A Hazy Category

Last November, campus police at the University of Central Florida received a phone call reporting “loud, aggressive screaming and moaning” coming from a nearby fraternity house. Upon entering, the police discovered a group of disgruntled pledges dressed in diapers, women’s panties and fairy wings. Local news channels broke the story soon after, and the chapter was immediately shut down by its national headquarters.

Now, I must admit that when I first heard the story, I burst out laughing. Call me sick or depraved, but something about the image I just described — however disturbing — struck me as more comedic than criminal.Sun Podcast: A podcast is available for this column. Click here [3] to listen to or to download it.

When I regained my composure, however, a few thoughts came to mind. The first, of course, was, “I like women’s panties. On women. Or at least on one of those strikingly realistic female manikins one comes across in the mall.” The second was, “Despite how much I like women’s panties, and regardless of my level of intoxication, I would never voluntarily put them on my own body.” (Fairy wings are not quite out of the question.)

But when we take a closer look at the details of the Florida incident, we find issues more ominous than cross-dressing frat boys. For one, several of the pledges had to be rushed to the emergency room because of severe alcohol intoxication. As Channel Six of Orlando reported, one student, sporting a pink tank top, women’s underwear and a blond wig, was found lying on the floor vomiting. A second pledge was seen crying in the corner, wearing a rainbow-colored wig and, yes, a diaper. Worse yet, the police found several “things” inside the fraternity house that suggested sexual assault may have taken place during what the older fraternity members described as “a ritual.”

As shocking as this report may seem, parents and school administrators across the country insist that similar acts of abuse occur regularly at many of America’s top universities. Hazing, they cry, is a national collegiate crisis. Accordingly, many universities across the country have begun to crack down on fraternities believed to be involved in hazing.

Cornell administrators, to their credit, now require new members of the Greek system to attend an informational meeting concerning the dangers of hazing, and have established a special website allowing pledges to report hazing violations anonymously.

The effort is well-intentioned and largely necessary. But as an active member of the Greek system and the former risk-management chair at my own fraternity, I have found it equally clear that the issue at hand is far more complicated than most realize. In fact, I have yet to meet a person who could give me a perfectly clear description of hazing.

This is not to say that the concept of hazing is entirely incoherent; almost everyone agrees that hazing involves acts which threaten one’s physical or mental well-being in exchange for admission into a private organization. Cornell sensibly expands its definition to include any treatment deemed “humiliating, intimidating or demeaning.”

Still, given the broad, subjective criteria offered by most universities, it is not difficult to understanding why hazing is, dare I say, a hazy concept. Whether or not an action is humiliating or demeaning ultimately depends on the sentiment of the participating individual. And while actions themselves can be objectively categorized, people’s responses to similar actions vary as much as with any other perceptual faculty. Yes, there are certain actions that no reasonable person would condone; but it also seems true that what intimidates one person may appear harmless to another.

So, the question persists: What exactly is this elusive culprit we call hazing? Again, tying somebody to a chandelier and shooting paintballs at him probably qualifies. At the same time, however, the majority of the hazing allegations I’ve encountered cite behavior not nearly as outrageous. Consider a recent anti-hazing survey conducted here at Cornell. The survey reports that 37 percent of Cornellians have participated in activities that the researches considered “hazing.” Only 12 percent of the students, however, believed that they had actually been “hazed.”

After taking a closer look at the survey, I found myself right where I was at the start of the article: laughing. To the apparent disapproval of the researchers, a startling 14 percent of the participants reported, quite disturbingly, having carried around “unnecessary objects or items.” Unnecessary objects or items? What the hell does that mean? If I was told to free myself from the unthinkable burden of “carrying around unnecessary objects or items,” I’d probably start by throwing half of my textbooks off the North Campus bridge, which — while I’m on the topic — has caused me far more distress than most of the other categories of “hazing” included in the research.

What, you ask, are those other categories? Well, 13 percent of the participants admitted to — brace yourself — being required to remain silent!!! Not disgusted? Consider this horrifying statistic: 10 percent reported having been yelled, cursed or sworn at!

Unfortunately, I too have been the victim of these heinous acts, most often as a child at my own dinner table, when my parents told me to shut up and stop throwing food at my sister. Come to think of it, I’m pretty thankful, or else I might be contributing to the 6 percent of participants who reportedly had food thrown at them right here at Cornell. I must apologize to the individuals who conducted this survey, since I’m sure their intentions were good, but the only helpful aspect of this anti-hazing initiative is that it’s provided me with the opportunity to be a sarcastic asshole.

I don’t intend to demean the efforts of those trying to prevent legitimate acts of abuse at high schools and college campuses across the country, and I certainly don’t deny that such acts of abuse exist. Any group caught forcing someone to drink should be banned from campus. In the instance of sexual or physical abuse, the guilty individuals should be expelled and be held legally responsible. But as far as I can tell, hazing can include any form of physical or mental challenge whatsoever. And what is pledging if not a series of challenges meant to cultivate perseverance and group unity? To achieve the type of social bonds to which I believe fraternities and sororities ought to aspire, a group must undergo a common, trying experience — the sort of experience that generates trust among its members. Without this kind of relationship, fraternities and sororities are no more than places to party. The bottom line is that in order for Cornell’s Greek system to grow and remain vibrant, we need to figure out a way to distinguish sodomy from food fights instead of lumping them all into one hazy category.