frat boys blindfolded

An ex-pledge on campus sexual assault and fraternity cultures of coercion

Ed. note: This post was originally published on the Community site.

In the wake of the much-disputed, now-retracted Rolling Stone story about an alleged gang rape by fraternity members at the University of Virginia, the national discussion of collegiate sexual violence appears mired in bitter partisanship and cynicism. 

Beyond scorning the magazine and the alleged victim, some critics assert that extrapolated statistics exaggerate the prevalence of campus assaults. Others deny that campus communities could develop characteristics of rape culture — which is perhaps best described as a social pathology in which a group increasingly (and often subconsciously) comes to accept sexual violence from observing and repeating behaviors like objectifying women, trivializing sexual coercion, and blaming victims. Tellingly, no one has challenged the Rolling Stone article’s recitation of the depraved yet celebrated “Rugby Road” school drinking song, nor the confirmed gang rape in the same house years before, nor all the confirmed assaults by individual UVA. students that never once in the school’s history resulted in expulsion.

And yet, given our society’s intense individualism, many may struggle to imagine a person’s moral compass becoming skewed by a social pathology. Terrorist massacres continually demonstrate the savage power of religious fanaticism, another kind of social pathology, but the news media rarely examine how insular groups cultivate and reinforce a warped collective mindset. Without fully comprehending this perverting potential, we may assume an innate flaw or evil seed in each offender, as Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo implied about alleged assailants at UVA.: “Yes, bad apples need to be identified and must go, but…We must not and dare not throw any organization under the bus.”

But what are the odds that several “bad apples” coincidentally joined the same fraternity? Or the chances that this explains other recent alleged sexual assaults by multiple fraternity members at Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Kansas? Are fraternities magnets for budding sex offenders? Not according to a 2007 study, which found that fraternity members became more sexually coercive than their non-member peers after joining fraternities (Foubert et al., 2007). That was also the second study to find fraternity members three times more likely to commit sexual assault than non-members (Loh et al., 2005), among a total of six studies that each found a predictive correlation between fraternity membership and sexual coercion (Lackie and de Man, 1997; Tyler et al.,1998; Brown et al., 2002; Franklin et al., 2012).

Despite all this empirical evidence, and scandals so appalling that even “bro” actor/comedian Will Ferrell supports their abolishment, fraternities remain safely entrenched. Public universities are not only constrained by students’ freedom to associate, but often dependent upon both the student housing and alumni generosity that these organizations provide. However, such practical dilemmas hardly absolve college administrators from their obligation to provide a safe and equitable learning environment. To truly attempt to facilitate that safety, schools must address repeated abuses by reviewing and revising their fraternities’ housing and social practices.

Sadly, I can attest to common practices enabling abuse, because in my miserable first semester of college at the University of Kansas, I was a fraternity pledge.

Within a month of moving in, my pledge brothers and I were reduced to silent house servants, to be seen and not heard, while scrambling to clean older members’ rooms between classes. Most weeknights, we toiled long past midnight, especially when constructing elaborate party staging that served primarily to enchant members’ dates and boost their chances of drunken hook-ups. At least one night a week, we stood shoulder-to-shoulder in our boxers so that sophomores could quiz, interrogate, and berate us. To relieve sleep deprivation, we napped in remote library stacks.

We were, of course, forbidden to breathe a word of this to anyone outside the house — including our parents. However, as some of my pledge brothers commiserated with pledges of other fraternities, we learned that their programs were surprisingly similar, if not worse, with some houses still paddling or commanding scores of pushups. I suspect that such “traditions” persist. Representatives from each house who comprised KU’s Inter-Fraternity Council were caught paddling each other four years ago, and despite receiving two years’ probation, voted to retain the same president. Oaths of secrecy have proven quite effective; KU’s only other publicized hazing investigations in recent years were prompted by pledges suffering head injuries during a party or initiation ritual.

I dredge up these experiences and events to convey that hazing cultivates an arrogant entitlement to physically coerce others, which could help explain how fraternity members multiply their odds of using coercive means to obtain sex. Criminologists Walter Dekeseredy and Martin Schwartz have spent decades developing the sociological concept of “male peer support,” which they find exemplified in fraternity cultures. They conclude that this testosterone-loaded camaraderie can reinforce male-dominant beliefs and behaviors as well as promote the objectification of women (DeKeseredy and Schwartz, 2013).

In my experience, members used male peer support to condone physical coercion and debasement, such as our daily servitude and weekly submission to verbal abuse. They projected smug entitlement to such dominance, offering rationalizations that every pledge class must prove itself, and that this hardship would forge lifelong bonds between us. Captive and overwhelmed, we accepted their reasoning and resigned ourselves to humiliating drudgery. Before long, a dynamic akin to Stockholm syndrome inverted some pledges’ resentments, and they voiced eagerness to abuse next year’s pledges.

