Did Germany invent the "Frat House" 400 years ago?

A must see on your next visit to Heidelberg. Alas, no beer pong tables.

Heidelberg Studentenkarzer | Atlas Obscura:

Studentenkarzers, or private jail cells designated to punish students, were once the norm at many of Germany's schools of higher learning. But after the lock-ups became nothing more than party rooms, most of them were abandoned and some, such as the Heidelberg University Karzer, were permanently preserved.

Established in the 1600s as a means of allowing students to police other students, the karzers were simple rooms where young academics would be sent for minor offenses such as drunken conduct, insulting authorities or staging a duel. The accused would be forced to lodge in the jail for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, but was still allowed to attend classes and other primary academic functions. Over the years, being thrown into the karzer became a sort of rite of passage for the students, who would actively seek punishment. Eventually visitors were allowed and the jails devolved into party palaces, where the locked-up students would invite people over to celebrate their incarceration, marking the walls with graffiti, often from their respective fraternity houses.

No longer in use, the Heidelberg karzer has been preserved in its original state, including iron frame beds and wooden tables decorated by the etched writings of former students. The walls too have been left perfectly alone, still covered in the centuries-old scrawl of proud delinquents.    

'via Blog this'

Learning doesn't stop at 22. (Scripting News)

Dave Winer is one of the first, if not the very first, bloggers. He also is one of the inventors, if not THE inventor, of podcasting. In addition to his technical chops he often has interesting stuff to say on any number of subjects. In this article he touches on something that every chapter volunteer (not to mention every parent) has experienced. No matter what age you are, you think you know all you need to. He writes about a conference he attended at age 44...

Picture this. A group of about 20 people seated on the floor in a circle. A young man, opposite me, says directly to me, "I know as much as you do." It's part of a discussion about the differences between people of varying ages. According to the younger folk, they have everything we have, and of course their bodies are younger, and stronger. We older folk are nothing but older. This was the point the young man was trying to make.
[...]
I asked him a question.

"Do you know more now than when you were 12?" (I picked an age before puberty, when he lived with his parents. Before he had a beard. Back when college would seem as vague as high school, when he would have had no sense of his future life independent of his family.)

"No comparison! I didn't know shit when I was 12."

"Do you think learning stops at 22?"
[...]
People of all ages should keep their minds open. It might surprise some young people to learn that this advice applies to them as much as it does to older people.

Good advice for students, and for volunteers. There is more at the link.

Learning doesn't stop at 22. (Scripting News)

Top 10 Worst Greek Hazing Scandals & Stories | Online Colleges

Ten of the worst - usually involving death - going back to the early 20th Century.

Isaac William Rand. One of the first hazing incidents that set off 100 years of horrific Greek hazing happened at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1912. Isaac William Rand fell from a barrel on which he was standing. He landed on a broken bottle that pierced his jugular vein, and Rand bled to death. The four students associated with the hazing incident were expelled from the university. One was acquitted and the other three were found guilty of manslaughter.

Fortunately, and probably due to sheer luck, there are no SigEp incidents listed. Each item has a link to the details and background story, too

Top 10 Worst Greek Hazing Scandals & Stories | Online Colleges

Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity Party in 1971

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Kappa Alpha Creates Problem with Old South Parade

AKA celebration interrupted by Old South parade
Sorority alumnae ask for event to end By Amanda Peterson
Editor-in-chief

Members of a historically black sorority plan to ask UA President Robert Witt to cancel Kappa Alpha fraternity's Old South celebration. It comes after a parade of students in Confederate army uniforms stopped in front of the sorority's house during anniversary celebration on Saturday.

A number of UA members and alumnae of Alpha Kappa Alpha were shocked when the Old South parade, displaying Confederate flags and participants wearing Confederate uniforms, stopped in front of their sorority house during the course of the parade despite requests by the sorority to move.

And from the Tuscaloosa News

Larry Wiese, the fraternity’s executive director, said the national office “is investigating the reported actions of some members of the Alpha Beta Chapter at the University of Alabama this past weekend.”

“Such behavior, if true, would violate the code of conduct of our organization, and appropriate disciplinary action will be imposed when our investigation is completed,” Wiese said. “On behalf of Kappa Alpha members in Alabama and across the nation, I apologize for any inappropriate behavior.”

Missouri Sig Ep House Housed WW II POW's

Traveling exhibit has relics from POW life WW II captives held in Midwest.

Beverly Holder of the Moberly Public Library looks at a book on board the “Bus-eum” Friday in Moberly. The exhibit describes the lives of World War II POWs held in the United States.

By Jodie Jackson Jr.

MOBERLY — Untold stories, tucked away in the margins and footnotes of history books — or simply neglected beneath the settled dust of World War II — are brought to life by a mobile museum that visits Fulton tomorrow. The “Bus-eum” tells the story of German and Italian prisoners of war who were interned in Missouri.

“We pride ourselves on telling the untold stories,” Bus-eum driver and historian Irving Kellman said yesterday during a stop outside the Moberly Public Library, where a handful of military veterans made their way through the museum.

The “untold stories” include accounts of Italian POWs being housed in Columbia in vacant dormitories at Stephens College and in the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house near the University of Missouri campus.

Those POWs worked the McBaine river bottoms as well as other farmland in Boone and Callaway counties. The National Youth Administration camp off Highway 54 at Fulton housed both German and Italian POWs in branch prison camps.

“It’s not in our history books,” Kellman said. “Our teachers don’t teach it.”

The Bus-eum, a project of the not-for-profit educational organization TRACES, features a series of 10 display boards telling the story of foreign POWs on American soil, from “pre-capture life” to postwar settlement. The display tells those stories using traces of narratives left behind in letters, diaries, military records and other documents.

One particularly telling aspect of the exhibit is the unique relationship forged between German POWs and Midwestern farmers. Many of those bonds spanned the Atlantic even after World War II ended; some foreign soldiers even stayed or returned to the Midwest to marry.

Kellman can’t understand why the story of the 425,000 POWs in the United States is not better known. There were 660 internment camps scattered across the country, with three base camps and dozens of branch camps in Missouri. With few exceptions, the camps complied with the terms of the Geneva Conventions, the international document that spells out how prisoners of war are to be treated.

“It’s nothing to be swept under the rug,” Kellman said of the untold history. “To our total amazement and wonderment, it’s not in our history books.”

The traveling exhibit had special significance to Beverly Holder, the Moberly library director of adult and young adult services. Holder said her father, U.S. Army soldier Henry Seibert, had been responsible for moving German and Italian POWs throughout France during World War II.

POWs interned in the Midwest came across the Atlantic on “liberty ships” that evaded U-boats. After arriving in New York, Boston or Newport News, Va., the prisoners were taken to America’s heartland aboard Pullman train cars. The driver’s side of the bus has information about American citizens of German ancestry who were interned even after the war ended.

Holder described the bus-eum as “wonderful,” even though some of the history it describes is painful.

“It paints reality,” Holder said. “A lot of history was horrible, miserable.”

Making that information available is a vital part of the library’s mission, she said, adding, “It’s what a public library does.”

The library paid $300 to have the bus-eum stop in Moberly on its route from a home base in St. Paul, Minn. TRACES receives additional financial support through grants and humanities organizations, mostly in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa.

The organization has two other mobile museums and last year visited Moberly and other sites with its exhibit about Midwest POWs in Nazi Germany.

The traveling museum has scheduled stops from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. today at 515 Market St. in Hermann and from 1 to 4 p.m. tomorrow at 1101 Business 54 in Fulton.

Reach Jodie Jackson Jr. at 573-815-1713 or e-mail jjackson@columbiatribune.com.

"Journal" Archives - Thanks, Google!

(...And thanks to Gene Shurg for letting us know about this way to read about the history of the Fraternity.)

You may know that Google has been systematically digitizing books for online access and searching. That process has led to our own "Journal" archives being made available for anyone to read.

Here is the 1919 Journal Archive in Google Books.

For a list of all the editions so far go to this link.

It's cheaper than airfare to Richmond!

