When a boy becomes a pledge, there are a few things he needs to understand. The rigors of the experience he is about to endure have brought together generations of pledge classes before him. These arcane rituals are not his to question, for they reach far into the fraternity’s history. All the precious, lifelong experiences of brotherhood will rest upon these essential building blocks.
This is not a new concept, folks. The values that bring groups of people together take on a life of their own and raise up protocols around themselves to ensure the next generation carries them forward. Pledges enter at the bottom of a hierarchy, accepting inferior status with the understanding that their time in the sun is coming. In time they will become full brothers — worthy of respect and equal status — but first, they must pledge allegiance to the system, and, in reverence to tradition, give of their livers and waking hours. The hierarchy enforces itself like the knights of western Europe once did: pages served at the heels of their masters until they learned humility and respect, whereupon they were awarded with their very own spurs and allowed to swagger around their halls as knights.
Honor and chivalry, such as they were, have given way to something less grand but no less pervasive. While students rose to challenge the extension of Honor Committee authority and the manipulations of Rector Helen Dragas, we have sat soundlessly by as Zeta Psi returns to Grounds not two years after its hazing nearly took a student’s life. Though in the aftermath of that debacle “soy sauce” has become a punchline, no one seems surprised that Zete has returned after a slap on the wrist.
As if in fear that the community might become irrelevant in the absence of scandal, the Greeks have obliged us all again. Multiple fraternities are under investigation for incidents related to the pledge process. Legal niceties require the University to dress its definition of hazing up in tortured legalese — “inappropriate conduct,” for example — but hazing can be aptly summarized as such: anytime someone abuses someone else in a University-sponsored organization, it’s hazing. The University protects its students from such abuse through the auspices of the Inter-Fraternity Council and an anonymous hotline. Of course, as we’ve seen, the rituals of pledging are age-old and sacred, so we can hardly be surprised if things are overlooked from time to time. And every time an incident goes unaccounted for, it burrows itself a little deeper into the folds of tradition in which U.Va. clothes itself.
This time, though, the University has had it, and they’re rooting out the maladroits with a vengeance. The Office of the Dean of Students last week required that all 31 fraternities complete initiations by 6 p.m. Sunday. This means no more pledging. For everybody.
Right.
We all remember “Hell Week” from first year. Whether you pledged or not, someone in your dorm came home covered in some bodily fluid or some classmate stumbled into class red-eyed and disheveled at some point near the end of April. A blanket sanction of the entire IFC has done little more than accelerate the pledging timetable. The University is either ignorant of the pledging process it hopes to regulate, or it simply failed to anticipate these consequences. I’m not sure which would be more shameful, considering how widely understood such consequences are in the University community. It’s clear that University administrators realize they have let things slide for too long, and now they are reacting in a panic to save face.
The University community seems to be at an impasse. The fraternities get punished as a bloc because the University has to maintain the appearance of control, and the University can’t effectively protect its students from their own occasional savagery. Lyndon Johnson had the right idea of how to deal with members of a community who felt they could harm others with impunity. He understood that the rights of victims of Jim Crow had to be guaranteed without completely dismantling the governing structures of the South, so he introduced preclearance. Under Section V of the Voting Rights Act, states with a history of abusive voting practices had to get federal approval for their voting laws, and had to submit for approval any changes before they took effect. The University can bring rogue houses to heel without punishing all of the fraternities, and may even strengthen the whole community in the process.
The fraternities currently under investigation should be required to submit a pledging schedule to the IFC for review. The IFC will enforce these schedules, and fraternities that violate their precleared agreement will face disaffiliation with the University. It is not enough to give the IFC more regulatory responsibility, although they have to have a reason to hold their members accountable. The IFC wants the Greek system to survive and remain as autonomous as possible, but that must come with a condition of more rigorous internal policing. The IFC must negotiate a clear hazing policy with the University and then devote all necessary resources to ensure that preclearance doesn’t just squeeze the slime into dark corners where no one looks. Student self-governance is a hallmark of this University, and the fraternities, like any other group, should have the right to establish their own codes and enforce them. If the IFC can’t keep its member organizations in line, the University must be informed enough and courageous enough to step in before dramatic measures are necessary.
Punishing all for the sins of a few sends the wrong message, as wrong as failing to follow through with meaningful consequences. We can only hope that the University will stop oscillating between negligence and overkill, and instead work with the IFC to actually address the problem with hazing.
Hazing is not a fact of life, not a necessary rite of manhood and not something we need idly accept. We can hold our Greek community to the same standards of decency that govern normal social interaction, or better yet, encourage them to do it themselves.
Matt Menezes is a first-year Batten student and a former member of Beta Theta Pi.
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