Gay college hazing

This is the worst outcome I could have expected from being hazed by a fraternity. Frat House is a documentary that explores the darker side of fraternity life and hazing. The film, directed by Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland, focuses on the pledging process through a composite of different fraternities. It was mostly filmed at the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The forced sexual contact of hazing is certainly another way to fulfill those desires; it’s no wonder that so many gay men are attracted to college fraternities, long the bastion of hazing in. Yet state and federal lawmakers fail to enact strong measures to stop hazing, which is a persistent problem in some college fraternities. This winter, in the wake of Lohse’s op-ed, Dartmouth professors, concerned about this entrenched mindset of avoidance, signed a letter condemning hazing as “moral thuggery” and urged the.

I cannot count how many times I have asked the following question amidst the past four years of my life; what can I do to stop hazing? This single question has left me confused, angry, disillusioned, and ultimately inspired to make a difference in the world. I hope that by sharing with you my story, you too will be inspired to make an impact in your community. My name is Colin, and I am currently a graduate student at the University of Connecticut.

I am studying secondary education and history and am extremely excited for my future after college. Four years ago, during the spring semester of my freshman year at UConn, I made the decision to pledge a well-known fraternity. Like most other students who choose to join a Greek organization, I was seeking to meet new people and enrich my college experience. Though my fraternity experience has had many high and low points, I am forever grateful that I made the choice to join.

I began to notice hazing practices within my fraternity on the very first night I became a part of it. On that night, brothers from the chapter gathered my pledge class in the parking lot of our on-campus house and began the first event of the pledging process. Hoping to immediately show who was in charge, two brothers instructed me to sit in the backseat of their car and wrap a tie around my eyes.

They blasted loud music and subsequently slammed the gas pedal. I remember feeling like I was on a roller coaster, only this was no amusement park ride. The brother driving sped up to what felt like ninety miles an hour and shook the steering wheel back and forth; it sent me and the other pledge in the backseat flying. Still blindfolded, we were brought to an undisclosed location and lined up.

Heads swirling, we were brought back to campus and officially inducted into the new pledge class of the fraternity. After a week of pledging, I began speaking out about the hazing I was experiencing. Throughout my pledge process, I sat down with brothers and posed questions that most had never been asked. What are the purposes of these hazing events? What seemed to me like perfectly reasonable inquiries, these questions unleashed a firestorm within my chapter.

It still makes me cringe to think about the texts brothers sent me when they heard about my views.

In the span of

However, with some support within the chapter, this push never reached a vote. Somehow, I made it through the pledge process and immediately began taking on leadership roles to advocate for change. During my sophomore year, I joined the Interfraternity Council. As leaders of the community, we executed an initiative to remove alcohol from the recruitment process, which at the time served as a major contributor to the unhealthy environment.

Though we did not directly tackle the issue of hazing, I deemed this undertaking as an important movement within the Greek system. I am proud to say that we came together as a community to uphold our values by eliminating recruitment parties. In addition, as a fraternity brother, I continued to speak out against hazing practices within the chapter, but to no avail.

As you may have seen on the news, a student from a sorority at UConn came out publicly last March with her story about hazing. This incident came as a shock to the campus, yet was in no way a surprise to me, as it only reinforced what I had been fighting against throughout my college experience. Upon reading the newspaper, I began posting articles about the developing story on my Facebook page.

Instantly, I began receiving overwhelming attention, both positive and negative.