UW frat launches 16th ‘Tour de Touchdown’ philanthropy endeavor - The Daily Cardinal

Another great news story. This chapter has been doing their special event for the last 16 years.

By: Jacob Ela /The Daily Cardinal

Sigma Phi Epsilon started its multi-thousand dollar philanthropy event Wednesday that includes a bike ride to the Minnesota-Wisconsin football game to raise money for sick children

UW-Madison’s Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity kicked off the 16th year of its Tour de Touchdown philanthropy project Wednesday, working to raise funds for the UW American Family Children’s Hospital.

The Madison Fire Department and patients and staff of the Children’s Hospital joined fraternity members at their Langdon Street house for the launch. About 60 members will ride their bikes to Minneapolis to deliver the game football to the Badgers as they take on the University of Minnesota Saturday.

UW-Madison senior and TDT chair CJ Goldberg said this year’s goal is to raise $15,000.

“We’re really trying to get more people involved this year,” Goldberg said. “The best part is definitely the fact that we’re raising money for the kids.”
[...]
Raising more than $100,000 since its first year, TDT is the largest Greek philanthropy event on campus, with more than $20,000 raised in the last two years, according to UW-Madison junior and Sigma Phi Epsilon member Nathan Fuller.

UW frat launches 16th ‘Tour de Touchdown’ philanthropy endeavor - The Daily Cardinal

Hazing Is Everyone's Job To Stop

(Update: We found a poem about hazing in the New York Times archives from 1906.)

Hazing, Hazing, Hazing!
Contra Costa Times – Walnut Creek California11/04/2007
By Jackie Burrell

A Chico fraternity pledge is forced to drink water until he collapses and dies.

A Chicago high school powderpuff game turns into a melee. A Fremont swim team hazing involves seniors urinating on freshmen on the pool deck.

One would think that with the growing amount of negative publicity surrounding hazings, a strong social taboo would arise against such initiation rituals.

But hazing continues today, permeating college fraternities and sororities, middle and high school bands, athletic teams and church groups.

"For some reason," said Hank Nuwer, a national expert on hazing, "students are basically turning on other students for entertainment and sadistic behavior."

In January, UC Berkeley baseball rookies were discovered late one night in 34-degree weather blindfolded and wearing nothing but G-strings and shoes. In October 2006, a San Ramon Valley High football player was bound, dragged and kicked repeatedly in the groin during a locker room hazing.

Grahaeme Hesp, the director of Fraternity and Sorority Life at UC Berkeley, says hazing is a real issue outside of Greek life, too. (Karna Kurata/Staff)

And at Chico State, where 21-year-old Pleasant Hill resident Matthew Carrington died in 2005 of water intoxication compounded by hypothermia, members of Beta Theta Pi fraternity's Chico chapter are being prosecuted for forcing pledges to crawl through mud and submerging them up to their necks in icy water.

Those cases pale in comparison with the growing number of teens who have been beaten, sodomized or debased by friends and teammates. In the past month, police and school officials have investigated hazing-related sodomy or sexual assault cases at high schools in Florida, Illinois and Texas, and what appears to be another instance at a New Hampshire middle school.

WWII history
Initiation rituals may date to antiquity, but modern-day hazing is an unexpected byproduct of World War II and the GI Bill, said Grahaeme Hesp, director of fraternity and sorority life for UC Berkeley. [Ed. Note: Grahaeme Hesp is a SigEp]

"(Veterans) arrived on college campuses, 25-, 35-year-olds," Hesp said, "with the Army philosophy of 'break them down and build them back up' -- this is how you build a team."

That strategy has since lost favor in the military, but it continues to flourish on college campuses and, increasingly, on middle and high school grounds.

"The (Greek) community is more than aware of hazing," Hesp said. "But the challenge still exists in the marching band, athletics -- and it's also gone downward, so it's high school, middle school. Now we have people arriving having gone through some aspect of hazing. The hazed become the hazers."

Universities and national fraternity and sorority chapters have concentrated their efforts on raising awareness and promoting healthy team-building alternatives -- ropes courses, leadership training and a hefty emphasis on aligning values with actions -- but a large subsection of the youth population continues to haze, some without fully grasping what they're doing.

Nearly half the high school students who participate in band, athletics, church groups and other teen organizations have been hazed, researchers at Alfred University reported. Seventy-nine percent of NCAA athletes say they were hazed in high school -- a quarter before they were teens.

Speedo runs
It's clear where sexual assaults and beatings lie on the hazing spectrum. But head shavings, embarrassing garb and Speedo runs -- like the one that got a group of athletes suspended at Moraga's Campolindo High last year -- fall into a fuzzier category.

Hesp defines hazing as "anything that makes people feel uncomfortable emotionally, psychologically, physically."

What's team-building fun to one participant, Hesp said, may be deeply humiliating, even traumatic to someone else.

And even mild hazing can have lasting effects, said psychologist Susan Lipkins, author of "Preventing Hazing."

She remembers speaking with a 90-year-old man who was hazed at age 17. He had survived a desperate run through wartorn Europe, only to be hazed at a camp in Israel where he was grabbed and taunted as a burlap sack was pulled over his head. Recounting his story 73 years later, the elderly man flushed with humiliation and remembered feeling helpless.

"There's something about hazing," Lipkins said, "that holds onto your gut."

Meanwhile, the pressure to participate is intense.

"The desire to belong, whether to the baseball team, sorority chapter or marching band -- there is that level of peer pressure," Hesp said. "Everyone else is going along with it."

And often, they don't recognize hazing for what it is -- "the exertion of power over a weaker position," Hesp said.

That's partly why Lipkins isn't surprised hazing is prevalent among teen athletic teams. Coaches authorize their team captains to conduct drills and oversee locker rooms. Vested with that power and authority, she said, senior athletes use hazing as a means of discipline, punishment and reinforcement of a team's power structure.

"This is an unusually competitive culture," Lipkins said. "The pressure to win is so huge. Proving you are more worthy than the next person, winning at all costs. (These) are predisposing factors for a hazing."

Eric Stewart, a Minnesota teen who launched a pro-hazing group on Facebook, calls hazing "a necessary part of life. Without it those damn freshmen and sophomore(s) get cocky and seniors lose power."

Tom Hoyt, a Maryland high school student who oversees the "Hazing Squad," another Facebook group, sees two varieties of hazing.

"The varsity hockey team I was on was really cruel about hazing," he said in an e-mail. "Like dragging (my friend) from the shower room and tying him to a football post right after it had snowed. But I thought it would be fun if hazing was a joke and nobody took it seriously so that stuff like that wouldn't happen. In our school, the only thing we do is talk about hazing and intimidate the underclassmen."

Even tame traditions -- running through a football game in a Speedo, for example, or enforced calisthenics -- can spiral out of control because new hazers often feel compelled to add their own signature twists. One small thing is added, and then another one and another and "suddenly, it's a major issue," Hesp said.

This slippery slope "may be how alcohol consumption has become more extreme," Lipkins said, "and why hazing increasingly skids into the hazardous zone."

Efforts to combat hazing at the college level, Lipkins said, are derailed when high school students pack up their "hazing blueprint" and head to college.

"They do unto others what was done to them," Lipkins said, "and they feel as though they have the right and duty to pass on the tradition."

The result is that hazing prevention has become a Sisyphean task.

The adult role
The only thing that will make hazing stop, Hesp said, is the firm resolve of a coalition of schools, parents, coaches and authorities. Even then, it's easier said than done.

It's a cultural issue, Lipkins said, and change must begin with the attitudes of adults who have repressed or "reframed" the memories of their own hazings to salve their own discomfort.

Despite the presence of anti-hazing policies on nearly every college campus, the practice continues, said University of Maine professor Elizabeth Allan, who recently completed the pilot phase of a hazing study on 52 campuses. And hazing methods have become more severe and demeaning.

Particularly troubling are the pilot study data that found 40 percent of hazed athletes said their coaches knew about the team hazing, and 22 percent said the coaches actually participated.

Hesp finds adult participation and community reaction the most troubling aspects of hazing. He points to the notorious 2003 Chicago powderpuff game, which turned into an alcohol-fueled riot.

