UPDATE: The Cornell Sun’s Jeff Stein confirms that both Sig Chi and Phi Sig are being investigated for violating Cornell’s pledging policy, but that neither will be kicked off campus.

A well-placed tipster tells IvyGate that Cornell’s Interfraternity Council and Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs have agreed to suspend two fraternities for violating the university’s pledging policy:

Within a week the Cornell IFC/OFSA will kick Sig Chi and Phi Sig off campus, for public “initiation rituals” done 3 weeks after the official end of the pledge period.

[...]

Just giving you a heads up that the news will break before Slope Day…The greek system at Cornell is dead

The tipster declined to reveal the nature of the “initiation rituals”; prior examples of Cornell-flavored hazing can be found here. According to the reputable website Cornellfrat.com, Sigma Chi is ranked #3, and Phi Sigma Kappa #13, out of Cornell’s 35 fraternities.

(Know more? Get in touch.)

According to a fairly insane website, Dartmouth student Travis Blalock ’12

will walk with you around campus to show where major hazing practices occur and which areas you should avoid. As with any tour, questions are welcome throughout the event and you should feel free to inquire about certain groups in which your child is interested.

Blalock adds: “we are in the exploratory stages of developing a hazing simulation for our tours.” For now, however, Hazing Tours will “work like traditional tours.”

Wow. So it’s both controversial (or edgy! or whatever!) and a complete disappointment. Only ten bucks, though!

Who is Travis Blalock? We have no idea, but (he claims) he’s not against hazing. From the press release we received:

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, in a completely uncontested vote, Nathaniel Fick (D ’99) will be elected to Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees. The CEO of a Washington think tank, Fick is an attractive candidate: he’s intelligent (Harvard Kennedy/Business), served in the Marine Corps, and will be the youngest trustee by over a decade. In contrast, the other two Trustees who will share Fick’s victory are straight-up Dartmouth drones: an ex-Goldman venture capitalist and a corporate lawyer.

But in light of Dartmouth’s recent hazing scandal, Fick makes for an especially awkward choice. Around the same time that Ravital Segal (D ’09) almost died (and broke her teeth) during a hazing incident at her sorority, Fick defended and valorized his brutal treatment in military training, which he has described as “like fraternity hazing.”

In 2005, Fick was doing the rounds for his well-received war memoir, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, which capitalized heavily on his unlikely path from the Ivy League to the American military. In an interview with Book Reporter, Fick said he realized that “all the hazing and abuse” he underwent at Officer Candidate School were in fact tools of self-improvement: Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Deadspin reported that Cornell’s Sigma Chi fraternity required a pledge to dress up as Jets QB Mark Sanchez and give fake autographs around Ithaca as a part of the frat’s Hell Week. (The accompanying photo is sort of funny—two other pledges functioned as fake-Sanchez’s security detail—but otherwise we guess you had to be there.) Anyway, Sig Chi hurriedly notified Deadspin that fake-Sanchez and his crew were not their pledges. Which is kind of weird, because the stunt seemed somewhat creative, if pretending to play football is creative.

More importantly, they were Sig Chi pledges, according to tipsters at Cornell. See, Cornell president David J. Skorton wrote a Times op-ed about fraternities and sororities (and whose title was a pun on “pledge”) back in August, several months after the hazing-related death of Cornell sophomore George Desdunes ’13 last February:

This tragedy convinced me that it was time — long past time — to remedy practices of the fraternity system that continue to foster hazing, which has persisted at Cornell, as on college campuses across the country, in violation of state law and university policy.

Hazing, of course, has an imprecise definition; but in his op-ed, Skorton denounced pledging, too. He argued that, since “pledging” almost always shades into “hazing,” the Greek system needed to find a better way to acclimate new members. So, sure, those pledges aren’t Sigma Chi pledges—but only insofar as “pledges” aren’t supposed to exist, at least at Skorton’s Cornell. But they’re from Sig Chi nonetheless. (Know more? Get in touch.)

It’s here. Just as we predicted, Dartmouth’s hazing scandal has turned into a swirling, lightning-forked shitstorm. This is the kind of controversy college presidents resign over. Here’s a play-by-play if you’re just joining us now.

The AP story: Good overview. Read it. The Globe article: It’s College president Jim Yong Kim arguing that he can’t change Dartmouth’s culture by himself. The article cites “tradition-bound alumni” for opposing reform. (Of Dartmouth’s ~60,000 alumni, just 146, or 0.002%, have signed a well-publicized alumni petition to stop hazing.)

The 27 identical hazing charges against SAE brothers: That’s a lot! Apparently a witness other than (who may or may not be Lohse) came forward and named names. On the same day, SAE’s outgoing president wrote in to say that he and his brothers were scapegoats of Dartmouth’s P.R. strategy. He also admitted that “certain practices from 2009 … were in violation of College policy.”

The mysterious Rolling Stone piece: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the most enduring question of 2012: who in Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the recently notorious Dartmouth frat, actually thought ass beers (among other carnival attractions) were a good idea? We may have an answer!

A tipster close to the fraternity tells us that C. Clark Warthen ’10 (pictured) masterminded the pledging period for which Dartmouth’s administration is prosecuting the fraternity.

