addictive Fraternity Chapter by James C. Arnold
6. Pledging and Hazing in African-American Fraternities and Sororities by D. Jason DeSousa, Michael V. W. Gordon, and Walter M. Kimbrough
7. Examining Violence in Black Fraternity Pledging by Ricky L. Jones
8. Troubled Times in a Fraternity System by Jonathan R. Farr
9. A Sorority Executive's Perspective on Hazing: A Conversation with Holly Hart McKiernan
10. Military Hazing by Hank Nuwer
11. Rites of Passage and Group Bonding in the Canadian Airborne by Donna Winslow
12. Traumatic Injuries Caused by Hazing by Michelle A. Finkel, M.D.
13. A Carolina Soccer Initiation by Gregory Danielson
14. Hazing and Sports and the Law by R. Brian Crow and Scott R. Rosner
15. Institutional Liability and Hazing—Mainly Athletics-Related by R. Brian Crow and Scott R. Rosner
16. Transforming a Hazing Culture by Elizabeth J. Allan and Susan V. Iverson
17. Hazing and Gender by Elizabeth J. Allan
Appendix: Hazing Resource Information
Bibliography
Contributors
Index

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