News footage, which was aired nationwide, showed senior girls pummeling juniors and dousing them in urine, feces and animal intestines. Several younger girls had to be hospitalized. And those arrested included two mothers who provided kegs.

"The world was shocked by the Chicago powderpuff," Hesp said, "especially when it was videotaped by parents and they did nothing."

It is far too common for adults to portray hazings as locker room horseplay that got out of hand, Lipkins said.

That was the excuse one poster added to an online discussion board last fall, after a San Ramon Valley High football player was assaulted in the locker room.

The school district didn't buy it. Four football players were thrown off the team, district spokesman Terry Koehne said. A parent meeting was called, and the 45-member team underwent three days of sensitivity training.

"It was a serious issue," Koehne said, "and we wanted to make sure we were on top of it."

Hazing was added to California's penal code only after the death of Chico State's Carrington. But in Massachusetts, it has been part of the criminal code for the past two decades, and bystanders who fail to report a hazing are subject to a $1,000 fine.

There has to be a system in place to deal with reported abuse, Lipkins said, and serious consequences must be enforced, not just for hazers but for the spectators who stood by and did nothing.

The message has to come from everyone.
"It has to come," Hesp said, "from the faculty and culture and team and marching band working together to send a collective message."

Reach Jackie Burrell at jburrell@bayareanewsgroup.com.

HAZING BY THE NUMBERS
48 - Percentage of high school students who have been hazed by members of athletic teams, music, church or other youth groups; 24 percent were hazed as part of a church youth group.

22 - Percentage of high school students who had participated in dangerous hazings; 21 percent of college students have been part of dangerous hazings

71 - Percentage of high school students subjected to hazing who reported negative long-term consequences, including injuries, anger management issues, concentration problems, anxiety, guilt and food and sleeping issues.

79 - Percentage of NCAA athletes hazed in high school; 25 percent were first hazed before age 13.

50 - Percentage of female NCAA Division I athletes who reported being hazed; 10 percent were beaten, branded, tattooed or had their heads shaved against their will.

40 - Percentage of college students who said their coach or club adviser was aware of the hazing; 22 percent reported their coach or adviser was actually involved in the hazing.

-- Sources: Alfred University Hazing Study (1996), Alfred University High School Hazing Study (2000), National Study of Student Hazing (2006 preliminary results)

WARNING SIGNS FOR PARENTS
After dealing with a hazing problem, it's easy to look back and think, "I should have known." But Susan Lipkins, author of "Preventing Hazing," said the warning signs of hazing are so similar to those of other emotional issues that it's easy to miss them.

The following warning signs may indicate your child is involved in a group that hazes as part of its initiation:
1. Adjusts too quickly to new situations and has instant friends.
2. Changes patterns of communication -- frequency, duration or tone.
3. Reduces contact with family and old friends.
4. Rise in new kinds of physical and mental problems -- exhaustion, broken bones, sprains, bruises, cuts and burns, sore throat, stomachaches, severe headaches, hospital visits -- or discrepancies in the student's explanation of the injury.
5. Develops new psychological symptoms -- changes in sleeping and eating patterns, anxiety, irritability, anger and negativity, poor concentration, drop in achievement, picking up obsessions or compulsions.

WHAT TEENS CAN DO
Teens are not powerless, Lipkins said. There are actions they can take before, during and after a hazing incident to protect themselves:

BEFORE:
1. If you intend to join a group that has initiation rites, try to find out what they are.
2. If you still want to participate, consider an exit strategy you can use if you believe you're in danger. For example, if you are one of 10 freshmen joining a football team, gather together beforehand and create a plan, so you can act together to prevent injury.
3. Discuss the definition of hazardous hazing within your group so everyone understands and agrees to act together as a group to stop the event or call authorities.
4. If you are already part of a group that has a tradition to haze at specific times, such as on your birthday, make a choice about participating that day. Any tradition has the potential to skid out of control.

DURING:
1. Be aware. Try to remember the layout of the area. Read the emotions of the perpetrators. Do not volunteer to be hazed, to be first or to try to please the group.
2. If you are asked to do something that is dangerous, or that you do not want to do, pay attention to your instincts. It can be dangerous to exit during an initiation rite alone. Plan ahead and try to find a group of like-minded individuals.

AFTER:
1. Safety first. If you are not sure you are physically OK, get medical attention. Internal bleeding, fractures and overdoses are serious and need to be attended to as quickly as possible.
2. When you are sure you're OK, get medical attention for others.
3. Be aware of psychological problems -- sleep issues, flashbacks, eating issues, anxiety, avoidance, depression and intense feelings. If you are experiencing any symptoms in these categories, get help.

Sometimes the psychological damage can be worse than the physical, especially if the trauma continues. Tell your parents; tell a doctor; talk to your school psychologist; call the number on the back of your medical insurance card and get a referral for a mental health professional; or call a teen crisis hotline (Contra Costa Crisis Center, 800-833-2900; Crisis Support Services of Alameda County, 800-309-2131).

-- Source: InsideHazing.com

More about Purdue - SigEp focus

...and it isn't in a good way. This editorial relates past excesses and the slow progress.

Greeks' new reputation will take time

Purdue University's Greek organizations are taking some important steps toward improving their reputations.

And none too soon. In 2006, a Sigma Phi Epsilon pledge ended up in the emergency room, his blood alcohol level a dangerous 0.49 percent -- more than six times the legal driving limit. The pledge recovered, but university officials rightly suspended Sigma Phi.
[...]
Between 2001 and 2006, Purdue officials disciplined 34 student organizations, many for hazing violations, defined as any act that requires an act that "creates a substantial risk of physical harm ... or seriously demeans or degrades any person or interferes with any person's scholastic activities."

In 2006, university officials suspended Delta Chi fraternity, an action that stemmed from an investigation into alleged hazing.

Of the 10 university sanctions of Greek organizations in 2005, half were due at least in part to hazing. But alcohol and drug violations are often related as well.

In 2002, Purdue officials disciplined Sigma Nu fraternity's Beta Zeta chapter after an incident involving theft and underage drinking. In 2005, Purdue doled out a five-year suspension to Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity after three of its members were arrested on drug charges. The university withdrew its recognition of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity due to alcohol and drug violations. Two of three sorority sanctions levied from 2001 through 2006 were alcohol-related.

Purdue's Greek organizations are attempting to change long-held, often negative, perceptions about Greek life. Change is difficult. But the need for these changes cannot be ignored.

Journal and Courier Online - Editorial

Here is link to a related post.

What the Brits Think of Greeks!

Driven by booze, hazing and sex US fraternities and sororities have a dark side that is increasingly under the spotlight.
The Times Higher Education Supplement
London, England - June 15, 2007
Jon Marcus reports.

The Delta Zeta sorority, created nearly 100 years ago at DePauw University in the American Midwest, is among the US's oldest campus social clubs for women and part of one of the largest national university fraternities, with 165 campus chapters.

Inside its red-brick plantation-style house with four white columns in the front, it practised the largely harmless rituals of America's so-called Greek system. It had an official emblem - the Roman lamp - and its official jewel was the diamond.

But like other fraternities at American universities, which have seen their memberships level off or decline, Delta Zeta was suffering from a drop in popularity. Its national leadership began to believe there were flaws in the diamond.

After a review, 23 of the 35 Delta Zeta sisters at DePauw were thrown out.
The sorority says they were removed because of what it calls a lack of commitment to recruiting new members.

But among the women who were told to leave were the only African-American, Korean and Vietnamese members as well as every member who was overweight.

Those who remained were slim, popular and attractive. Six of them also quit in protest.

The university protested, too. It threw the sorority off campus, in effect shutting it down. Enough was enough, said DePauw president Robert Bottoms, noting that the school was already in the midst of a crackdown on its fraternities because of excessive drinking, recruiting irregularities and other problems. The sorority, in turn, has sued the university.

Stereotypes or not, fraternities and sororities have come to be synonymous with elitism, sexual assault, high-risk hazing (initiation ceremonies) and other bad behaviour on American university campuses.

