Huntsman Hall, the hub of Wharton and its trench coat-donning, corporate-speaking attendees, sits just blocks away from Penn’s various fraternity rows — yet the two places might as well belong to different worlds. Occasionally, however, those worlds collide in a bizarre cinematic crossover. Glance up at the right moment and you might spot a pledge streaking by, and now you’re the unwilling extra in a late-night Christian Grey subplot that Penn’s administration insists doesn’t exist.
Roughly a quarter of Penn undergraduates participate in greek life. While the specifics differ between organizations, it’s common knowledge that hazing is a routine part of pledging for many fraternities and sororities. Penn’s affiliated already show a willingness to not take themselves seriously, and people who accept degradation as a price of belonging are certainly not above replicating it outward.
Due to Penn’s history of willful ignorance of criminal activity on campus, our resident pledgemasters and “new member educators” don’t need to fear any real consequences. Of course, publicly, the University champions hazing prevention initiatives (any student organization leader who sat through hours of anti-hazing training sessions in August can attest to that), but privately, Penn’s administration is reluctant to actually drop the hammer on its biggest offenders.
In January, Penn’s Center for Community Standards and Accountability released last year’s Hazing Transparency Report, which documented only two violators: Alpha Iota Gamma, a pre-health fraternity, whose pledges were zip tied together for a routine game of champagne and shackles, and Lotus, an off-campus philanthropic society, which required new members to participate in “mandatory overnight activities.” Neither case involved registered social fraternities or sororities, and the infractions were relatively minor when compared to the more serious practices rumored to occur across campus.
As part of its sanctions, Penn’s CSA required Lotus to “pursue a process of formal recognition” through either the Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life or the Office of Student Affairs. Aside from the Lotus case, there’s no public evidence of Penn mandating unrecognized societies to seek recognition in recent years. Yet the most “high-profile” unrecognized organizations, often known for drawing wealthy or well-connected members, are frequently discussed as being among the worst offenders.
Registered fraternities and sororities on campus aren’t exempt from allegations of hazing, either, and they can’t fall back on plausible deniability when many of us have seen pledges running naked across campus. In one of the only instances where hazing details surfaced beyond hearsay, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported on the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity’s new member education — which allegedly includes binge drinking and eating — after murder charges were filed against chapter alumnus Luigi Mangione. Still, with only back-alley evidence in circulation, the University was able to sidestep the allegations, leaving the fraternity more vulnerable to sanctions for oversized parties than for the hazing itself.
On the subject of hazing, though, I realize that much of what we see day to day doesn’t look nefarious. Some of my friends in sororities have had prospective brothers publicly serenade them, a pledging requirement that’s awkward at worst. But while officially unverifiable, the frequency of more sinister accounts suggests that hazing practices at Penn remain far worse than what public disclosures lay out.
I recently spoke with Dr. Paige Wigginton, executive director of the CSA, to learn more about how the University responds to hazing. She explained that whether a hazing allegation leads to a finding depends on “the totality of information available” and “whether that information sufficiently demonstrates a policy violation.” Her description of Penn’s safeguards sound like what you’d expect at any peer institution, yet I struggle to reconcile the intended effects of these policies with what many students say they actually see on campus.
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I don’t see Penn confronting hazing head-on in the immediate future. Under its current policies, the University can redirect us to reporting channels, yet hazing remains an open secret that’s unlikely to leave a paper trail behind. However, Penn is no stranger to intervening in student social life on the basis of suspicion alone. Just this academic year, University appointees have allegedly pulled fire alarms at parties they believe exceeded a 100-person capacity limit. The irony is that when it comes to hazing, administrators hinge disciplinary action on an imaginary paper trail, even as “hell weeks” continue to mark a pledge’s initiation into brotherhood.
Going forward, the University doesn’t need to raid yet another fraternity house’s basement — but it can make that basement an inconvenient place to run a hell week. The University knows when recruitment season arrives, and if it can hire appointees to monitor party size, it can send the same people to keep watch of new member programming during those weeks.
And while those who participate in greek life may consent to its risks, the majority of us who remain unaffiliated are still subjected to its cultural norms: codes of silence, reputation hierarchies, and getting flashed at midnight by people you have to sit next to in lecture the next morning. So at the very least, keep talking about the abuses that pledgemasters want you to hide and administrators pretend not to know about. That’s the only way we can hold the University accountable.
MRITIKA SENTHIL is a College junior from Columbia, S.C. Her email is mritikas@upenn.edu.
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