Tag Archives: hazing

“tasting the brotherhood”

Context:TB, a member of a fraternity at USC provided me with this legend that has circulated amongst the men in his frat. We were having a discussion about traditions and rituals that are unique to his fraternity and that is how I obtained this legend. He told me that he had heard it from an active member who was a year older than him when he was pledging over a year ago and that the story still gets passed down to new pledges every semester.

Text:“In my frat we have educators, who are older active members in the house who keep the pledges, the new class of boys being initiated at the end of the semester, in order. There’s this rumor that a few years ago a pledge was promised an expedited initiation if he drank a concoction of urine that had been collected from a bunch of active brothers in the house. This act was referred to as “tasting the brotherhood” but the strange thing about it is nobody knows if it’s true because the person made to do it would be too embarrassed to admit their actions. The rumor probably was first made to freak out the pledges, but with years of the story being passed down its uncertain if it ever happened or still happens at all”

Analysis: One of the most stand out features of this legend is the ambiguity surrounding the truth of the rumor. The idea that someone may be too embarrassed to confirm or deny their participation ensures the story’s continued circulation without any clear verification. I believe this uncertainty is central to the fraternity and them being able to use this story as a scare tactic for the pledges to create a greater sense of unity upon initiation.

Club Initiation Ritual

Main Piece

“[A club I joined this semester] has certain traditions and rituals that we have to undergo before we are onboarded slash, um, official members of the club – not on paper, but in the eyes of the members already. So…what they did is each new member or “newb” was blindfolded and led into a room where we were distracted and sc–I wouldn’t say they ‘scared’ us but they would like yell “BOO!” in our ears and scare us while we were blindfolded, but it never got too out of hand, it was never too scary, they were never too mean – just light, playful, pranks on us. And they would read–they read the constitution of their organization to us at hyper-speed while we were getting lightly hazed slash pranked and blindfolded by other members, and when they were done, we were taken back to our meeting room and we were each assigned — or they told us, in a big form of display, who our “Big” of the club was. We have “Bigs” and “Littles” — basically a new member is mentored by a past member, a member that has been reoccurring on the board — and they kind of take them under their wing to lead them throughout the club and the motions of the club, and we can come to our Bigs for advice, etc. And each of our Bigs ripped off our blindfolds and they would be standing right in front of us with their arms outstretched, ready to give us a hug. And we each had to go to different corners of the room with our Bigs and we were given 2-3 other members of the club as “delegates”, and we were all given champagne bottles. And each Little-Big pairs, along with their committee/chosen few delegates, had to chug the champagne bottle, and the first to finish got to pick karaoke for every other group.

I know that their tradition tends to wave and flow based on the constraints or number of new members that they get, but they always have traditions of light hazing, a grand Big-Little reveal, a reading of the constitution, and something where there’s a drinking competition.”

Interpretation

Informant’s Interpretation: Informant added context that this ritual happens at the beginning of the semester, and found it to be a fun tradition that unified the group. They also noted that it was hyped up to be a much more jokingly-frightening affair than it was in practice, and that partaking in it made them excited to be a part of a fun group. It also “broken down any of [their] nerves about being ‘new’ in the space.”

Personal Interpretation: While I believe hazing rituals sometimes take harmful forms on university campus, this one seems much more lighthearted and welcoming–particularly as recounted by informant, and with the knowledge that informant and peers were given context beforehand. Most importantly, the fact that it was something they were willing to share openly means no implication of absolute secrecy was present, which can often be a manipulative tactic for more intense hazing rituals. On a more analytical level, this reads as an initiation ritual–a way for new members to symbolically cross a boundary into being part of a group–and officially establish their ties to it. It also serves a purpose as a means of community bonding, and creates an experience only people part of the group have experience.

Background

Informant is a 21 year old college student who was raised in North Carolina and attends school at USC. They are mixed race (Pacific Islander and white), and identify as queer and fem-presenting.

Oscar The Grouch

Context: Informant is a USC student, but not part of a USC fraternity, and has not tried to pledge to one in the past. Their information on the subject is entirely based on what they have heard from their USC peers, who are not part of fraternities either. Oscar the Grouch is a prominent Sesame Street character, known for his irritable personality and the fact that he enjoys living in his trashcan home.

Informant: “I heard from my friend that in USC fraternities, for hazing, they choose the ugliest guy trying to pledge, and they call him ‘Oscar the Grouch’. They put him in a trashcan and then they have the other pledges get really drunk and then throw up on him.”

Background Info: Although the hazing rituals are a well known aspect of joining fraternities/sororities here at USC, the exact details are supposed to be kept secret. Therefore, in this scenario, the folklore is not necessarily the hazing ritual, but the conjecture and rumors which the community makes surrounding the hazing ritual. Whether or not ‘Oscar the Grouch’ is a real hazing ritual or not, the students of USC have enjoyed telling these outlandish stories to one another. When informant was describing the hazing, surrounding people stated they had heard of the ritual as well. Although no one could confirm, it was obvious it was a well-known story among the USC students.

