Do Greek organizations ignore their own history of
hazing, especially the paddling part? It doesn't help when paddles are proudly displayed on the walls inside the lair of a fraternity house. Seeing a paddle hanging on a wall is a stark reminder of past physical abuse that have produced many bloodied and bruised buttocks in the name of "brotherhood" pledging process. You might ask yourself why someone is willing to sell their own original, vintage wooden pledge paddles on eBay? Embarrassed to have one around knowing its dark, secret history?
Kappa Gamma's history is filled with getting caught for hazing but did they ever step up to the plate and apologized to all the pre-pledges, pledges and current members for the physical and mental abuse in the past? Maybe it's high time that they collectively as a group or least somebody with the balls to step forward and do their "mea culpas" acknowledging the errors of the organization's hazing past onto others and publicly apologize on the campus of Gallaudet University for their organization's past misdeeds? Like a publicly apology on the campus of Gallaudet University from current president of Gallaudet University Dr. Hurwitz who is the
83rd Congregation Kappa Gamma brother as a start? Not all members, pledges or pre-pledges made it through completely unscathed. Some may still carry
emotional, physical and/or mental scars as a result.
Paddling
is one of the oldest traditions in Greek organizations, and was adopted
by many Black Greek organizations. Although receiving a swift whack to
the backside with a wooden paddle may seem harmless, it is possibly the
most dangerous ritual. Paddling can cause blood-clots, kidney damage,
blood in urine, Rhabdomyolysis, and death in many cases when symptoms go unnoticed.
It's not just the mere paddling with a couple of easy whacks. It's the handling of a paddle wielding it like a baseball bat and exacting the full force of contact squarely on the buttock turning it red, purple and blue. The goal is to injure and humiliate.
Paddling victims could receive severe injuries on their buttocks looking like this
here.
Anytime you see paddles hanging on the walls of a sorority or fraternity house means
they are proud of their paddling and hazing history. Why else would they display them in the first place? A paddle represents physical, mental and emotional abuse. Hazing manifest into a gang-like mentality by members in the effort to weed out the so-called "weaker" ones through physical and mental abuse in the pledging process.
Hazing comes in all shapes and sizes in terms of subtlety and obviousness with paddling being the very obvious kind of hazing exercise which is a no-no in fraternities nowadays.
But it still continues elsewhere. However, there is one international fraternity on the campus of Gallaudet University, the Kappa Sigma, who believe in the simple honor and respect of their fellow human beings. From the 1990 Tower Clock Gallaudet University Yearbook, page 324:
The benefits they had to offer, frankly, were unequaled by any other organization I knew of and the concept of a warm, strong brotherhood that these men had shared caught my fancy. another valuable plus about them: they don't haze. Their stand against hazing and the belief that pledging should be any enrichness and education of character rather than abuse and strict "training and re-education" of minds and bodies only served to further reinforce my initial hunch that this fraternity was the one for me.
Whoever wrote that hit the nail on the head. But a question must be asked. Is hazing, however subtle,
still continuing somewhere in the dark recesses of the Kappa Gamma's building (or any fraternity for that matter) in their super-secret effort to somehow stay connected with their long tradition of hazing going back to perhaps the early 1900s? According to
Wrongs of Passage: Fraternities, Sororities, Hazing, and Binge Drinking the possibility of some level of hazing may still be continuing out of habit and connection to their own history which I hope that this is not the case for Kappa Gamma at this point.
School administrators also find it hard to halt the actions of alumni who haze (or who encourage undergraduates to haze), because penalties such as school suspension that deter students are no threat to alums. Another problem is the unevenness of enforcement across schools. In particular, many noncriminal pledge activities (wearing "dinks" or beanies, silly clothing, or pledge pins; getting members to wear undergarments; lining up without being subjected to verbal or physical abuse) are considered hazing by authorities at one institution, while the same actions are tolerated at another. Yearbooks at Gallaudet University in the '80s and early '90s carried pictures of student club members being hazed, for example, and these "harmless" initiations were vigorously defended by some Greeks. After the ex-wife of a Kappa Gamma fraternity pledge sent photographs of her ex-husband's bruised buttocks to the author and to Chuck's Eilen Stevens, Kappa Gamma officers Brian A. Bippus and Paul R. Rutowski defended their hazing activities performed behind closed doors on the Washington D.C. campus of Gallaudet.