So strong are the associations between fraternities and unacceptable behaviour that when members of the lacrosse team at Duke University were accused of gang-raping a woman, they were widely assumed to be part of a fraternity. In fact, the players, who were cleared of any crime, were not in a fraternity but lived together in a house off campus.

"They might as well have been a fraternity," says Diane Roberts, a professor at Florida State University who writes about fraternity culture.

What the Duke men were accused of "is the kind of group behaviour that commonly happens in fraternities".

University presidents and fraternity leaders met in Washington in 2003 and collectively acknowledged that "illegal and abusive alcohol consumption and its second-hand effects - sexual assault, vandalism, violence, negative community relations, anti-intellectual environment and lack of civility - continue to plague Greek systems". They drafted new guidelines requiring, among other things, that fraternities understand "that alcohol is not the central focus of their organisations".

Fraternities "have spent a great deal of time really doing a lot of education around things like hazing and alcohol", says Debbie Heida, vice-president for student affairs at Berry College in Georgia and president of the Center for the Study of the College Fraternity. "Our systems have gotten better about calling people on their behaviour," she said.

In fact, since the Washington conference there seem to have been fewer incidents related to fraternities, which normally occupy their own houses on or near American campuses.

There have also been crackdowns by university administrators and government officials. Forty-four of the 50 states have passed anti-hazing laws meant to stop alcohol-fuelled membership ceremonies that include beatings.

National fraternities have also struggled to reverse the years of bad public relations, which culminated nearly three decades ago in the still-influential movie Animal House, inspired by a fraternity at Dartmouth College. They point out, for example, that fraternity members collectively contribute some 10 million hours a year to community service.

But although only 3 per cent of Americans were members of fraternities, nearly half of all US presidents were fraternity members; so were more than 40 per cent of senators and 30 per cent of Fortune 500 executives. It is this clubbiness that may explain the antipathy of growing numbers of Americans to fraternities.

"What it's really about is class solidarity," Dr Roberts said. "It is called the class system, that thing we are not supposed to have in America.

Being in a fraternity is how you make connections, and it costs money to be in one."

Dr Roberts is convinced that a fraternity culture of secrecy has made its way into the halls of American power. She said George W. Bush, an alumnus of the influential Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, known as "Deke" - its Yale chapter graduated not only him but five other US presidents - was the most secretive president since Richard Nixon.

The point of fraternities is not just their social function, Dr Roberts has written.
"It's that there are insiders and outsiders, those who are allowed to know the mysteries and rituals, and those who aren't. It's a powerful thing, being privy to the secrets of the brotherhood."

Dr Roberts, the product of the Sigma Kappa sorority at Florida State University, said: "I used to make the claim that I thought sororities were very different from fraternities. But in sororities there was a kind of social pressure to look a certain way and go out with certain kinds of men.

After this Delta Zeta thing, I think they are more similar than not."

She says that the situation at DePauw is not unknown, "it's just that Delta Zeta got caught".

Nor have other fraternities managed completely to do away with their reputations for drinking and other misbehaviour with the attendant bad publicity. A Harvard University study found that 86 percent of men and 80 per cent of women who live in fraternities are binge drinkers, meaning they have four or more drinks in a row at least once every two weeks.

Hazing of new members also remains a problem, no matter how many laws are passed against it.

A chapter of Phi Gamma Delta at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faced criminal charges when a member died of alcohol poisoning during an initiation ritual. The university ultimately paid the student's parents $6 million (Pounds 3 million), including $1.25 million for a scholarship in his name.

Even after that, at the Fresno State chapter of the same fraternity another student was found dead, also of alcohol poisoning. Other fraternity members had "induced or forced" the student to drink "massive quantities of alcohol", according to a lawsuit filed by the victim's parents.

A new recruit at Tau Kappa Epsilon at Texas State University in San Marcos died from an alcohol-induced bludgeoning by other fraternity members.

A student being hazed by older members of a fraternity he wanted to join at the University of Miami drowned while swimming across a lake on campus in the middle of the night.

Another so-called pledge at a fraternity at the University of Maryland died after drinking whiskey until his blood alcohol level was five times the legal limit for drink-driving.

Fraternity hazing often involves physical abuse - typically beatings with paddles. A student trying to join the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity had his kidneys damaged when he was hazed by being beaten.

A recruit at a fraternity at Texas A&M University had his testicle ruptured by being lifted off his feet by the waistband of his underwear. The testicle had to be surgically removed. In October, a student at the University of South Carolina was hospitalised after being beaten and choked with a T-shirt in a hazing ceremony.
Still, says Ms Heida, "to have the actions of a few shape the perception of what the value is of the fraternity and sorority experience is not fair to these organisations".

Whether or not it is because of such incidents, the number of fraternity chapters and members has levelled off and even dropped in some categories.

Dr Roberts thinks it is cyclical. "When I was in the sorority in the late Seventies it was so uncool. Then it got cool again under Reagan. Maybe it's going through a not-cool phase. It swings back and forth," she said.

Ms Heida agrees. "They're like any organisation," she said. "There are times when there is growth, and there are times when there is a plateau."

These days, Dr Roberts says, her students tell her they join fraternities for entirely pragmatic reasons. "They are really almost business-like about it now," she said. "They want someplace to hang out and think it will be good for networking. For some people it's like joining the Kiwanis Club (a voluntary organisation in local communities), with better rituals and a lot more booze."

FRATERNITIES AND SORORITIES:THE 'GREEK SYSTEM' IN AMERICA

• From their beginnings in America as student literary and debating societies, fraternities evolved into men's social clubs with secret handshakes,loyalty oaths and other rituals.
• At the College of William and Mary in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa started a tradition by giving itself a motto in Greek to deepen its mystique. Others followed suit, and the names were later shortened to Greek-letter acronyms.
  Today, the groups are collectively referred to as the "Greek system".
• The first of the nation's all-women fraternities, today commonly called sororities, was founded in 1851 at Wesleyan College in Georgia.
• The first fraternity for African-Americans was established in 1906. Students of various religions have also formed fraternities. Now, fraternities are cropping up, for instance, for gay students.
• In addition to their social role, fraternities provide important professional networks for ambitious students. Their prestige varies widely.
• Six members of Yale's Delta Kappa Epsilon, which was founded in 1844, went on to become presidents of the US, including Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and both presidents Bush. Celebrities who were fraternity members include the actors Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey and Ashton Kutcher.
• The University of Illinois has 46 fraternities and 23 sororities, with nearly 7,000 members out of 30,000 undergraduates - the largest proportion in America.
• Nationwide, only about 5 per cent of all university students join fraternities. In all, there are 12,000 fraternity chapters on about 800 campuses in the US, with 750,000 members.

THES Editorial ©2007

Hippies and Deadheads and SigEps, Oh My!

What does "The Summer of Love" (that's 1967 to you kiddoes out there) have to do with SigEp? You might be surprised.

People involved in the local hippie scene recall that only in Plaza Park, which is now known as Cesar Chavez Plaza, did large numbers of long-hairs congregate in public. There, says Gus Kaplanis, a newsletter publisher and former owner of the underground newspaper Aardvark who in 1967 was a history major at Sacramento City College, “you’d see groups of kids and young adults walking around. You know they’re not working and probably not going to school. But they’re having a good time, sitting around, playing guitars. It’s an easy life. You’d see hippie vans converted. You know they were living there.”
[...]
“What was so vibrant and so exciting about that time--there was a great hope about our youth,” recalls Linda Parisi, who now heads the public defender’s homicide division. She was a 17-year-old suburbanite attending El Camino High School in ’67. “As a result of, really, a youth movement, fundamental social changes occurred.”

“It exposed me to the term 'Free Love,’” remembers Kaplanis, now a balding, gray-bearded, golf-playing retiree with a shy smile. “Everybody was safe. Everybody was friendly. Free Love was the big deal. I guess it showed rebellion, that you don’t need a piece of paper to like somebody.”