Thoughts: It is definitely interesting to see how folklore can be mysterious, and therefore conjecture on the subject will produce more folklore. The hazing ritual is meant to define who is in the fraternity, and who is not. It’s interesting that the people not in the frat will lack that folklore, and will make their own trying to fill the void. This, i think, leads to a lot of over-exaggerations in the story, and therefore the stories become pretty outrageous. Still very entertaining though.

Sorority Hazing Ritual

TG is a 25 year old graduate student and cultural forensic anthropologist. She grew up in Maryland and currently resides in Tennessee. She was an active member at her university. She was in a sorority herself.

Context: This performance was done during the Spring semester at the university between X sorority and the girl trying to rush.

Transcript (discussed over the phone):

TG: Okay, I have to make this kind of vague because I can get into trouble if I give away the name of the university. There was a student trying to rush X sorority and there was an intense hazing process. Every girl got a difference hazing task when rushing but one girl specifically was not allowed to speak for a week. She had people secretly monitoring her to make sure she does not speak. That is not the worst part though; when she was spoken to, she was only allowed to respond by meowing like a cat. So for example, if someone asked “How are you?” she had to meow back to them. It was crazy.

Collector: Why meowing like a cat?

TG: Honestly, I’m not sure. I think it was more because it was an embarrassing thing to do and if you could do it successfully for the full week then it shows your loyalty to the sorority- maybe even your submissiveness too.

Thoughts/Analysis: There are hazing rituals in almost every fraternity and sorority. I find that the common denominator between them all is that they are supposed to have the potential member display some form of loyalty to the organization. These initiation processes are not kind; they push potential members hard to make sure they are worthy of membership.

For variations of embarrassing hazing rituals, see:

Appel, Stefan. “Sorority Hazing (Kappa Cow).” USC Digital Folklore Archives, May 18, 2021. http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/tag/hazing/.

British Boarding School 18th Birthday Hazing Tradition

Text:

DD: “At Malvern and at most boarding schools, you have all your meals in your house, which means you sit with your year group, but there’s people from [ages] 13 to 18 in that room. Whenever you turn 18, after lunch and the housemaster does all the announcements and leaves and goes to the private side, what the birthday boy would try and do is run out of the lunchroom, but what everyone else does—and it’s mainly the lower and upper sixth, like junior and senior years—they like, hold down the person and carry them out of the lunchroom and into the showers, which are in the basement. And we’re all wearing suits. And then they turn on the showers and you get thrown in the showers and you get completely soaking wet. And, also, as you’re doing this, if you resist at all, they beat the s— out of you.”

Context: 

The informant is a 21-year-old college student who was born in the Netherlands and attended a British boarding school, Malvern college, from ages 16 to 18. He experienced this tradition on his 18th birthday and similarly hazed other students on their birthdays. DD describes this ritual as “the highest form of endearment” that someone in this environment can experience. Since homophobia and oppressive gender ideals play such a big role in shaping social dynamics at all-boys boarding schools, he says that boys often use violence to express affection for one another. He says that this ritual acts as a sort of substitute for more common birthday traditions like singing happy birthday to someone or baking them a cake, which students may deride as “gay.”

            Moreover, despite the brutality and humiliation of this tradition, he argues that boys enjoy it because it’s an opportunity for them to be the center of attention and to be celebrated on their birthday.

Analysis:

This tradition exemplifies how transitional events are often ritualized and the tendency for people to behave in ways which would ordinarily be deemed unacceptable during liminal moments. In International Folkloristics, Arnold van Gennep describes rites of passage as “ceremonial patterns which accompany a passage from one situation to another or from one cosmic or social world to another” (Dundes 102). I am arguing that boarding school students hazing their peers on their 18th birthday is a rite of passage which marks the transition from childhood to adulthood, where the event acts as a sort of acknowledgement or confirmation of a student’s status as an adult. 

People feel inclined to engage in abnormal behaviors during instances of liminality because the paradoxical qualities of these moments make people think that the conventions which govern normal time are inapplicable. In general, birthdays are liminal because they cusp the end of one year and the beginning of another. With this ritual, another dimension of liminality applies to one’s 18th birthday, as this day cusps the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Further, one’s status as an adult is complicated by the student still being in secondary school, which is generally synonymous with childhood. One could argue that a possible intention of this rite of passage is to humble the person whose birthday it is by showing that despite having the nominal privileges of adulthood, they are still a part of the school. The inversion of social roles often occurs during liminal moments. Younger students hazing their older peers can be interpreted as flipping power dynamics.

Another feature of liminality in this ritual is it simultaneously being embraced as a cultural tradition and being seen as a form of rule breaking. Students wait for the housemaster to leave before carrying out the tradition, but this is merely a performance of secrecy which is part of the ritual. The practice is a kind of open secret, where school authorities know that it occurs and participate by turning a blind eye and not getting involved. Though such hazing would ordinarily be penalized, it is tolerated on 18th birthdays because the community understands the tradition as a longstanding rite of passage celebrating students’ transitions to adulthood.

Van Gennep, Arnold. “The Rites of Passage.” International Folkloristics: Classic Contributions by the Founders of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 1999.