Such toxic male peer support is often sustained by group secrecy (Dekesredy and Schwartz, 2013). Cooperative silence about prohibited or abusive practices not only shields all actions and participants, it can nurture a morally relativistic groupthink through which other misconduct is similarly rationalized and concealed. Indeed, how else did the pledges at KU most implicated in alleged sexual offenses find it conscionable to disregard investigators’ requests for interviews?

Then there’s the alcohol abuse. A 2009 study identified binge drinking in 86 percent of fraternity house residents compared to 45 percent of non-members (Wechsler et al., 2009). The same year, KU freshman and fraternity pledge Jason Wren died in his bed from alcohol poisoning after participating in a house drinking game ritual. All four sexual offense cases publicized last fall at KU involved underage drinking. Three involved a fraternity setting either before or during the alleged sexual offense.

After all this suffering, I’m compelled to ask: How much more tragedy must be endured and research conducted before we admit that the problem is not just bad apples, but blighted orchards? And after decades of educational programs have failed to reduce binge drinking, when will schools concede that mandatory training sessions and online quizzes may not be enough?

Again, any college administration that earnestly aspires to eradicate cultures of coercion and silence must look critically at its fraternity practices and initiate changes that will truly facilitate its students’ well-being and success. Several schools have already structurally altered their fraternity systems; Yale and Princeton recently delayed fraternity recruitment and residency, at Yale to spring semester and at Princeton to sophomore year. Public universities such as Ohio State and SUNY schools defer rush and residency to the spring and require a minimum GPA. Indeed, research indicates that second semester pledges perform better academically than first semester pledges (DeBard et al., 2010).

In KU’s case, deferring residency to sophomore year would not only align its fraternities with its sororities, it would stop houses that haze from exploiting the social and psychological vulnerability of incoming freshmen. Fraternities currently provide most pledges’ first living environments and friendships since leaving home. I can attest that this housing practice makes pledges less likely to leave due to hazing or to ever report it. I barely mustered the will to leave after months of uncertainty about where to move and guilt over abandoning my pledge class. Such feelings compel almost all pledges to stay, endure, and then inflict the same torment the next year, resolving to never report it.

If freshmen could experience at least one other environment before immersion in fraternity cultures, they could make informed comparisons and choices of social climates. They could gain unaffiliated friends, perspectives, and confidence in their options if they later encountered abuse as pledges. They would be less vulnerable to the toxic groupthink that suppresses individual consciences and enables secrecy about serious misconduct.

Additionally, the Department of Justice’s 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study found that assaults most often occurred on weekend nights between midnight and 6 a.m., especially from September through November. Without pledges’ residency, universities could officially discourage freshmen of both sexes from attending fall fraternity events, potentially reducing both underage drinking and the risk of sexual assaults.

As shrewd businesses with powerful advocates, fraternities can be expected to resist any change that reduces their revenue, even though they could compensate for deferred residency by persuading more seniors to live in-house. If such opposition ultimately prevails, universities could at least require houses to adopt Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s 2014 nation-wide ban on “pledging” or any lowered status for new initiates. This historic change followed nine SAE pledge deaths since 2006 (including Jason Wren’s), for which Bloomberg News declared it “America’s Deadliest Frat.” The recent racist chant by SAE’s at Oklahoma University was apparently learned and adopted four years ago by the last classes to receive traditional pledge treatment.

While not reducing freshmen presence at house parties, banning pledge programs would serve to squelch hazing and coercive mentalities. Protesting fraternities will cite their programs’ numerous non-hazing activities, but they cannot deny the unmitigated potential for coercive behavior, which has already enabled far too many injuries, assaults, and deaths. Preserving a few supposedly safe pledge programs and indignant alumni’s donations hardly seems worth postponing such an obvious improvement to student safety and campus culture.

I’ll never forget the night an older alumnus drove hours to knock on our door, introduce himself as an administrator, and demand a private audience with our pledge class. He then dourly described receiving complaints of pledges becoming mute servants and asked if any of us could confirm them. When all remained silent, he left the room only to re-enter minutes later, arm around an upperclassman and chuckling that we’d “passed the test.”

Such men would undoubtedly oppose even minor changes to their beloved fraternities. But so long as these houses continue to operate just as they have for decades, this dreadfully familiar pattern — shocking abuse, tragic suffering, disgrace and silence — seems unlikely to abate any time soon.

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