COLUMN: The reality of Hazing

From Gabriele Marcotti's "Land of the Stoopid,", Fall '94 From Gabriele Marcotti's "Land of the Stoopid,", Fall '94One week ago, 380 young and impressionable freshmen and sophomores went down to Meyerson Hall and signed away the next five or six months of their lives. Now they are faced with pledging: a period full of circle jerks, late-night food runs for brothers, drunken campus streaks and other homoerotic nonsense that will destroy their GPAs and self-esteem all in the name of that much ballyhooed brotherhood. Just ask Anthropology Professor Peggy Sanday, who knows all about such matters, since she wrote a very enlightened book called Fraternity Gang Rape, which proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that pledging is an outlet for repressed homosexual desires. In all seriousness, few aspects of campus life are as shrouded in mystery and stereotype as pledging. Those who know about it are in the system and keep it quiet. Those who don't know what they're talking about are quick to express judgment -- judgment which is often biased, usually negative and almost always uninformed. Whether you are a member of the Greek system or not, however, there are certain aspects of hazing that need to be considered when talking about the issue, but are often ignored. First and foremost, one must remember that pledging is strictly voluntary and that those individuals who choose to pledge a fraternity are over 18 years old. One would think that if you're old enough to get married, blow people up in combat or die in the electric chair, you're old enough to make up your own mind about what you're willing to do to get into a house. Of course, there is a case to be made for socially immature freshmen who do not know what they're getting themselves into, who succumb to peer pressure and participate in things they would not do otherwise. But this argument does not change the fact that we are dealing with Ivy League adults who must be held responsible for their actions. Peer pressure is a factor at any age -- whether it be stealing from WaWa at age 12 so your friends will think you're cool, or buying a Ferrari at age 52 so your neighbors will think you're rich. If at age 18 you can't deal with the social pressure of deciding whether or not you want to be hazed, then perhaps you deserve whatever's coming to you. This inherent consent involved in pledging is enhanced by hazing, a process which is aimed primarily at creating a common bond among pledges. The knock on hazing is that it is dangerous, humiliating and pointless. But building unity by subjecting a group to the same demeaning treatment is nothing new. The shared experience creates a common bond of trust and camaraderie which is difficult to break -- that's why the military has been doing it for ages. Whether it be plebes at West Point or grunts in boot camp, humiliating and torturing army recruits has always been the norm. Even the nice people in Penn's ROTC programs do it. Not only do they make cadets get up at the crack of dawn, they force them to do ten zillion push-ups. If they mess up, they get yelled at and the whole group must start over again. While this may not be dangerous, it certainly is humiliating (at least for the poor idiot who can't keep up). It's also quite pointless -- in the unlikely event that they will be called to war, the ability of Penn's ROTC cadets to do seventy-five one-handed push-ups will most probably not be critical. The other key thing to keep in mind when judging hazing is exactly who is doing it. The members of a specific fraternity have singled out a freshman or sophomore and invited him to become one of them. In most cases, this did not happen because the brothers were sadistic Jeffrey Dahmer enthusiasts who wanted to brutalize some poor freshman -- it happened because they liked and admired the pledge. With this in mind, most of the time whatever hazing is conducted occurs not with the sole objective to degrade and humiliate, but with the intent of educating the pledge. Granted, this is still pretty twisted, but it is hardly the kind of unilateral abuse Peggy Sanday and other anti-fraternity crusaders like to evoke. No effective discussion of hazing can ignore the issues raised above. Forms of hazing go back to ancient times -- one would have to be either foolish or a member of a University committee to think that it could be eradicated in one fell swoop. We must look at what hazing accomplishes and whether there are other methods of achieving the same goals. Several fraternities on campus, for example, have assembled strong pledge programs without hazing. We must evaluate whether those who agree to be hazed are doing so out of their own free will, or whether they are somehow physically or psychologically coerced. And we must decide whether hazing is something of a "victimless crime" (while there have been deaths and injuries on other campuses, pledging at Penn has been relatively incident-free) or if it is has ramifications that go beyond pledging. Sanday, for example, believes it leads to the degradation, objectification and eventual rape of women -- whether this is true or not is a highly subjective issue. Hazing exists, and there are some very good reasons as to why it exists. The issue is whether we want to change the status quo. Gabriele Marcotti is a senior Communications and International Relations major from Milano, Italy, and Editorial Page Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Land of the Stoopid appears alternate Mondays.