Tag Archives: fraternity

Fraternity House Shark Burial

Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: LMU, Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 9, 2013
Primary Language: English

Interview Extract:

Informant: “We have this story in our frat, about the shark. So apparently, one of the classes back in the 70s had a full-grown shark in their house. Like they kept it in a tank or something, I don’t know. But it was huge. And when it died, they had to carry it down to the beach, down to here in Dockweiler, and they buried, a full-grown shark, right under those crossing palm trees over there. They had to do it at like, the middle of the night obviously, but can you imagine, just a bunch of guys somehow carrying a giant shark and burying it, and they buried it properly, like six feet deep and everything,”

Me: “Do you really believe that?”

Informant: “I don’t see why it can’t happen. Our frat was really crazy back in the day, you know. They did stuff like this all the time. Now our class just has to figure out how to have a shark.”

Me: “So this wasn’t some hazing activity, it was just what the frat guys did?”

Informant: “Yeah pretty much. And the actives in the house all told us about it, and this goes back for a while, but they always talk about it. It’s well-known history of our frat.”

Me: “Do the other houses know too?”

Informant: “No, I’d doubt that. It’s probably actually illegal, you know, what they did and all, so um, it’s just what we all know, in our frat. It’s our own history.”

Analysis:

My informant realized the implausibility of his story as he was telling it to me, but he wouldn’t admit that it was untrue. He was still firm in his belief that it actually happened. As a new pledge member to his  fraternity at Loyola Marymount University, he proved to be very loyal to it, despite having just told me horrendous acts they had to do because of hazing. It sounds to me like a story the older members of the frat would tell the younger ones, in order to impress them, intimidate them, and ultimately initiate them into the house. Perhaps because the new members desperately want to believe they are joining an exciting and extraordinary organization, and that their hazing high-jinks will ultimately be worth it, the students willingly believe any such incredible story about their house. Additionally, maybe because I am not in the same situation as the members, I don’t often go to the beach where the shark is buried and I don’t personally know the actives who claim this is true, I don’t have the same contextual belief in the legend.

I was quite taken aback by how long this legend has survived. It’s obviously important they keep it a secret if it really did happen, and yet, through almost forty years of passing it on, it’s been contained to only this specific fraternity. They take pride in the fact that their brothers owned an adult shark of some kind and actually buried it on the beach. Incidentally, Dockweiler happens to host many of the frat’s meetings and activities, so the members have the opportunity to acknowledge the shark nearly every week, thus keeping the story in their memories. I wonder if there will come a time when the members try once again to house and potentially bury a full-grown shark, thus making a tradition of this legend.

Fraternity Bid

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 2/24/13
Primary Language: English

The informant told me a story very recently after a fraternity on campus offered him a bid to join their organization.

He was told to get into the car with two of the brothers and blindfolded. They dropped him along side of sidewalk. One of the brothers got out of the car with him and removed the blindfold. He raises both hands towards the informant, one with a red M&M and the other with a blue M&M. The brother said to him, “you can take the red pill and join us, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Or you can take the blue pill and go on with life without us.” The informant took the red M&M, and the brother nodded solemnly. Then he said, “This never happened,” and drove off, leaving my informant on the ground next to the sidewalk.

Analysis: This is clearly a reference to a popular movie called The Matrix (1999). Whether all fraternities have bid rituals referencing pop culture or if this was a one-off would take more research and collection. The reference may make the ritual more approachable to the new potential initiate, or give the fraternity a sense of coolness and make them seem hip and popular. The blindfold symbolizes the fact that the new member was blind to the world before he found the brotherhood.

Most fraternities are founded on history and tradition, so it is interesting to find this ritual that goes slightly against the grain, as it is a very current reference.

Annotation: “The Matrix”. Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved June 24, 2009.

