One of my former wives was a Pi Phi in the late 1980s she told me that she had never gotten over her hazing. I had lots of friends in the Greek system, however, and I heard their initiation stories. In the end, I decided not to, both for reasons of principle and because I worried that I wouldn't fit in with the fraternity culture. When I was a freshman at Cal, I flirted with the idea of joining a fraternity (one to which my grandfather, a great-grandfather, and numerous uncles and cousins had belonged). I have no sympathy for those who see binge drinking as an essential rite of passage I've seen the damage it can do to lives and bodies.Īs a feminist, I'm grieved to see that ritualized sexual humiliation is still such a vital mainstay of initiation practices. The Northwestern women were required to give lap dances in their underwear in front of members of the men's soccer team - while the Quinnipiac College men's baseball team is shown on the site stripping and dancing for a group of unidentified women.Īs an adult who struggled with problem drinking for years, I am of course greatly concerned by any ritual that requires that folks consume large amounts of booze in a short period of time. The essentials, then and now, are these: forcing the pledges/initiates/rookies/frosh to undress (at least to their underwear) forcing them to consume large amounts of alcohol asking them to "perform" sexualized dances in front of members of the opposite sex.
What I've seen tells me what I already knew: the kind of hazing that takes place on contemporary college campuses is more or less identical to what happened when I was an undergrad 20 years ago. Foolishness on the part of those who don’t know better doesn’t excuse leering on the part of those who do. We must remember the intent of those who uploaded the photos to sites like these pictures (often showing students in their underwear) were for the enjoyment of a select few, not a huge national audience. Though it was obviously foolish for the teams involved to photograph their hazing rituals and post the pics on the Internet, I grieve for the embarrassment the young women involved must now be feeling, and I have no interest in staring pruriently at the various details of their humiliations.
In the national media, the faces of the women involved are obscured, but on, they are in full view. All of the colleges involved have anti-hazing policies, and all (naturally) prohibit underage drinking. Then the same site followed up with pictures from a dozen other colleges and universities, almost all of which focus on hazing/initiation rituals involving various women's sports teams. The women are shown being forced to chug beer, give lap dances to members of the men's soccer team, all while various words and pictures are drawn on their bodies. The Web site published a number of photos depicting the Northwestern University women's soccer team conducting an initiation for new players. There's been a fair amount of attention over the last week to the issue of hazing and women's college sports teams.