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When I arrived at Indiana University, I fell in love with a house. A physical structure.
Across from the law school on Third Avenue sat the Acacia fraternity house. It was three stories tall with a gray stone facade. About a dozen two-story white columns dominated the front of the mansion, and a beautiful green lawn stretched out to Third. It was breath taking.
I had no idea what Acacia was. I knew nothing about fraternities. As I passed the house those first few days, I would just stare at the building and the young men going in and out. I was fascinated. I couldn't believe that undergraduates like me could live there. If a young man from that fraternity had approached me those first few days, I would have been hooked.
My love affair ended soon enough. I found out it was a fraternity, and my friends at the residence hall told me that pledges there were made to do all sorts of humiliating things. I have no idea if it was actually true. True or false, I believed what they said that evil things lurked behind the doors of Acacia and the other fraternities I passed each day.
Having just turned 16 (I went to college very early), I was petrified of older guys ordering me around and humiliating me. I heard stories of fraternity pledges doing naked, sexually-oriented activities. I had flashbacks to fourth grade when a neighborhood bully would routinely humiliate me in front of other kids at the bus stop, and I shuddered at the idea of putting myself in that situation again. Nothing was worth that.
I didn't even have a word for "hazing" at the time, but I knew I didn't want to be mistreated. I didn't have the self esteem for that. I didn't want anyone yelling at me. I wasn't interested in mopping floors at 2 a.m., or doing pushups. So, I didn't join Acacia, and I didn't consider joining any other fraternity. I found other things to do, like writing for the student newspaper, which I loved.
In the coming year, I would watch pledges from Beta Theta Pi across the street from my residence hall being harassed. From the Journalism building, we could watch the Sigma Chi pledges marching and dressed alike. If those young men were having fun or enjoying themselves, I couldn't see it. I felt good about my decision to avoid the fraternities at Indiana. I didn't see anything I liked.
Of course, I did end up being a fraternity man. A pretty active one, in fact. I joined a group that was chartering a couple of years later, in part because I knew that I wouldn't be hazed. I would have a chance to make friends and do important things, without any of the garbage that other new members routinely endured on my campus in the late Eighties.
As we begin National Hazing Prevention Week, I offer this story, humbly. I have every reason to believe that the groups I've mentioned here are now amazing chapters who treat their new members better than they did in 1988.
But, I wonder how many other young men walk on our campuses, and view fraternities from a place of fear. I wonder how many, like me, see the beautiful houses and the excited young men walking in and out the doors, and decide that fraternities aren't for them. So many bright and hard-working young men who could make amazing contributions to fraternities, but hazing scares them away. They just can't sign up for humiliation.
Some who read this might be fine with that. Perhaps, you think, I wasn't strong enough to be a fraternity man. If I wasn't willing to suffer a bit, then I wasn't fraternity material. I would argue the other side. Just as you disrespect a man who couldn't tolerate hazing, I found myself (and still find myself) disrespecting anyone who would.
For years after joining the fraternity movement, professionally, I would seek out the men who ran Acacia. I wanted to know them, because in the back of my mind, I remembered that initial infatuation with their beautiful house on Third Avenue. I found them to be good and honorable men.
"I almost joined Acacia at Indiana," I would tell them. "You should have," they'd tell me. "Why didn't you?" I didn't explain, because by then it felt silly. I was older, more confident, less fearful. I would simply think to myself that had hazing not existed at Indiana back then, I might be one of their brothers.
It's not enough to stop hazing in our chapters. That's the first step. After we have found better ways to build our brotherhoods, we have to reach out to the young men arriving on campus and let them know that brotherhood isn't about hurting people. It's not about servitude and being humiliated. It's about something better. It's a place where a young man, unsure of himself, can gain confidence and a place to belong.
Once we have turned our undergraduate chapters into something admirable, we need to put the truth in front of them and fight back against decades of cautionary tales.
I love fraternity, and I hate that I almost missed out on it. Let's get rid of hazing, re-educate our communities, and make sure we never miss out on a good guy again.
