This comment shows an ignorance of the basic principles of social psychology and instead engages in classic victim-blaming. The extreme social effects of peer pressure combined with fear of retaliation make it extremely difficult for a pledge to just “get up and walk away.” It’s easy to pontificate at a distance about how weak and desperate pledges must be to endure this type of hazing, but experiment after experiment demonstrate that the vast majority of individuals would find it equally difficult to break away (see, for instance, the Stanford prison experiments). The same caustic rhetoric is regularly directed against victims of domestic violence (e.g.: why didn’t you just leave?) and it is as inappropriate here as it is there. Blaming the victim just allows us to ignore how pervasive and institutionalized hazing is at Dartmouth by shifting the focus from castigating the entrenched institutions responsible for perpetuating the cycle of abuse to the relatively powerless pledges who must have done something to deserve it.

@John Mei ‘11’s comment shows that he is ignorant of the principles of free will. If pledges are being physically forced to do things, physically shoved into pools of filth, tied up and having disgusting food shoved down their throats, glued to someone’s butt and…well you get the idea. Otherwise they don’t have to take it. Many students are ignorant of their rights. The rights that I am far more concerned with than these however, are the rights they have on campus in their relationship to the administration. Students go along with what the administration makes them, their parents and alumni do far too often. The College is ready for a Dartmouth Spring where the students, parents and alumni band together to demand their rights, that the College once again make the students their top priority along with a great education for the money. This hasn’t been the case for decades, especially the past 20 years.

Considering that the author of this letter is a brother at a frat known for its policy of not hazing pledges, I think he has a point. If you don’t want to be hazed, don’t join an organization that is known to haze!

Its against nh law not to report it. Also waiting well over a year before bringing allegations to the public and in the mean time continuing to be a paying member of the fraternity shows that lose didn’t want to distance himself. I don’t want to make an ad hominem attack but when the allegations are this strong it is important to check the credibility of the accuser.

Finally some sense, thank you Max. John Mei ‘11’s comment just rehashes tired arguments that try to remove self-responsibility from the equation. We wont solve this problem on campus until people absolutely refuse to become apart of or remain a part of frats known for their hazing incidents.

Max, you’re spot on here: “The cycle repeats and repeats because students are too afraid to stand up to their “friends” and demand a higher quality of treatment.” I just don’t know if I see the rest of it in the same way as you. Sure, they need to stand up to their “friends” but we need to talk about positionality here as well, and consider how and why these people are “afraid.” I don’t think that the hundreds of pledges each year are coincidentally cowards across the board, and there must be a structural reason here to explain this. These “friends” of whom you speak are older friends who are already members of these Greek organizations and leaders on campus. To a degree, pledges put trust in these people. And further, pledges in all likelihood fear these people to a degree, or at least fear being kicked out of the house if they don’t do what they are told. This is what I imagine to be the case — you can remind me I’m not in a house if you want, and that I might not know what I’m talking about, but fine. All I know is that it strikes me as absurd to expect 1800 people to just individually all pick up and leave their fraternities and sororities because they think some weird things are going on. We need to acknowledge the incredible prevalence of fraternities on this campus, and be a bit kinder than to call these pledges “needy.” For the entirety of freshman year, many are led to believe that the only means for social inclusion on this campus are via the Greek system. Too many aspects of our social scene set students up for placing a high premium on Greek membership for us to place this much blame on each of them for not speaking out or walking away.

I do think its appropriate to ask the administration to be more responsible and step in, much in the same way I think its reasonable to expect the government or police to step in for gang violence or drug rings (“Come on, I mean, yeah, we should do something about gangs, but why don’t all those gang members realize they’re in a really messed up organization! The real issue here is that they’re all not leaving their gangs!”) Sure, its an absurd comparison to make — gangs and fraternities — and I have no intention of likening Greek organizations to violent groups. But I think there’s some sort of parallel with regards to our expectations for administrative intervention. I know you’re not arguing against administrative intervention, but the way you structure your argument here seems to acknowledge the need for administrative action but then imply that the victims of hazing don’t deserve this intervention due to an absence of character.

Unfortunately this argument is extremely weak and offensive. Could Rosa Parks have walked every day instead of taking the bus? Absolutely. Could the Little Rock Nine have stayed in black schools and avoided Little Rock Central High School? Yes. Could the United States have avoided Germany in World War II and allowed Hitler to create his perfect race? Sure. But if you believe in something, you have to stand up for what is right. You have to go through the tough times to get to the great times. Simply saying Lohse should have walked away is ignorant and the administration needs to take immediate action. Unfortunately we are blaming the victim again.