"Our paddling was based purely on a voluntary basis, and it was always done with a purpose. Paddling is a common practice among fraternities and sororities, as well as secret societies across the nation....We are not in this alone."
We are not in this alone?? What a great excuse to paddle! Like lemmings following other lemmings over a cliff using their own warped justification to physically, mentally, and emotionally abuse pledges with their elongated wooden paddles.
Stevens wants all schools to ban "harmless" activities that involve the dominance of a group over non-members who wish to belong. If you allow objectionable pre-initiation rituals, you increase the odds that a tragedy will eventually occur, she said. Talking to thousands of students and parents a an activist and speaker on the college circuit has convinced her that all hazing practices enslave the hazed and hazers alike. In a 1997 telephone interview, she said that hazing creates what is tantamount to a caste system at schools dedicated to ensuring equality for all.
Hazing occurs when a group perceived to have power over a new comer requires someone to do any of the following:
*engage in servitude, run errands, and perform so-called favors
*participate in intimidation; use derogatory terms to refer to pledges; terrorize; use verbal abuse or create a hostile environment
*engage in acts of degradation such as required nudity, partial stripping, rules forbidding bathing, and games played while someone is in a state of undress
*engage in rough rituals involving physical force, paddling, electric shocks, beatings, calisthenics, and sexually demeaning behavior.
The
list continues on for another page.
Here's a quote to remember from a piece called, "
What is a 'Real Man?' ":
"
Men belonging to a fraternity live at the contested border and boundary between acceptance and rejection."
In a 1993 People magazine article "
Their Brothers' Keepers?" it referred to one incident at Gallaudet University of a pledge who experienced extreme hazing.
The punishment was both tedious and cruel. Last February members of the Kappa Gamma fraternity at Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf in Washington, D.C., reportedly ordered pledge Kevin Clark to stand in a meeting room for several hours without moving. Eventually Clark collapsed and was rushed unconscious to a hospital. He later recovered from head injuries allegedly incurred during his fall, and university officials suspended the fraternity for four years.
Such pointless brutality is not unique to Gallaudet.
Though colleges have tried to crack down on fraternity hazing in recent years, degrading and sometimes racist initiation activities are still common, In many schools hazing has gone underground, where it is more likely to be abusive," says Eileen Stevens, 52, who founded the Committee to Halt Useless College Killings after her son Chuck, 20, died of alcohol poisoning in a 1978 hazing incident at Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y. A few students have broken the code of silence and offer a glimpse of this dangerous and demeaning rite of passage.
Let me expand about the Kevin Clark hazing incident and how he successfully sued. In the 1993 People magazine article "Their Brothers' Keepers?" the incident that Kevin Clark experienced was never fully explained. During the pledging probation Kevin Clark was made to stand for several hours under the auspices of Kappa Gamma which caused him to faint and collapse on the floor or so the story goes. He was rushed to a hospital but my according to my inside sources he was taken to a children's hospital instead and was hastily dropped off at the emergency entrance like a wet rag doll before taking off into the dark of the night. This could be the case since I suspect in their panic they thought the children's hospital was the closest hospital which is approximately 2.9 miles away from Gallaudet University even though Howard University Hospital was only 1.9 miles away and much closer. It wasn't just that incident that helped win the suit (settled out of court) but pictures of severely bruised and bloodied buttocks and other documented items that helped sealed the indictment against Kappa Gamma. The Greek organization eventually got suspended for hazing.
