The Snowflake Factory
On February 15, 2022, the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity at the University of Virginia instructed its pledges to show up blindfolded at the frat house at precisely 10:28 PM After being led to the basement, the newbies were ordered to race one another in consuming various combinations of milk, bananas, Sprite, mayonnaise, and broccoli. One pledge vomited.
Then the blindfolded inductees were commanded to engage in “wall sits” on the basement wall. Against the backdrop of loud music, FIJI brothers began throwing eggs against the ceiling and walls around the pledges. One egg struck a pledge in the eye.
“Multiple witnesses confirm that the victim was in pain and asked to go to the hospital,” summarizes the resulting Hazing Misconduct Report. “No effort was made to call 911 or secure immediate medical assistance.”
In the administrative proceeding that followed, Phi Delta Gamma’s operating agreement with the University was terminated and five students were referred to the Student Judiciary Committee. The chapter would have to wait four years before being permitted to reconstitute itself at UVA.
A generation ago, the egg-throwing incident would have been a non-event. Most likely, the pledge would have gotten over the momentary pain, he would have been inducted into the fraternity, and as an upperclassman, he would have plotted ways to torment the next class of pledges. No longer. These days anyone discomfited by a fraternity initiation rite is encouraged to submit an anonymous report, the Department of Student Affairs aggressively investigates the complaint, and fraternities can be shut down.
This is how snowflakes are made.
To be sure, young men are inclined to do stupid, reckless things, especially if their judgment has been impaired by alcohol. If fraternities were left entirely bereft of adult authority, the neighborhood along Rugby Road would descend into The Lord of the Flies anarchy. No one wants students hospitalized from alcohol poisoning, drunks tumbling down stairs, or the judgment- impaired leaping from windows. Fraternities and sororities do need to be held accountable for grossly negligent behavior. Some regulation is called for.
But dissolving a fraternity for a thrown egg?
(Update: I have been told that the eye injury from the thrown egg was serious and that the pledge’s family was furious about the incident. I have not yet been able to confirm this account but will reiterate that fraternities need to be held accountable for negligent behavior.)
Consider another incident.
On February 4, 2022, the Tri-Delta sorority and St. Elmo fraternity held a mixer known as “The Scare.” Alcohol was served, and the pledges were required to watch a slide show featuring the current members. During the presentation a Tri Delta sister ran into the room and exclaimed that someone in the pledge class had reported them for an alcohol violation. She then declared she was going to take a picture of the pledges and that someone needed to fess up.
Sometime later, the Tri Delta sister returned to the room to say the pledges had been pranked.
On October 14, 2022, the University Judiciary Committee (UJC) ordered Tri Delta to revise its Hazing Prevention Plan, create a Hazing Prevention chair, and submit in writing a pledging process to be reviewed by the UJC vice chairman for sanctions.
In this case, the hazing involved no physical harm. Rather, pledges were subjected to brief mental distress resulting from a joke.
“Hazing has no place in the University experience,” declares the Hoos Against Hazing web page. The University scowls not only upon incidents of physical harm, it disapproves of practices that risk emotional harm. And “emotional harm” is defined broadly.
States Hoos Against Hazing: hazing is “any activity expected of someone joining a group (or to maintain full status in a group) that humiliates, degrades, or risks emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of the person’s willingness to participate.”
The word “hazing” often brings to mind examples of physical abuse and/or excessive drinking – egregious acts of hazing that make the national news. Many students are familiar with the legal aspects of hazing and know to avoid activities that involve physical abuse. But what about the use of secrecy, servitude, blindfolding or sensory deprivation? Students may falsely believe these acts only cause temporary discomfort and aren’t harmful. However, hazing actually includes a broad spectrum of actions and behaviors that “may hurt in more ways than a paddle ever could.” Every day, hundreds of thousands of people continue to struggle with the “hidden” harms of hazing – the mental and emotional scars that result from being hazed and even from hazing others.
Joining a new organization can cause stress, states Hoos Against Hazing. Many people may wonder, “Will people accept me? Can I be my true self?” The website goes on to say that common concerns about belonging are amplified when someone is also dealing with a mental disorder. And mental disorders are rampant on college campuses. Twelve percent of students report symptoms of an eating disorder, 41% symptoms of depression, and 34% of anxiety.