Fraternity Initiation – Pledge Plays

Nationality: American
Age: 83
Occupation: Businessman - retired
Residence: Glencoe, Illinois
Performance Date: 4/10/2013
Primary Language: English

My informant attended the University of Chicago during the 1940’s and early 1950’s, and was a member of the Zeta Beta Tau, or ZBT, fraternity.  While fraternity life was different than it was at other universities and certainly is different now, they had one initiation ritual in particular that my informant remembers.  After they had become fully admitted into the fraternity, the pledges had to put on a play where they got to parody the older members of the fraternity.  Each older member had to be represented at least once during this play.  Also instead of hazing rituals, the pledges had to do tasks around the house like cleaning and other chores.

Personally, I find it amazing that the USC Trojan Marching Band, or at least the alto saxophone section of the TMB, has this very same ritual.  At the end of the Weekender trip, which is the away game against either Cal or Standford depending on the year, the freshman are tasked with putting on sketches about the older members of the band.  Every older member must be represented at some point, which often means that some freshman must pull double duty and do two skits.  The fact that a tradition so similar is still being practiced 60 years later tells me that this tradition is at least somewhat universal.

Hazing- skinny dipping naked in fountain

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Detroit, MI
Performance Date: 4/3/12
Primary Language: English

My informant was visiting USC and on the second night of her stay, she went out to find a late night snack. While wandering around campus, she saw a few naked guys, presumably students, jumping around in one of the fountains. They then ran off. She had heard stories of such an act being part of hazing and so attributed the sighting to that.

Seeing that was interesting, she said, because she doesn’t personally see the value in something like hazing but knows it’s important to some fraternities and to some people. To her, though, it was just more evidence of the shallowness and lack of worth of most frats.

Hazing rituals have been going on in colleges for decades, and though administrations try to crack down, it always seems to remain. The rituals are usually embarrassing and uncomfortable, as well as sometimes dangerous. I believe their intention is to humble those who want to join the frat so they know their place. And because of their existence, actually being in a frat seems more significant since hazing makes it difficult to join. It makes it seem more exclusive and special. Hazing is also supposed to bond those attempting to join together via their humiliating experience. Personally, though, I’m not sure I see much point to the rituals. Many frat students seem to want to continue the trend only because they had to go through it; performing the ritual on someone else is like a taking back of power, a revenge for what was done to them, but exacted upon someone else. The rituals also often reflect this human desire to have power over others and even to inflict pain upon them, even if it something we generally repress.

The Hurricane

Nationality: German
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/21/12
Primary Language: English

“The Hurricane”

The ‘hurricane’, according to my informant who is a member of a USC fraternity on the row, is his fraternity’s slang for somebody who is ‘outrageously drunk’ or ‘blacked out’. My informant described the term as starting back when he was a freshman, three years ago, from an older member of the same fraternity. This older member, whom my informant witnessed firsthand, was notorious for drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and being ‘outrageously incoherent’. Members in the fraternity began to refer to him as “the hurricane”, or “the ‘cane” for short. They would describe the level of his drunkenness by equating it to categories for hurricanes. “If he was only a little bit drunk, we’d say he was a category one or two. But if he was out getting wasted, he’d be more like a category six or seven”.

And, according to my informant, the term stuck. Now, anybody that comes back from a night of drinking can be referred to as “a hurricane” or people will say that he “got hurricaned out”. My informant says that it now is commonplace among the fraternity, even with members that have never even met the ‘real hurricane’ because he was much older. “It’s just what we do”, he says “it’s just common slang in our frat now”.

My informant assures me that other fraternities are picking up on the same lingo, and the members of other USC fraternities, and even sororities, have picked up this term. My informant assures me that the term is unique to his fraternity, and that they were the ones who first used the term to describe this sort of situation and behavior. He says that he sees it as an engrained part of his fraternity’s culture these days, and that he assumes it will carry on for years to come.

I believe that this is a prime example of how folklore is started in a small community and group of people, and is then spread to a wide and wider audience. I am certain that other fraternities will pick up on this terminology and begin to utilize it like it is their own in future years.