Over the previous month, there was appreciable media protection of hazing inside Nationwide Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) organizations, often known as the Divine 9 (D9). That is in gentle of Southern College scholar Caleb Wilson’s dying by the hands of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity members. Because the late Nineteen Seventies, there have been greater than a dozen reported hazing-related deaths in D9 fraternities, together with Wilson’s. For a lot of, the query is: Why has hazing continued so lengthy in these organizations?
As a common matter, fraternity hazing tends to be extra excessive than sorority hazing. The place white fraternities are inclined to have extra alcohol-related hazing points, D9 fraternity hazing is extra bodily violent. An integral part of D9 fraternity hazing is one’s potential to endure bodily violence as a sufferer and administer it as a perpetrator. A few of what drives that is the failure of D9 fraternities to adequately grapple with anxieties round masculinity inside their ranks.
There’s a palpable and irrational disgust and concern amongst many inside D9 fraternities of homosexual, bi and queer members. That is a lot in order that many D9 fraternity members who’re nonheteronormative have to hide their sexual orientation to navigate fraternal networks and politics. Heterosexual members danger being unintentionally mislabeled if single or deliberately as a way to weaponize homophobia throughout fraternity management elections.
There are additionally robust stereotypes throughout D9 fraternities round masculinity—how they relate to ladies, different males and concepts. Publicly, the organizations espouse virtues of intellectualism and gentlemanliness. Nonetheless, information present that their members typically coalesce round hypermasculine identities (e.g., anti-intellectualism, stoicism and violence). Unsurprisingly, id influences membership choice.
In 1990, the D9—en masse—pivoted from the pledge technique of outdated to the Membership Consumption Course of, which was shorter, extra centered on studying organizational info, and sought to eradicate bodily violence. Nonetheless, there was not broad membership buy-in. A part of that’s as a result of D9 leaders did away with a course of that many members valued and that labored in some methods.
To not romanticize it or faux that it labored the identical manner for all pledges, however the pre-1990 course of upheld custom, even when it was simply that of the chapter. It helped domesticate an emotional connection between pledges and between pledges and members. It additionally fulfilled pledges’ want to attain and, by that, their vanity—possibly most pronounced for younger males who overcame adversity and even brutality. Within the absence of such a course of, members sought to duplicate the pre-1990 course of, innovate or do each in a vacuum of secrecy—hoping to keep away from the “zero tolerance” method that BGLOs reportedly took to hazing violations.
As they at all times had, gatekeepers play a important function in D9 pledge processes, even post-1990. Most D9 members are alumni, and people initiated by faculty chapters preserve important affect over their chapters of initiation. That is important in that D9 fraternity alumni members get to play a important function in establishing the contours of what masculinity means for his or her respective chapters of initiation. In that vein, they get to assist resolve which candidates for membership meet that commonplace and the processes wanted to form these younger males.
The D9’s failure to adequately retain, reclaim and interact these alumni members undermines their potential to appropriately advise, mentor and supervise collegiate members or educate and sanction alumni members in a manner that stops hazing. This failure has additionally opened the door to a different type of hazing, sexually predatory, the place D9 fraternity alumni use entry to membership as a option to prey on candidates for membership, particularly these by faculty chapters.
Gregory S. Parks, J.D., Ph.D., is a Dean’s Fellow and Professor of Legislation at Wake Forest College College of Legislation. He is among the nation’s main specialists on hazing and co-editor of African American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Imaginative and prescient (College Press of Kentucky 2005). He’s a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Integrated.
