penn writer traces non-greek history of hazing

The phenomenon of hazing is generally associated with greek organizations to the layperson, but columnist Alex Ball of the Daily Pennsylvanian wants to dispel such dreary misconceptions. His brief synopsis begins in 1657 at Harvard when freshmen were routinely subjected to what would now be called hazing by upperclassmen; the practice survived under the Britishism "fagging" until the mid-twentieth century.

It was at that point that hazing first began to take shape in the modern fraternity. But Mr Ball shows the conversation does not start and end there: "Greek organizations account for a minority of hazing incidents, the biggest offenders being sports teams, academic honorary organizations and various social clubs," citing a 1999 Alfred University study which found that over 70% of student-athletes were hazed—though a freshman basketballer is quoted as describing his travails as innocuous, no doubt exonerating the system as a whole.

Mr Ball also refers to a home-grown campus group called the Mask and Wig comedy troupe, where hazing evidently prospers in plain sight under different titles. "New guys" wishing to join the troupe and become "clubbies" are required to undergo a two-year process of "new guy unity" under which they are "at the beck and call of older members." A new guy quoted does not seem to be complaining, though: "It's an important part of the experience, though. We really come together as a class." Why does this sound familiar? (Replace "new guys" with "pledges"; "clubbies" with "brothers"; and "new guy unity" with "hazing".)

Mr Ball writes in a campus climate in which Delta Tau Delta and Alpha Phi Alpha were each recently forced off campus by hazing events gone awry, both involving injury to their pledges—so his history should not be taken as any kind of apologia for greeks who haze. Rather, it's a brave challenge to common tropes and a call to re-examine the stereotypes that allow non-greek organizations to abuse their members under alternative nomenclature.

Daily Pennsylvanian