In 2006 another
pre-pledge incident (pre-pledges are those who go through the interviewing process first before becoming a pledge) experienced the type of hazing described below has been actually corroborated by others who experienced the same thing:
I did not appreciate KG for its antics back then. When they wanted to interview me, they put me in a room blindfolded and made me stay seated for a long time...then they opened the blindfold and I was shocked to find their swords aimed at my eyeballs.
That was a shock test to see if these pre-pledges or interviewees were willing to go through the actual hazing pledge process and that they have the mettle and the "courage" to continue. Blindfolded in a seating and/or standing arrangement lasted anywhere from less than a few hours to several hours long according to a variety of accounts. The more well known the student is on campus the less standing or sitting he will experience. If a particular student is not "well known" on campus the longer he will stand or sit while blindfolded. This is believed to have been a common practice by practicing certain favoritism in turn for a lesser "sentence" when it came to hazing their own well known pledges.
According to one commenter in the 2006
Washington Post article he or she talked about how president I. King Jordan was ceremoniously paddled by a Kappa Gamma brother to become an honorary member of Kappa Gamma after he became president of Gallaudet University.
Many members of this fraternity work at Gallaudet as faculty and staff. Even I. King Jordan was paddled in as an honorary member after he became president. Of course, they were thrilled when two of their own made it to the final three of the presidential selection process, but dismayed when a woman was selected.
If so then that would be a rare acknowledgement by a university president in 1988 that paddling pledges was seen as an acceptable hazing practice on the campus of Gallaudet University during those days. I was told that there is a picture of president I. King. Jordan posing while he was ceremoniously getting "paddled" after he became president of Gallaudet University.
History is replete with
references to hazing in the old days of Kappa Gamma back in the
1930s, 1940s and 1950s seen in the old Buff and Blue archived
news letters but how hazing was done and the severity, if any, is subject to discussion.
As is the custom, hazing continues to be the chief interest at the present time. Painting the preps with lip-stick, making them propose to fair damsels of Fowler Hall are only two of the many situations affronting these new students. A common sight is that of an upperclassman explaining the tradition of our noted "coffin door" in forceful and authoritive language and what would result should that certain Prep chance to walk through it. It seems that at the rate they are going, the Freshmen, who were Preps themselves only yesterday, had spent their summer vacation
not working in defense plants, but in thinking up new ways with which to make the life of the lowly Prep "miserable." Contrary as it may seem, the new students are apparently enjoying every bit of their hazing. The question, then, is, are the Freshmen dealing out the usual castor oil, or have they changed to honey?
The Buff and Blue (newspaper), Vol. 53, no. 1 (October 27, 1944)
Pledges actually enjoyed their own hazings when upperclassman figured out ways to make them feel miserable? Pledges enjoyed that?
Right.
But the question is how extreme were these hazings back in the older days compared to 1980s and 1990s? I'm sure that might be a surprising find.
From an
interview in the Buff and Blue about KG during the late 1940s:
I have to say that the best memory for me was the Kappa Gamma Fraternity days. The whole experience really did it for me. It was the pledge process, the four weeks, the “torture period,” [this was before anti-hazing policies existed].
Torture Period? What exactly was hazing like back in the 1940s and 1950s compared to what was documented in the 1990s onward? More references to freshman hazing from the
1960s,
Another question, why did it take nearly 80 years before Kappa Gamma was caught hazing and the organization suspended as a result? How come Gallaudet University president Dr. Hurwitz, and prior president Dr. Davila, who are both KG brothers (honorary)? Why did that take place?
Even as recent as the 106th Congregation at the
March 3rd, 2005 Kappa Gamma Fraternity Trivia Bowl there is a Powerpoint slide acknowledging with pride proclaiming that the worst paddling incidents occurred during Kappa Gamma's 55th, 81st, and
83rd Congregations (1955, 1981, and 1983) as seen on slide number 65.