In many ways, Kaplanis, who today drives a convertible white Thunderbird--golf sticks popping up out of a bag on the passenger seat--embodied Sacramento’s counterculture-lite take on the Summer of Love. Not a true hippie, he was, instead, a frat boy. “Gooser,” as everyone called him then, lived in a Sigma Phi Epsilon frat house on the corner of 22nd and T streets. But he imbibed many of the mannerisms and lifestyle choices of Frisco’s hippies, especially after his first visit to the Haight.

“A bunch of us from City College played hooky, went down there, spent all day and some of the evening, and my eyes opened up to the counterculture, to what was going on, the runaways, the people fed up with government, with regular city life. I was impressed. This is really cool.”
[...]
Politically, the campuses--or at least a vocal minority on the campuses--drifted leftward, as they did throughout the country. “This was a very freewheeling period when, how shall I put it, student-teacher relationships were very friendly,” reminisces 73-year-old Jerry Fishman, a now-retired English instructor at City College. “We’d walk into a class and say 'party time.’ And then we’d party with students that night.”

He still recalls the contact high you’d get simply walking down the pot-smoke-filled corridors.

The radical African-American activist Eldridge Cleaver came to CSUS in 1968, a year after he’d participated in the Panthers’ Capitol Invasion, and caused a stir by using the word “fuck” while speaking from the podium. “The students were just like 'Oh my God!’” Kaplanis recollects. “There were hundreds of them.” City College had a series of bomb scares.

And guess what? Yup, all those "crazy hippies" you see in the documentaries and movies like "Woodstock" grew up to become your Moms and Dads. I know. I resemble that remark. I'm told I had a wonderful time.

SN&R > Local Stories > Hiding out in Sacramento > 06.07.07

New Book about the Good Ol' Days

'Berkeley Daze: Memoir of a Frat Boy' Now Available

A look back at fraternity life in the late 1950s and the beginnings of the sexual, political and social revolutions of the early 1960s at the University of California, Berkeley.

A new book, 'Berkeley Daze: Memoir of a Frat Boy,' is the journey of a fraternity boy from the smug, late 1950s to the beginnings of the sexual, political and social revolutions of the early 1960s at UC Berkeley. Frat boy's journey is by turns clueless, bewildering, raunchy, politically incorrect, but also transformative and ultimately serious.

In the fall of 1958, Greek life at UC Berkeley reigns supreme. Coming from a small town, Frat Boy is immediately seduced by fraternity living with its promise of fellowship, endless parties, willing coeds and files of old exams to ease the transition into a mega-university of 26-thousand students. Soon, Frat Boy is on the verge of flunking out but manages to survive despite a disastrous encounter with ROTC. Along the way, he rows on Cal Crew in preparation for the 1960 Olympics. He takes a year off to study in France and when he returns, he finds the Berkeley campus transformed into a hotbed of political and social causes including civil rights, Castro's Cuba and sexual freedom.

'Berkeley Daze: Memoir of a Frat Boy' will be read and enjoyed by anyone who has lived through those times and by those who are interested in pivotal moments in student and social history at UC Berkeley.

The book is now on available on Lulu.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Borders.com.

About the Author:Allan Brown is a 1963 graduate of UC Berkeley, California. He has wandered far afield from Berkeley while pursing a career in television news in San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. Occasionally, he returns to Berkeley.

"Uncle Billy" - Freemason landmarks

One of our correspondents has been tracking down the Masonic history of the founders of Sig Ep. This response came in answer to a query about "William Lazell Phillips"

For your information, we have the following on the above brother.

Joined our Nutley Lodge #25 at age of 23, occupation - Clerk

Entered Apprentice Degree on 9/20/1897

Fellowcraft Degree on 10/18/97

Master Mason Degree on 11/22/97

Date of death June 19, 1956

Fraternally,
Ray Bellini, PGM
Gr. Sec.

According to these dates, he was a Master Mason at the time Sigma Phi Epsilon was founded.

To find earlier posts in this series, search for the "Freemason" tag

Critics: Frats refuse to reform

Rider student's death isn't the first and won't be the last, hazing foes say
BY DARRYL R. ISHERWOOD

It is sometime after midnight as 14 pledges complete a solemn fraternity initiation ritual and are led to the basement of the fraternity house.

The booze laid out for them must be finished before the pledges leave the house, the young men are told. Most get sick as they drink, but one is sicker than the rest. He vomits. Fraternity brothers, fearing the freshman may choke, lay the incoherent 18-year-old face down on a couch.

Some time later, help is called.

But it is too late; the pledge is dead. Authorities later learn his blood-alcohol level reached .434, more than five times the legal limit to drive a car.

While some of the circumstances sound eerily similar to those reported by friends and law enforcement officials in the recent alcohol poisoning death of 18-year-old Rider University freshman Gary DeVercelly, the death of that pledge, freshman James Callahan, took place 19 years before, on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

As a result of Callahan's death, 15 Lambda Chi Alpha brothers were indicted for hazing and his mother, Jane Callahan, filed a lawsuit naming the fraternity, the university, the national chapter and the liquor store that sold the members the booze that killed her son.

While no charges have been filed in the Rider case, investigators have labeled the Long Beach, Calif., native's death at the Lawrence school a possible hazing incident.

Regardless of the outcome, anti-hazing advocates say the system designed to protect pledges like DeVercelly and Callahan and dozens of others who have died over the years is flawed and won't be fixed until the fraternities and sororities themselves admit the problem.

"I believe the fraternity industry has known the shortcomings (of its risk-management policies) for a long time and has done nothing to fix it," said Douglas Fierberg, a Washington, D.C., attorney who has represented numerous victims of hazing and alcohol-related deaths nationwide.

There is a "duck and cover" mentality among universities and fraternities when an alcohol- or hazing-related death occurs, Fierberg said, and for that reason little has changed.

BANDING TOGETHER
In an effort to deal with liability issues, a group of 47 national fraternities and sororities has banded together in an organization known as the Fraternal Information Program Group. According to the FIPG Web site, the organization's goal is "to be the one-stop resource for risk-management education ..." for the entire campus community.

The Times made several efforts to reach the group's officers by phone and e-mail over two days, but members -- all of whom also are officers in national fraternities and sororities -- did not reply. Likewise, representatives of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, which is under investigation in connection with DeVercelly's death, also declined comment.

A spokeswoman for Phi Kappa Tau's national office in Oxford, Ohio, also did not return several calls and e-mails, preferring instead to issue a series of statements in support of DeVercelly and his family. The national chapter's president, who is listed as a director of the FIPG, also did not return a call or e-mail.

However, FIPG has issued a risk-management policy that all 47 member organizations -- including DeVercelly's Phi Kappa Tau and Callahan's Lambda Chi Alpha -- adhere to.
The policy addresses issues such as hazing, alcohol abuse and sexual abuse and harassment, according to the group's Web site.

Among the tenets are 10 related to alcohol use, including the requirement for all members to adhere to state laws regarding drinking. The policy restricts in-house activities and prohibits drinking games. It also forbids the use of alcohol in pledge events.

But the policy does not require the fraternities to ban alcohol and instead puts students in charge of policing themselves, Fierberg says.

He said it is predicated on keeping dues-paying members and alumni happy rather than on pledge and member safety.

"For at least eight years, the industry has known that alcohol-free housing is the safe way to run a fraternity," Fierberg said, citing a 1997 study done by a national organization of fraternities that recommended dry housing across the country.

"But they won't go dry. What they prefer to do instead is create a policy full of holes implemented by underage, ill-trained fraternity members who have no knowledge whatsoever of the dangers involved in managing alcohol policies in fraternities," he said.

EMPHASIS ON PROTECTION
The organizations' focus on protecting themselves is also evident in the "Risk Management Manual" put out by FIPG, Fierberg says.

Among its 80 or so pages are sections dealing with the role of various fraternity officers and policies on hazing and drinking.

But the most tell-tale section of the book, Fierberg said, is one called "Crisis Management Plan," which instructs members how to act in the event of an emergency.

Among the instructions is one directing members to immediately close the house and limit outgoing phone calls if a tragedy occurs.