The predominant psychological paradigm on college campuses, and society at large, is that young people are emotionally fragile and easily traumatized. They should not be exposed to anything that causes anxiety or emotional discomfort. Words are violence. Afflicted students need “safe spaces.” Access to “emotional support animals” is a legitimate form of treatment.
But there is a growing body of thought that the mass coddling of youth is a major contributor, accelerated by cell phones and social media, of the anxiety epidemic. (Read Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness and Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up.)
Young people need to be exposed to stress. They need to encounter adversity. Chronic debilitating stress can lead to bad outcomes, but without exposure to some adversity, young people don’t develop the emotional armature to cope with life’s inevitable difficulties and disappointments.
If this emerging paradigm is correct, UVA and other higher-ed institutions are taking a generation of students coddled by parents and K-12 schools to begin with and making things worse.
What Hoos Against Hazing calls “hazing” are initiation rites that have meaning to the upperclassmen (and women) who administer them and to the pledges who undergo them. Brief physical and emotional stress sears the rituals into the memory. It forges lasting bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood. As I will explore in an upcoming post, the Greek system and the induction rituals at their heart provide a sense of “belonging” for roughly a third of the UVA student body.
The Hoos Against Hazing website shows no recognition that there might be any beneficial aspects to hazing rites. The consequence has been a campaign against hazing — often abusive (see How UVA Holds Students “Accountable”) — that is difficult to distinguish from a war against fraternities.
The Department of Student Affairs publishes summaries of Hazing Misconduct Reports over the most recent three academic years. Ten Greek organizations (nine of them fraternities) and two student clubs have been sanctioned. Five fraternities have had their Fraternal Organization Agreement with the University revoked, effectively dissolving them for four years.
A report on Phi Kappa Psi cited the fraternity for requiring pledges to wear white shirts that could be “marked upon by brothers.” Similarly, the investigation into Tri Delta revealed that “new members had words written on their bodies.”
UVA also frowns upon the practice of treating pledges as servants. An investigation into Theta Tau found that the chapter required new members “to perform favors such as picking up food or coffee, attending a brother’s intramural game, following/liking content on social media, and swiping a brother into a dining hall.” Failure to comply resulted in “punishments” such as being given derogatory nicknames and being ordered to collect signatures for a fake petition. For these offenses, Theta Tau was ordered to establish a “Risk Management chair” and set up a mechanism for anonymously reporting hazing, among other requirements.
Other transgressions cited in the Hazing Misconduct Reports:
Hot sauce was placed on pledges’ backs and necks;
New members were sprayed with water from a hose and had flour thrown at them such that it stuck to their bodies;
New members were asked to engage in acts of “servitude,” such as cleaning the frat house, driving brothers to various locations around Charlottesville picking up or buying food or beverages for current members;
Pledges were told to strip down to their underwear and put on a blindfold;
New members were quizzed on biographical information regarding active and new members and were punished for answering questions incorrectly by having to perform calisthenics;
New members were ordered to engage in pointless tasks and embarrassing activities. Example: Kappa Alpha pledges were required to carry specific items at all times during the pledging process. Items included cigarettes, lighters, condoms, beef jerky, chewing tobacco, and smokeless nicotine pouches;
Pledges were “required to go on a morning run;”
New members were forced to sleep over at the chapter house.
The coerced consumption of alcohol is a legitimate concern, and the hazing reports included several instances of it. But the overwhelming majority of abuses cited were physically and emotionally harmless. Only the most exquisitely delicate of psyches could suffer emotional trauma.
The Hazing Misconduct Reports are the most visible signs of what social psychologist Haidt calls “safetyism” at the University of Virginia, in which adults seek to shield young people from any physical or emotional harm. The coddling culture is all-pervasive, and there is no sign that the Ryan administration is rethinking it. Indeed, administrators have signaled that, in their estimation, UVA students need more career and guidance counselors and more mental health resources. So-called “solutions” seem always to expect less of students and give administrators more power and more resources.
Perhaps a better solution is to shrink the cadre of adult helpers, meddle less in student affairs, and encourage students to figure out how to handle more things on their own.
James A. Bacon is the founder of Bacon’s Rebellion and a contributing editor with The Jefferson Council.
