Jacob can only stare helplessly as an active member of his frat hops onto his bed and starts jumping up and down. The 15 piss-drunk kids crowded into the room begin to start chanting, “Do it! Do it! Do it!” The active stops bouncing, but the chanting gets louder. Jacob glances around the room. The rest of his belongings are trashed, drenched in condiments and mud. He glances back at the active, who has removed his pants and promptly squats over the frosh’s pillow. The crowd loses it. The noise is unbearable. Jacob watches in horror as the active proceeds to release his bowels, soiling his last piece of sanity.
This specific horror story was relayed to me by a close friend at a West Coast school I won’t name, but these types of atrocities are happening everywhere, and somehow still normal in 2019.
Meanwhile, at Santa Clara University, I was happily tossing a baseball around, waiting for practice to start. Being on the baseball team already gave me a frat to belong to, brothers I can count on, and a ready-made social circle. Joining Greek life had never crossed my mind, but it fascinated me. In a way, I relate to those frat guys—after all, no pain, no gain, right? You have to suffer through the hard stuff to get to the good stuff, except we were running sprints to win games, not chugging juice from the bottom of trash cans to party with girls.
Not everyone who rushes is going to end up like Jacob. You might end up like Tony from Denison, who had to eat a stick of butter dipped in chewing tobacco. Or maybe you’ll end up like my boy Pauly from Oregon, who had to get on his hands and knees and drink from a dog dish filled with milk, sriracha, pickles, condiments, tequila, and mop water. Unless you have a fetish for margarine and chewing tobacco, why on earth would you join a fraternity?
The reason why most students want to join a fraternity is to meet a ton of people and party, not to forge important connections and business opportunities. They certainly don’t join to improve their grades. A 2018 study by two Miami University researchers revealed that “Greek affiliation reduces student grades by 0.1–0.3 standard deviations.” In fact, they found “no evidence of a Greek salary premium and ruled out even modest positive effects.” Joining a frat lowers your GPA and kills several million brain cells, all for a negligible benefit later in life and the honor of being able to pass the tortuous rituals onto the younger brothers. After a pledge class is initiated, members have all the freedom in the world to place their pain and suffering squarely on the heads of the next pledge class. Successful alumni pump money back into the house for more handles of Jose Cuervo and drugs, fueling a never-ending party cycle.
“At least one U.S. school, club, or organization hazing death has been reported every year from 1959 to 2019.”
Frats are synonymous with American college life, and there are some legitimate reasons why kids join in droves each year. The alluring offer of acceptance and social validation is powerful, even if members may have to suffer for a year to obtain it. One Santa Clara freshman, Tanner, told me, “It’s an experience that you can’t understand until you do it, and that’s the appeal of it. You only get to be in college once and meet new people, so that’s why I did it.” He added, “A lot of guys need the frat in order to feel socially validated.”
Another freshman, Jack, told me that joining a frat allowed him to “get to know a lot of people from a lot of backgrounds. It’s a chance to meet new people, be part of a community, and get you out of your comfort zone.”
If leaving your comfort zone involves drinking sriracha from a dog bowl, maybe it’s OK to stay comfortable?
There are plenty of other ways to meet new people. You don’t need to depend on a fraternity to find meaningful friendships. Rushing a fraternity has the potential to do more harm than good and offers no sizable social or career advantages. It does, however, offer plenty of disadvantages: emotional damage, loss of identity in the eagerness to conform, loss of time (as fraternal life will demand almost all of it), and loss of money to the tune of $300 per quarter for dues. Oh, and you may end up dead.
Author Hank Nuwer is an expert on the hazards of hazing who has written extensively about ways to combat hazing and binge-drinking. After decades of research, Nuwer reports an astonishing statistic: “At least one U.S. school, club, or organization hazing death has been reported every year from 1959 to 2019.”
You are known, first and foremost, as a fraternity member and only secondly as a nice guy who likes Labradors and majors in computer science.
The most recent victim of documented hazing was 18-year-old freshman Noah Domingo. The Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge at UC Irvine passed away in January 2019 due to accidental alcohol poisoning. Noah’s blood-alcohol level was four times the legal limit. Noah’s father, Dale Domingo, attributes his son’s death to a dangerous and longstanding hazing ritual, “Big Brother Night,” where Noah was compelled to guzzle a special “family drink” to become part of the fraternity.
“It is why fraternities openly refer to this type of ritual as being one of the ‘deadly nights,’” Dale said.
I can understand wanting to belong to something bigger, meet new people, and party every weekend. But I can already do all those things at Santa Clara University. I was in a number of clubs that made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself. I met tons of new people, some of whom I’ve become immensely close to and all of whom I partied with every weekend. I was able to have a fulfilling social life without having to suffer through rushing or handing over cash. Santa Clara freshman Taylor summed it up: “Frats have their pros and cons. Personally, I didn’t see any benefit frats could bring me, because the first few months of school I made such an effort to meet and become close with people, I felt the frats couldn’t bring me relationships as close to the ones I already had.”
Joining a fraternity can subject you to unkind stereotypes of the “typical frat guy.” It’s an indoctrination into a lifestyle that threatens to engulf your entire four years. You are known, first and foremost, as a fraternity member — “This is Carl—he’s a Sigma Chi” — and only secondly as a nice guy who likes Labradors and majors in computer science. People will associate you with their preconceived notions of your respective frat. Quickly, you will notice that most of, if not all of, your group of friends are involved in Greek life and that your social life revolves around the frat. You will become dependent on the connections afforded by the fraternity and count on them for years to come.
Frats are just like sports teams or any other group: you have your star players and your benchwarmers. Much like an NFL draft board, many frats have a ranking system for their pledges as well as a hierarchy within the fraternity. Your self-esteem can become bound to your social standing within your fraternity. Jacob was number 34 of 34 in his pledge class, the last rung on the ladder. “It sucks because I was constantly reminded that everyone else in the frat was better than me,” Jacob said when I asked him how he felt about his ranking. “I slowly accepted that role and thought less of myself.”
You can have just as good a time, just as full a college experience, and gain just as much business traction as a “regular college student” than as a Sigma Nu. There are just as many open parties as closed ones, just as many cute girls in dorms as there are in sororities. You don’t need to belong to a frat to have a good time in college, find a group of friends who have the same interests, or establish lifelong business connections. Most of all, you don’t need to endure hazing, and you don’t need to pay annual dues on top of your tuition for the “privilege” of being allowed to join this special society. It’s simply not worth it.
The names in this story were changed to protect the identity of the subjects.