"Do not discuss the situation until the National Representative, chapter advisor, or housing corporation president arrives," the manual reads. "Instruct your members to make no statements to anyone other than fraternity/sorority officials.

"As the president, you make any appropriate statements to the media after the situation is under control and you have discussed the content of your statement with school and fraternity/sorority officials and have been given permission by the National Office."

There is even a section on what to do if a member becomes ill or dies and another if a member attempts suicide.

"Only with the permission and instructions of your National Office should you call the family to offer sympathy on behalf of the chapter," it says.

The brothers of Phi Kappa Tau seem to have followed at least some of the manual's recommendations when dealing with DeVercelly's death.

After news broke of the pledge's death, fraternity members said they were told not to talk to the media, instead issuing a statement through the national office. A representative of the national chapter was dispatched to Rider to help deal with the crisis, and the house was closed.

The risk manual, which the FIPG site lists as under revision, can be found on numerous college, university and fraternity Web sites nationwide.

DEATHS RESULT IN JAIL TIME
But given the history of fraternity-related deaths, it is little wonder that the organizations are concerned with managing the risk. There has been at least one fraternity-related death every year since 1970 except last year, according to Hank Nuwer, a Franklin College professor who tracks fraternity hazing incidents.

In previous fraternity-related deaths, members faced criminal charges resulting in jail time and national chapters and universities have been hit with civil lawsuits totaling millions of dollars.

In Callahan's death, 15 Lambda Chi Alpha members were indicted on hazing charges, eventually completing a pretrial intervention program. Callahan's mother Jane settled a civil suit with the fraternity for nearly $400,000.

In 1995, Princeton University was sued by a student who had been drinking at student eating clubs and fraternities off campus before climbing atop an NJ Transit train and grabbing hold of a metal device that connects the train to the wires above.

The resulting 11,000-volt shock cost the student both legs and part of his left arm. His lawsuit named several parties, including the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and the university and was eventually settled by all parties for $5.7 million.

In 2004, a Miami-Dade County jury awarded $12.6 million to the parents of a drunken University of Miami freshman who drowned swimming across a lake in a swim organized by two members of Kappa Sigma. The suit was later settled for a confidential amount.

And in February 2005, Matthew Carrington, a pledge in the Chi Tau fraternity at California State University at Chico died during a pledging ritual that involved drinking gallons of water while exercising in a cold basement.

In that case, prosecutors filed felony charges and four Chi Tau members received sentences ranging from 90 days to a year in jail.

LIABILITY LOOMS LARGE
Experts say that, like those cases, the potential liability in a death like DeVercelly's is enormous.

"In a civil situation it comes down to 'foreseeability,'" said Mitch Crane, a former judge in Pennsylvania and a staunch anti-hazing advocate. "If this is an activity that resulted in an injury, not only is the organization that delivered the activity responsible, but anyone who had the authority to oversee it would be responsible if they could foresee it."

Crane said depending on the outcome of the investigation, Rider University itself could face liability because it is a private institution.

Officials at the university have said they cannot address the circumstances surrounding DeVercelly's death or potential ramifications because of the ongoing investigation.

To begin to deal with the fallout from the tragic death, the university has established a presidential panel charged with reviewing policies on campus related to drinking and fraternities. The panel is made up mostly of university faculty and administration and is set to begin meeting this week. Officials said the panel's recommendations should be complete before the end of the semester, sometime next month.

Faced with similar tragedies, reactions from universities and fraternities throughout the nation have been varied.

At Rutgers, officials shuttered the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and banished it from campus. At Princeton, where a student was hospitalized after a 1990 fraternity drinking party, students were punished, but officials could do little to the fraternity as the Greek letter organizations operate independently of the university.

Fraternities themselves also have taken on the dual problems of hazing and binge drinking. Faced with the risks involved, at least one national fraternity has gone alcohol-free and another has abolished pledging altogether.

At Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y., the site of two fraternity-related deaths including one highly publicized hazing incident in 1978, a panel similar to the one formed at Rider recommended abolishing the Greek system completely.

What will result from DeVercelly's tragic death is unknown. But what is sure, Fierberg and others say, is that until the system is reformed and hazing and alcohol abuse are curtailed, the laid-back freshman from Long Beach will not be the last to die.

"All of this is a secret until the parents get a call that their son or daughter is dead," Fierberg said. "Unfortunately, most parents don't find out until it's too late."

Pike's Keep on Keeping On Gets Them Gone

U. Florida fraternity suspended following party
By Jessica Dasilva

The Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity has been suspended from the University of Florida with loss of its recognition through the end of the spring 2011 semester, a decision released from the Dean of Students Office on Monday states.

The fraternity, also known as Pike, was found guilty by Gene Zdziarski, UF's dean of students, of hosting an unregistered party Feb. 2 and committing actions "with disregard to the possible harm of an individual or group."

Pike has 10 days to appeal the decision. Patrick Duffey, Pike's acting president, said he plans to. The appeal will go to Ainsley Carry, the assistant vice president for student affairs, who is the last person the case can go through before it leaves UF's jurisdiction.

"If the sanction was reasonable, we wouldn't be complaining," Duffey said. "If it was something we could live with, we would set it down."Duffey said one of Pike's reasons for appealing is a lack of due process. With a deliberation that lasted three hours longer than it was scheduled to and that included the advising of Paige Crandall, associate dean of students, and Chris Bullins, director of sorority and fraternity affairs, Duffey said he doesn't think Pike received a fair trial.

"I think the best thing you could compare that to is if any individual was on trial for a crime, and the jury left for deliberations, and the judge and prosecutor followed them into the prosecution room," Duffey said.

Pike was originally sentenced to two years' suspension by the Greek Judicial Board after a seven-hour meeting that ended in the early morning hours of March 2.

According to a letter sent to Pike, Zdziarski modified the punishment because Pike failed to "accept responsibility for, or to acknowledge the seriousness of its conduct."

Zdzdiarski also cited Pike's history of misconduct as a reason for extending the board's recommended suspension."There has been a recent pattern of behavior that is concerning to me," Zdziarski said.

"The board did a good job, but it's my job to make sure (the sentence) fits the level of consistency for the nature of the behavior that took place."
Pike's problematic history began with a suspension in 1999 after it was found guilty of hazing and other offenses that happened at a party.

According to a letter sent to Pike in 1999, the hazing charge included an incident when pledges were forced to wear nothing but jockstraps. Then members threw ice water, sand and garbage at them for several hours.

Pledges were also fed unidentified foods that made several of them vomit.
The suspension lasted through summer 2002 but didn't deter Pike for long.

In another letter from December 2002, Pike was suspended through fall 2003 for hazing and alcohol-related charges.

Pike was also asked to revise its constitution, bylaws and new member education program to curb any future hazing incidents.

However, two years later, in December 2004, Pike was placed on social suspension through the end of fall 2005, meaning it was forbidden from hosting events on- or off-campus, regardless of whether the events were official. Pike was charged that year for the same accusations they now face.

The decision states that if the fraternity re-registers with UF in 2011, it must pass several reviews of its chapter policies about alcohol, chapter bylaws and new member recruitment practices and education program.

Duffey said he would meet with members of the Alpha Eta Housing Corp., the company that owns the Pike house, on Wednesday to discuss its response to the decision.

Fraternity President as "Godfather"

(This interesting commentary was sent to us by our friend "Asclepius")

How to Be a Fraternity President: As Learned from Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather”

A year ago, before returning for my sophomore year of college, I bought a movie on the recommendation of a friend. The movie was “The Godfather”, winner of the 1972 Academy Award for Best Picture and, as I would find out later, a guide to life. I watched it the first time, awestruck for three hours as the highs and lows of the Corleone Family played out before my eyes. But, on the second, third, and fourth viewings, I kept picking up on the little things that make it such a great film. I began to view the movie, not only as a masterpiece of American cinema, but as a guide to running a fraternity. As I came back to school in the fall, I began to draw parallels between running the most powerful Sicilian crime family in New York and operating a successful college social fraternity. I began to model my own behaviors after Don Corleone; in a much more legal way, of course. What follows are some of the lessons I have learned from my favorite movie of all time.

