Just when you thought Ithaca was the lowbrow capital of the Ivy League — and, let’s be honest, it’s not an entirely unfair assumption — genteel Princeton, in impressive dark horse fashion, has catapulted to the forefront in the race to represent ivory tower unseemliness.

The Daily Princetonian is in the midst of publishing “Behind Greek Lines,” a five-part investigatory series focusing on the school’s nascent Greek community this week. While the University’s frats and sororities are usually an afterthought when compared to those more distinguished havens of smug, upper-crust conceit — eating clubs — there’s apparently plenty about Greek life worth noting; in particular, a complete lack of University oversight, pervasive self-segregation and arbitrary bursts of sadomasochism.

For starters:

Surrounded by his pledge brothers and 40 other club patrons, [John] Burford climbed onto the stage and selected a stripper. She removed his shirt, handcuffed him to a tall metal pole in the middle of the stage and began to beat him with a thick leather belt volunteered by one of his pledge brothers.

The above quote was lifted from the series’ incendiary first installment, published Monday, which examined the phenomenon of hazing at Princeton. And strip club beat downs are just the tip of the iceberg. What reporters discovered over the course of their investigation was less of the jovial belligerence of Old School or Animal House, and more of the raging, unfettered psychosis of Lord of the Flies.

[After the Jump: Power booting, "salty" wannabes and even more stripper hijinx! PLUS, exclusive to IvyGate, a sorority president responds to the uproar.]

Drawing largely on the testimony of erstwhile fraternity pledge John Burford P ’12, the piece explores (oftentimes in painstaking detail) the brutal hazing tactics of his former house, Sigma Alpha Epsilon. The practices — nominally meant to acclimate new members to the responsibilities and privileges of brotherhood — were apparently designed to inflict daily vomiting spells, flirtation with hypothermia, the aforementioned abuse by crazy strippers and — what it all really amounts to — wholesale psychological warfare.

One particularly egregious offense Burford alleged has it that he was forced to watch his pledge brothers down gallons of milk and do wind sprints, then commanded to chug a bottle of tobacco spit in order to end the exercise. When he did so, and later became physically ill, the “pledge educator” responded with the textbook wit of a learned man (“PSYCH!”) and made the rest of the pledges continue their punishment.

A commenter on the Prince’s website, who claimed to be Burford, further elaborated on the hazing practices, saying:

The pledge educator the year before me used to get completely coked out, make the pledges lie on their stomachs, and would pee on them while screaming at them.

Ah, brotherhood.

According to a survey cited in the series’ second installment — alliteratively titled, “Whiter & Wealthier: Who rushes and why”:

Roughly 88 percent of fraternity and sorority members are white, and 70 percent come from families with annual incomes greater than $150,000.

Reading those figures, it would be no surprise if some of you worried that — even after “new member education” (read: wildly deranged mistreatment) — there would still be a noticeable absence of multiculturalism in these organizations.

But have no fear: the local chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi enforces a rigorous pledging program that embraces cultural diversity. In fact, sources reported that AEPi brothers have traditionally mandated that each pledge class take the time to engage with a racially and socioeconomically distinct subgroup — specifically, by procuring

a lap dance from a black stripper.

(Dr. King’s dream fulfilled.)

To be fair, the articles did also feature numerous positive testimonies about Greek life, primarily emphasizing social benefits available to newly matriculated freshmen, and also stuff like lifelong friendship, or whatever. Regardless, Princeton’s Greek population is predictably incensed. Critics have flooded the comments section of the Prince’s website, railing against the articles as “sensationalism” and its writers as “Bro-haters”; one commenter even defended the use of alcohol in hazing as “in the interest of securing the existence of the fraternity.” (Really? REALLY?)

Even sororities — against whom the most damning indictment was that their pledges were forced to watch Sex and the City and eat candy — have been notably indignant. In an email obtained exclusively by IvyGate, Kappa Kappa Gamma president Alexandra Wich P’11 lamented the control of non-Greeks over the story and derided its sources as

salty wannabe frat boys who couldn’t hack it during pledging.

She then reminded sisters not to comment publicly on the articles, and to try to resist the urge to “bitchslap somebody.” (Always good advice.)

Tomorrow, in the series’ final installment, the Prince will be taking a gander at whether or not the University should finally recognize and regulate the Greek system. The administration — and, in particular, president Shirley Tilghman — have expressed deep concern about the nature of Greek organizations, particularly “the excessive alcohol and the hazing” — problems they are convinced cannot be solved by regulation.

Said Tilghman in Monday’s article:

All you have to do is look at episodes that happen all over this country at universities that have recognized their fraternities and sororities to know that [attempting to regulate the Greek system] is chasing fool’s gold.

If you’re wondering, this means that Princeton’s official policy on potentially dangerous, ritualized abuse is, pretty much:

“LA! LA! LA! LA! I. CAN’T. HEAR. YOUUUUUU.”

Something tells us, though, that this might not be the best strategy. Ignoring the problem might be OK when the biggest issue in Greek life is, like, a soooper rowdy Plain White T’s concert. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Better to deal with this stuff now, before someone decides to solidify brotherly bonds by crushing Piggy with a boulder.