Warthen’s a familiar face here at IvyGate: in 2010, he was charged with witness tampering for his 8th-grade-level intimidation of SAE brother Phil Aubart ‘10, who reported the house’s cocaine use to campus security. During the same incident,  Andrew Lohse ’12 was also charged with witness tampering, for spitting on Aubart. That may explain why, according to Dartmouth administrator David Spalding, Lohse refused to name Warthen (or anyone else, for that matter) when he reported SAE’s hazing tactics.

So here’s what the tipster told us: In fall 2009, when Lohse was pledging SAE, Warthen—currently a first-year law student at the University of Virginia (ranked 9th in the country!)—served as the house’s “Pledge Educator,” in which position he oversaw the super-secret rituals which, as Lohse claims, involved chugging ass beers, eating vomelettes, and consuming pure vinegar. (To be fair, Lohse’s account suffered from some rank exaggeration—as others have corroborated.) Apparently Warthen wanted to whip the chapter into something resembling a more traditional, “southern” fraternity. And now he’s studying law, to be a lawyer.

And yet! Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday The Boston Globe reported that Dartmouth is charging Sigma Alpha Epsilon with violating the college anti-hazing rules. Noticeably absent from the Globe’s report was any mention of the Hanover Police Department, which is sorta weird: this wasn’t your everyday hazing buffet.

Over the weekend, however, a representative of SAE’s national office informed IvyGate (during a media inquiry we were making) that the police are investigating the Dartmouth chapter, too:

Since there is an ongoing investigation by the police and university, we have no comment at this time.

Dartblog-style addendum: Today’s report in The Dartmouth makes no mention of police, either.

Last week we ranked the laziest of the Ivy League: those schools at which hazing is non-existent (or, possibly, so underground as to avoid detection). Yes, you may have been wondering, but who are the haziest Ivy Leaguers? So here they are, beginning with the laziest of the haziest: Princeton.

One thing to remember about these rankings—and, to a degree, about all of the Ivy League—is that hazing (both the phenomena and the perpetual scandal) is more or less the outcome of combining two very different populations: the world’s future overlords and the anxious, striving individuals who will form tomorrow’s press corps.

It makes a ton of sense, anyway, why the Ivy League is almost always awash in one hazing scandal or another. What else would you expect? The Ivy League attracts students who willfully submit themselves to the judgment of schools which constantly market, and profit from, their exclusive reputation. They bring together people who, for whatever reason, need to constantly distinguish themselves in as many ways as possible, no matter how illogical or arbitrary or pointless those ways are. Add to that a well-funded press corps with a taste for scandal, and voilà! Hazing controversy!

To get rid of hazing in the Ivy League, you’d have to stop admitting the very people who applied to any of its schools. You’d have to start admitting people who don’t care about reputation, or status, or prestige; about feeling (and, yes, being) better than others. But then the Ivy League wouldn’t be the Ivy League, would it?

Anyway! Here are the haziest members of the Ivy League: Read the rest of this entry »

According to Andrew Lohse ’12, the amateur polemicist of hazing scandal fame, Dartmouth’s administrators are lying through their teeth about Dartmouth’s hazing problem. Also according to Lohse, Dartmouth’s Chief of Staff colluded with Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Lohse’s former fraternity, in order to hide hazing from the Hanover Police Department. Also according to Lohse, the same Chief of Staff—David Spalding—and April Thompson are lying about the images Lohse showed them as evidence of the hazing he reported to them. Also according to Lohse, Dartmouth’s president Jim Yong Kim routinely ignores Dartmouth’s hazing problem.

So much lying, and collusion, and conscious ignorance has drawn others to Lohse’s story—especially Joseph Asch ‘79,  who accuses basically everyone at Dartmouth of lying, character assassination, and so forth, claiming that the Chairman of Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees seeks “to cast doubt on the hazing allegations by pointing to both Lohse’s troubled background.” (E.g., Lohse’s arrests for cocaine possession, witness tampering, and disorderly conduct.)

Lohse’s tale has also summoned a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, who (we imagine) can’t be having too much luck getting fraternity brothers to speak. And it looks like the publishing industry is next: on the same day he published his hazing column, Lohse admitted to Business Insider that he was already seeking a book deal.

In fewer words, Lohse is selling (quite literally) an elaborate ploy perpetuated by powerful yet dishonest individuals. This isn’t the first time the English major has attempted to do so, though. Before he began spinning (and spinning) his hazing experience at SAE into a shadowy plot of intrigue, Lohse was touting another conspiracy—the one about George W. Bush ordering the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Yeah, we’re serious: Read the rest of this entry »

In higher education, anything can be ranked—even more so in the Ivy League. With so many hazing scandals erupting everywhere—at Cornell, at Penn, at Dartmouth, and on and on—the necessary question is: Yes, but which Ivies haze the most? Or the least? Let’s find out!

First, the Ivy League’s least hazy—a.k.a. laziest—members:

1. Columbia

LOL. Columbians don’t “haze.” Hazing is for commoners. Rather, Columbians take unpaid internships at underfunded literary magazines, at which they are subjected to nearly the same amount of humiliation.

Anyway: it looks like the last time any hazing-related event shook Morningside Heights to its core was way back in ’05—i.e., 1905—when Columbia student Kingdon Gould, which was apparently the name of a real person, defended himself against some sort of fraternity-affiliated kidnapping by firing a gun in the air. Oh, Columbia: how you’ve changed.

After the jump, Brown, Harvard, and Yale: Read the rest of this entry »