“Never let anyone outside the family know what you are thinking.”
     -Don Corleone to his son Santino, after speaking up in a meeting with Sollozo

In the early part of the movie, the Corleones meet with Virgil Sollozo, an aggressive narcotics smuggler looking for political protection. Corleone objects to his proposal on ethical grounds despite its lucrative payoff. When Sollozo tries a last ditch effort to convince the Don, Santino speaks out of turn, seeming excited about the deal. Sollozo sees this as dissension within the ranks of the Corleone Family’s leaders, and attempts to assassinate the Don, hoping that Santino will make a deal once he assumes control of the family. Sollozo saw the weakness and attacked it, when he otherwise would have moved on or tried to find protection elsewhere.

In this case, the “family” is the executive board of the fraternity. Within the confines of an exec board meeting, debate and disagreement are valued. You need a variety of opinions and points of view in order to make an educated decision as president. Debate facilitates reason, and reason usually leads to better ideas, plans, and actions from the exec board. However, when you meet with the chapter as a whole, you must present a united front and support the decision the president has made. If the VP of Programming and Recruitment openly dispute a decision supported by the President, VP of Member Development, and the Chaplain, the brothers in the fraternity will detect this as weakness. Once this weakness is sensed, decisions about the direction of the chapter lose their legitimacy, validity, and acceptance by the chapter at large.

“Their aides sat behind them, the Consiglieres up close so that they could offer any advice when needed.”
     -The peace meeting of all the Dons in America, Chapter 20

Every man, no matter how wise, needs an advisor. It seems the more powerful a man becomes, the more important his advisors become. As president, you must have a strong consigliere, an advisor or counselor. To quote Socrates, “the wisest man is the man who knows how much he does not know”. This means Don Corleone knew his weaknesses and complimented them with an appropriate consigliere. A consigliere is often just as important as the man who pulls the strings. The don is the muscle end of the family; the decision maker that leads the way. A “yes man” of a consigliere is no help; one needs an advisor strong enough to oppose the don, providing a counterpoint, or even to play devil’s advocate from time to time, in order to make sure an informed decision is made every time.

My consigliere (yes, I call him that to his face) happens to be my VP of Finance and my best friend. We get along and are best friends, but we truly compliment each other. I like to be the visible leader and a decision maker. I speak well and often, and I like my presence to be felt when I am in a leadership role. My consigliere is more reserved. He does not like the spotlight or the burden of decisions; he has assured me he prefers the position of right-hand-man rather than leader. But I can always go to him for advice and receive an honest opinion. He will call me out when I am out of line, when no one else will; he will prick my conscience from time to time, pointing out mistakes that others ignore. I value that boldness in people, because true friends can tell you when you are wrong. He is the constant voice of reason that prevents me from crossing the thin line from strong leader to tyrant. When faced with a tough situation, my consigliere’s advice is always sought before I take action. My AVC president is also a close consigliere, providing an experienced, alumni viewpoint.

“Allow a man to “make his bones” before trusting him with the family business.”

In the hierarchy of the Corleone family, there is the Don and consigliere, followed by his caporegimes, under which are many “button men”, who in turn are in charge of many young hoodlums who have only loose affiliations with the family. In order to move up the hierarchy and earn oneself more responsibility, one first had to “make his bones”, or prove himself through a job. This job often consisted of “knocking someone off” or another important action in the family’s interest. This was meant to test a man’s loyalty to the family, his competence in working the family business, and his willingness to do what is necessary for the family. Once a man “made his bones”, he received more important responsibilities and higher pay from a part of the family’s earnings. Also, it was understood if something happened to him, his family would be taken care of in his absence.

In SigEp, identify young talent and potential for leadership in your new members and call on them to perform a small job, like a chair position or organizing a small event for the fraternity. If he “makes his bones”, you can trust him with more important tasks, moving up him up the ranks to exec board or even groom him as your successor as president. Considering Sigma Phi Epsilon’s badge and it symbolic skull and crossbones, one can interpret “make his bones” as waiting for a brother to go through the Epsilon Rite of Passage/Rite of Initiation. Once a brother earns his badge over his heart, only then has he “made his bones” and with it, the trust to perform important duties to the chapter.

“A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.”
     -Don Vito Corleone to his godson, Johnny Fontane

Despite his ruthlessness as a business man, the Don is very traditional in his views of the family and personal life. In fact, the reason these seemingly ordinary men get into their business is to protect their families, make a better life for their children, and a refusal to go through life with someone else “pulling the strings”, or living by another’s rules. As a brother in Sigma Phi Epsilon, we usually take on the mentor role of “big brother” to a younger brother in the chapter. Do not take this responsibility lightly, for you can never underestimate the role that a good mentor can play in a young man’s life. Young men are full of energy and drive. However, it usually takes the mentorship of a “big brother” to provide focus and guidance in these challenging college years.

This particular quote is my favorite from the Godfather. It constantly reminds me of my responsibility to those having prior claim upon my substance. I’d like to think that SigEp and the Balanced Man Program have made me the man I am today. However, before my college years in the Balanced Man Program, I was part of mom and dad’s own version of the BMP for the better part of 19 years. They made me the man I am today and, I thank them every day for raising me to be a good person. The Balanced Man Program just put on the finishing touches, smoothing out all the rough edges. Make sure you spend quality time with your family, because they do not need an oath of obligation to remind themselves how much they love you.

I will never be part of the Corleone crime family, but following these guidelines, I have been a more effective leader for my “family”, Ohio Iota.

Campus Tragedy Never Forgotten

Hearts still mending, 20 years after sorority tragedy
By Errol Castens

The first dogwood blooms and greening grass decorated the early spring afternoon two decades ago as about 50 members of the University of Mississippi's Chi Omega sorority chapter made their annual fundraising trek along State Highway 6.

That Thursday was the kind of day you might want to remember forever, if the circumstances had remained idyllic.

"For those of us closely involved, March 26 never loses its significance," said Mary Ann Fruge, who was Tau Chapter adviser when tragedy struck that day in 1987.

For Dr. Thomas J. "Sparky" Reardon, his life was forever marked by the moment. "It was probably one of the toughest things I've ever had to deal with," recalled Reardon, then Ole Miss' associate dean of students.

"It's one of those indelible times in your life. There seems to be a special clarity about it."

As in previous years, the Chi O's had begun their walk-a-thon for the Kidney Foundation of Mississippi at the McDonald's restaurant in Batesville, taking turns walking and riding toward their house on the University of Mississippi campus, 23 miles to the east.

But this time, tragedy lay in wait just a few miles shy of home.

Robert Lee Davis of Senatobia was towing a hay baler eastbound on the highway. His white Ford flatbed truck overtook the walkers and the blue Nissan Maxima that served as their escort. Although he was reportedly within the speed limit and could see several hundred yards ahead, Davis crashed into the Maxima, and both vehicles plowed into the line of walkers ahead.

The injured screamed in pain, the uninjured in horror.

To this day, the memory is so harsh that survivors contacted by the Daily Journal chose not to speak about it.

Retired teacher Ellen Wright was one of the first motorists to arrive after the disaster. She told the Oxford Eagle in a report from that day, "It looked like somebody had taken a handful of toys and threw them up in the air and strewed them everywhere.

"Wright raced with a friend to nearby Williams Antiques to call for help in that pre-cellphone era.

C.L. Keen, who had waved at the women as they passed his house just minutes before, went to help and found himself mostly helpless.

"I couldn't do anything," he recalled days later as he talked with a Commercial Appeal reporter. "I'll tell you what I would have given $100 for a wet towel, just to bathe their faces.

"Two young women died on the scene.

Several survivors were taken to Oxford-Lafayette Medical Center, now Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi, and some reportedly went to a hospital in Jackson.

Those injured worst were taken to Regional Medical Center in Memphis. Before another day came and went, three of them would die.