Incidentally interesting is that the current president of Gallaudet University,
Dr. Alan Hurwitz who is a Kappa Gamma honorary brother per the
Kappa Gamma website entitled, "Brother Dr. T. Alan Hurwitz, 83rd Congregation." 83rd Congregation and he wants to carry that title?
Slide #76 ask the question on what happened in 1981,
"Why did the 81st Congregation
go through one of the worst probations (if you were a part of that Congregation, you chicken-shits would've died after the first Hell Round!)?"
And the answer was,
"Brother Fear of the T-4 had previously been Brother Death and so he whacked the suppliants as Death. The other T-4 members were forced to whack harder than him, which meant the suppliants were receiving Hell Rounds each time they were whacked."
Of course, all this means they were paddled mercilessly. The next slide confirms that.
Slide #78,
"How many bloody asses were there in the 81st Congregation?"
Answer:
"13 Bloody Asses."
Which confirms that some of the paddlings were so severe it caused the pledges' buttocks to turn purple and bloody. We can only imagine how pledges must have felt when they had to endure one of the worst paddling incidents in the 83rd Congregation with a bloody buttock. Imagine the stain on their underwear and I don't mean skid marks.
On
slide #82 a trivia question on when Kappa Gamma received their first suspension and what was the cause of suspension. The first suspension was in 1990 when Kappa Gamma was found guilty of paddling the 90th congregation (slide #83).
Kappa Gamma was suspended the second time in 1992 on accusations of "racism" (slide #85) by a black pledge when one of the Kappa Gamma brothers attempted to act like a "black brotha" using exaggerated, offensive mannerisms of a black person. Yo! Dig me? Wha'sup? Instead of calling it like it was supposed to be, a hazing incident, it appears that this was a cover up and was called it as a racism incident instead.
On slide #86 it asks the question who was the pledge (de-emphasizing the word "pledge" in extremely small font as their way of insulting the person soon to be announced in the next slide) that started the suspension proceedings of Kappa Gamma from 1993 to 1997. Slide #87 with the answer "
Kevin Clark" in a font so small you'd have to zoom in close enough just to see his name.
On slide #108 it ask a trivia question to list as many probation events with slide #109 listing about 70 events such as the "48 Hour Period," "Goat Night," (which reminds me of the movie Revenge of the Nerds with the goat scene and some condoms for the pledges) and so on. The list of probation events ends menacingly with "Z-4, (your asses will be sorry!!)" which sounds very much like a paddling expectation despite Gallaudet University's strict policy on hazing.
In my opinion, there were three incidents where Kappa Gamma got caught hazing rather than just two. History has shown repeated references to hazing attempts and how the organization was caught multiple times for hazing suggest the need to repeat such a pattern. Let's hope not.
But here's a good thing. Kappa Gamma
no longer supports hazing in any form.
What is the Kappa Gamma Fraternity’s stance on hazing?
The Kappa Gamma Fraternity follows and respects the Gallaudet University Hazing Policy and abides it fully. Fraternal growth should be facilitated through positive encouragement and instruction of intellectual lessons that strengthens the whole soul, not through hazing.
If that's true perhaps then it's time to burn those old wooden paddles hanging on their walls which graphically represents their hazing history of emotional, mental and physical abuse and apologize to past pledges (especially those that didn't make it), pre-pledges/interviewees and even some of their own ostracized brothers for their hazing past on them who still feel the pain today.
Current and past Kappa Gamma leaders and brothers ought to stand up and make a public major mea culpa announcement and officially apologize to all of the people they have harmed through their antics, intimidation tactics, and hazings that could have caused physical, emotional, and/or mental pain. They should be at least show remorse and concern over their own Kappa Gamma's past extreme hazing instead of glorifying KG paddles hanging on their walls.
A public apology is in order.
