The Problem
Back in the Spring, University of Kentucky Fraternity Phi Kappa Psi was kicked off of campus for their intense hazing, which included forcing pledges to drink until the point of throwing up, do calisthenics in pools of vomit, and watch gay pornography. They have been suspended until 2021.
As a freshman “new member” at a sorority, hearing all the horror stories about pledge hazing at the fraternities has absolutely shocked me, especially since from the moment I stepped foot into my sorority on bid day I’ve been loved, accepted, offered assistance, and protected by my upperclassmen sisters. What causes this difference in hazing between genders, is it actually there? What do actual pledges and new members have to say about hazing in their greek organization? These are the things I decided to try and find out.
Armed with a MacBook air and the most advanced data collection software I could find (aka google forms) I decided to head into the streets (aka the UK class of 2020 facebook page) to find out.
The Data
The first survey I posted had no incentive and was designed for anyone in the greek system, including fraternity members, sorority members, and sweethearts of fraternities. Over the course of a few days, I got 98 responses (if anyone who filled out this survey is reading this right now, please know that you are the bee's knees.) 96.9% of respondents said that they had never experienced hazing. That’s awesome! But there was a problem with the data, the vast majority of the respondents were female, in fact, 91.7%. And though there are more girls than guys involved in greek life at UK, it isn't 9x as many.
Why the lack of male responses? One can hypothesise maybe guys just don’t go on facebook as much, or are less inclined to respond to surveys, or maybe more sinister, that they are afraid to reveal that they have been hazed.
In order to find this out, I took to the streets (the facebook page again) for a second time to post another survey, this time aimed specifically at fraternity pledges with the added incentive of a $5 Cracker Barrel Gift card drawing, but I’ll get back to that survey in a minute.
The first survey resulted in only 1 out of 85 sorority member respondents saying they had experienced hazing. One responder commented, “My sorority takes pride in the fact that we don't haze.” Which confirmed that my experience as a new member was very similar to that of most other new members. So, if you're a girl reading this and thinking about rushing at the University of Kentucky, you can have nearly full confidence that you will not experience hazing, and if you do experience it, reporting it will be fully supported by the sorority community. There is no sense of "snitches get stitches" among the sororities. You should be made to feel safe, and hazing will be met with consequences.
Well, moving onto the boys. My second survey resulted in a whopping 6 responses (actually less than the first survey), this time with some differences in the questions. This survey consisted of statements which respondents could input how much they agreed with them from a scale from one to five, 5 being fully agree and 1 being fully disagree. Combining fraternity results from both surveys (n=16) 50% reported that they had experienced hazing as a pledge. (It should be noted that we should be careful about generalizing this data because the sample size was so small.) But, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say the results represent the entire fraternity member population. As a whole, fraternity pledges endure 42 times the amount of hazing as sorority new members do. Probably more concerning is that 3/6 of the respondents on the second survey fully agreed or almost fully agreed (4 or 5 on the scale) to the statement “I am afraid that if I talk about hazing that has happened to me I will be punished by other members.” This could give some insight into why there was such a lack of responses overall from pledges.
So why does it matter?
Okay, so these results aren’t very exciting. I mean, the average person could probably guess that fraternities haze more than sororities, and no responses had any particularly heinous hazing stories to reveal. (I apologize if you clicked on this article because you wanted to hear about juicy hazing stories, I don’t have anything for you.)
However what is interesting is that these results show us the polarity in greek life between sororities and fraternities. Though they're both greek, their values and concepts of sisterhood/brotherhood are totally different.
Its unrealistic to think we can just stop hazing. For many UK fraternity members, it is an integral part of "brotherhood" (I'll never understand it). But it becomes an issue when wellbeing and life is at stake. I encourage fraternity members to speak up against excessive hazing when they see it happening; its all fun and games until a freshman ODs on alcohol. If you see hazing getting out of hand, do your part to stop it or get medical help.