Today, friends of all these students are starting to buy reading glasses and look for the occasional gray hair, but Margaret Gardner and Robin Simmons of Tupelo, Elizabeth Gage Roberson of Greenwood, Ruth Hess Worsham of Corinth and Mary Pat Langford of Atlanta are forever young.

In Tupelo, Margaret Gardner and Robin Simmons are forever remembered by a home for girls that bears their name, The Gardner-Simmons Home.

Anne Cochet was working at Dr. Glenn Hunt's obstetrics clinic in Oxford less than a block from the hospital when they heard a mass of sirens."He put his instruments down and told me he was going to be gone," she said.

"All the doctors in town were called in.

"Dr. L.G. Hopkins was one of them."We didn't keep count of the injured; they came pouring in," said the now-retired general practitioner. "Every physician who was in town responded, and we just took care of people until they were all taken care of."

Cochet phoned her husband, who pastors College Hill Presbyterian Church, and met him at the hospital.

"We saw people experiencing great anguish," the Rev. Alan Cochet said. "It was also a time when we saw people asking very hard questions what, why, how that come in the midst of tragedies like this."

I was personally blessed by the tender pastoral care that I saw from other pastors and the campus ministry people, loving and listening and praying and comforting seeing Christ in the midst of the crisis."

Back at the Ole Miss campus, officials including then-Chancellor Gerald Turner started phoning the families of victims, both dead and alive.

As if things weren't frantic enough, the campus' phone lines went out."

Down in the Delta, someone had (accidentally) cut major telephone cables," recalled Dr. Judy Trott, then-dean of students. "We couldn't give any information out (to the media) until we had notified the families, and it took them five or six or seven hours to get the phone lines fixed."

Roughly a third of the Chi-O's had been on the walk. The others gathered at their sorority house, shocked and grieving.

"Total hysteria spread when we found out there were over two fatalities," said DeDe Dunlap, then a Chi Omega from Ridgely, Tenn. "I didn't know how to feel at first."Trott maintained her presence at the Chi O house.

"The girls didn't know what to do, either," she admitted. "I did what I could to keep them calm, reassure them that everything was being done that could be done."

As word spread of the tragedy, expressions of sympathy and support began appearing both locally and from across the nation.

Keen, who lived near the wreck site, erected five white wooden crosses at the scene, giving people a place to focus their grief.

A permanent stone marker stands there today, started by a $200 donation and a challenge from a local businessman.

"Flowers kept coming in and coming in," Trott said. The Chi Omega house filled with them. "Finally I had to call the florists and ask them to stop bringing them."

Reardon, who also provided an adult presence at the sorority house, was one who spent much of the night arranging a memorial service first planned for Fulton Chapel, then moved to the Tad Smith Coliseum to accommodate an estimated 4,000 people who would attend.

By the time the memorial began at noon Friday, "There was a program, there was an organ, there was a program printed," he recalled.

"Gerald Turner was really wise to bring us together at that point. "The chancellor, who was also a professor of psychology, warned students that adrenaline had sustained them thus far, and that when the shock subsided they must not let down their support for those most affected.

"We must provide a loving, supporting community for those who have been touched by this tragedy," he said. Paraphrasing William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he added, "You can, you will and you must endure, and then you must prevail."

Prevailing would take a while. With funerals for four of the five victims being held on Saturday and Sunday, it was a somber weekend on campus.

Then-ASB President Nancy Horton apologized for the quiet atmosphere to the more than 500 visitors who had come for the usually raucous Spring Visit Weekend. A few fraternities and sororities previously had scheduled dances but found them subdued. The annual Greek Games were canceled."What was so profound and surprising was the ripple effect of how it affected students who did not know the girls at all," said Susan Eftink, then a counselor in the Department of Student Development and now a professor of social work.

By Sunday after the wreck, a crisis counseling team arrived from the National Organization for Victims Assistance, a group that had been born in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a California McDonald's.

"Within those first few days, there were so many students who needed help," Eftink remembered. "Then we found we needed to work with the EMTs and people at the hospital, then people in the community who knew no one involved: It brought up past losses that they'd had. We tried to provide services for the whole community.

"The clergy continued their work as well. In 1987, the Rev. Duncan Gray III, now bishop of the Mississippi Diocese, was rector at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Oxford.

"People deal with traumas in different ways," he recalled last week. "I listened to a lot of stories of friendships." One complication, Gray said, was guilt and confusion heaped on survivors.

"A lot of them were dealing with things that had been said right after the accident that this was God's will and that it was a sign for people to get their lives together pretty quickly," he said.

It took a summer break before Ole Miss was its normal energetic self again.

"The whole campus, for the rest of the semester, didn't feel right," Eftink assessed.

Dr. Jean Jones, then director of student development at Ole Miss, told the Daily Mississippian a few days after the tragedy, "We are all victims in some way of this horrible event, but we are getting things in place so that we can go on with our lives."

Freemasonry and Phi Beta Kappa

An interesting article with some history of the first Greek Letter Society.

Masons might well take a closer look at their cousins, the Greek-letter fraternities. These and sororities in the United States owe their origins, at least indirectly, to Freemasonry. This is because the very first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, was heavily influenced by the Craft: "...Thomas Smith belonged to the Williamsburg lodge before joining Heath as one of the five Phi Beta Kappa founders. Smith served as the first clerk of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and became its president on May 3, 1777. Nine other members of the society joined the Masonic lodge during the next year."
[...]
Today there is too little connection between Masonry and the world of fraternities and sororities. Like the Masons, the Greeks find that the profane world with its problems has intruded into the temple, even into the Phi Beta Kappa temple. And like the television comedian who drew laughs in implausible situations by complaining about not getting respect, the Greeks have suffered at the hands of the profane.
[...]
While the frat house on the local campus or the graduation ceremony awarding Phi Beta Kappa keys are far removed from Freemasons meeting in Virginia taverns in the 18th century, they nevertheless are descendants of those brothers, and we strongly suspect that on at least some occasions the conviviality, if not the ritual, might recall those distant forbearers.

The Scottish Rite Journal

BMP vs Traditional Chapters - An Old Story

Posted by Euripedes for Dr. St. John

The posting below was sent to the then executive director as a solution to the two track system that Sig Ep developed. My comments were the result of an article that I wrote and published in 1987 regarding the four year programming concept that was immediately copied by Pi Kappa Alpha in their national publication. Frank Ruck and I talked extensively about the concept. He added the "nuts and berries" as we called the concepts from the men's movement and the result was the Balanced Man Project which became the Balanced Man Program we have today.

From: RStjohn@UTNet.UToledo.Edu
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 4:07 PM
To: vauclain@sigephq.org
Subject: BMP vs Traditional

Jacques,
Several years ago I suggested that the fraternity was like two trains on separate tracks heading for the same station. I have strong feelings about the good in the BMP and strong feelings about what we are now calling traditional chapters and quality programming. Now it appears we are on crossed tracks heading for collision.

I was the person in 1987 that began the four year programming concept for Sig Ep. I researched several other major fraternities and found that none of them had any such quality programming. I developed that programming for Sig Ep [and presented it at several Regional Leadership Academies (now Carlson's)].

I was the district governor assigned to the strategic programming committee at the conclave that recommended going forward with the concept that Frank Ruck had presented, and I was in the discussion at the retreat with the board where Bill Tragos and I ferreted out the idea of the Balanced Man in front of the board and selected participants. I was also one of the five people who were asked to react to the original BMP and stated where I thought it would have implementation problems.

All that to say, that I have walked the road to where we are now.The communication on SigEpnet is showing clearly how divided we are as a group. If there is any way that I can be of service to you to end this debacle before we self-destruct, please let me know. I am sorry to use so many "I's" in the communication because it is not my desire to add to Rick St. John's laurels. I am here to serve if wanted, if needed, if you feel I can help to end the debate.

Rick St. John

As I said then and have continued to say now, we easily could be speaking the same language and terminology if we had begun to call the stages of development in traditional chapters - Sigma Phase, Phi Phase, Epsilon Phase, Neophite Phase. By now we would have assimiliated our programming so that, in essence, we would not still be a two program operation.

Richard St. John