This is the only way to get a clean slate as a fraternity with a new face and mission of no more hazing. Choosing to stay silent and not apologize disrespect those who continue to carry physical, emotional and/or mental scars. Current Gallaudet University president Dr. Hurwitz need to step up and apologize on behalf all those who cannot or unwilling to apologize to those who have suffered in their hazing experiences under the auspices of Kappa Gamma. Not apologizing means the leaders (current and past) and brothers of Kappa Gamma are not serious about moving forward and be the bigger man. Another former Gallaudet University president, Dr. Robert Davila, is also an honorary
Kappa Gamma brother, could also join along with president Dr. Hurwitz and do a joint public announcement on the campus of Gallaudet University along with many of their brothers and make a public apology asking for forgiveness. Doing that will give those who were harmed by their hazing activities the chance to forgive them for their years and years of hazing.
But will they ever come clean?
My
poll results suggest that people want to hear from Kappa Gamma leaders (past and present) and brothers to publicly apologize for their Kappa Gamma's sordid hazing past for the physical, mental and even psychological harm they have caused to pre-pledges (interviewees), pledges, and brothers and those who are currently ostracized for whatever reason. It is simply not enough to have a statement on their Kappa Gamma website saying that they support Gallaudet University's anti-hazing policy.
A public apology is in order.
What's more, having a statement of supporting no hazing while paddles continue to hang on the walls of their fraternity house shows total hypocrisy in light of their now anti-hazing approach in line with that of
Gallaudet University's anti-hazing policy. A paddle hanging on a wall represent emotional, mental and physical abuse. Those paddles in any fraternity hanging on a wall represents a shameful history that need to go into the dust bins.
Here's a last interesting tidbit about the "H.O.S.S." It stands for "Honorary Order of Secret Society. Some say it means "Honorable Order of Silent Surds." H.O.S.S. was an
early Greek organization at Gallaudet University that was founded in 1864 and disbanded in 1894 when the Gallaudet administration discovered that the dues of H.O.S.S. were used to purchase wine. Later the same group renamed their new fraternity in 1894 as the Xi Phi Sigma fraternity. It lasted until 1900 before it was disbanded again because the XPS fraternity refused to have a faculty supervise their probation activities (i.e. hazing). That same group finally formed an independent fraternity called
Kappa Gamma in 1901.
And what about "H.O.S.S."? Did you ever see the scene in one of the Harry Potter movies where Harry Potter with the rest of the Gryffindor members utters a password, "
Fortuna Major," to the Fat Lady in order to get inside of their own secret society within the walls of Gryffindor Tower?
Yeah?
Whatever the case, I think it's time that current and past Kappa Gamma leaders and brothers ought to own up and make a statement by publicly apologizing to all those who have suffered under their hazing practices. Only then will the healing actually begin. It takes a much bigger man to admit their own mistakes and feel bad about what they did in the past and the mistakes of their own fraternity organization. It takes a very big man to admit that and go forward for the better of all brothers and the fraternity itself.
I feel that the Kappa Gamma fraternity is still great and honorable fraternity that means good but only if they do the right thing. It's the few wayward brothers who got drunk with power and those who followed their instructions without questions are the ones that sullied the name of the Kappa Gamma fraternity organization. They are the ones who have harmed some of the pledges and past brothers with their hazing antics and physical abuse. But as an organization itself the fault lies in more ways than one.
It's time, KG. Stop stalling and do the right thing, and be a man for once. Recognize your brothers, past pledges who didn't make it, and pre-pledges as human beings. They deserve more than your century long silence on past hazing practices.
UPDATE:
Why did I blog about Kappa Gamma?
UPDATE II: Why is Hurwitz listed on the
KG website as being in the 83rd Congregation and called a brother and never attended Gallaudet University as a student? Is he an honorary brother? Yes. The website does not mention the honorary title which is a mistake on the KG part. The 83rd Congregation and the date of his birth would make him about 41 or 42 years old at the time. Yet, the 83rd Congregation carries the distinction as having experienced one of the worst paddling incidents. See
previous blog on that one. And if he's an honorary meaning he never went through that terrible hazing incident which is good. But bad to carry the 83rd Congregation title as an honorary brother.
