Frat Row field
Sigma Alpha Epsilon, one of the country’s largest fraternities, eliminated pledging nationally this week after earning the title of “deadliest frat” from Bloomberg News and receiving other media criticism.
Of the more than 60 fraternity-related deaths nationally since 2005, Bloomberg found at least 10 related to hazing, drugs and alcohol at Sigma Alpha Epsilon events — more than any other group, according to an article published this month.
Effective Sunday, the national organization eliminated new-member, or pledge, programming and classification.
The new guidelines, titled the “True Gentleman Experience,” require chapters to initiate members within 96 hours of their receiving a bid, to stop pledging in favor of member education and to hold all chapter members accountable for meeting organization expectations and requirements.
Essentially, the organization seeks to prevent hazing and hazing-related deaths by removing the pledging experience from the new membership process.
This university’s chapter held its formal initiation Sunday, after the national headquarters’ mandate that all new members be initiated by Tuesday. Logan Connor, this university’s chapter president, said the date came more quickly than anticipated but wasn’t much of a paradigm shift.
“It wasn’t a huge difference for us,” the senior government and politics major said. “Our process was already focused on bettering them and making them into men. It’s just that now they’re not new members — they’re full brothers.”
The national organization cited a “number of incidents and deaths” and hazing-related chapter closings as motivations for the change. Chiefly, the move came after complaints to national headquarters about damage to the fraternity’s reputation, the fraternity’s website said.
“It was crystal clear to them that chapters were doing things antithetical to their founding values,” said Matt Supple, director of the university’s Department of Fraternity and Sorority Life. “They recognized that they needed to have a radical change.”
The fraternity is not the first to ban the pledging process nationally, Supple said, adding that Phi Sigma Kappa, Zeta Beta Tau and Sigma Phi Epsilon — all of which have chapters at this university — exclude it from their membership process.
As one of the larger national organizations, Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s move could warrant more attention than previous Greek chapters’ pledging bans, Supple said.
“With SAE’s size, it could have an impact. Lots of other Greek groups who were on the fence, maybe, might look at SAE and say, ‘If they can do it, we can,’ and decide now is a good time to make a change,” Supple said. “It would be a nice national movement, if there were more organizations willing to come forward and do that.”
The fraternity, which celebrated its 158th birthday this month, has 226 chapters at universities across the country comprising more than 14,000 undergraduates and an estimated 190,000 living alumni.
In the past three years, universities have suspended or shut down at least 15 chapters, Bloomberg reported. And in December, Bloomberg described hazing incidents at the Salisbury University chapter that included forcing new members to drink until almost passing out, dressing pledges in women’s clothing and diapers and ordering them to stand for hours in trash cans filled waist-high with ice.
The fraternity returned to this university in fall 2010 after the national organization revoked its charter and the university ceased to recognize the chapter in 2004 as a result of hazing and alcohol violations. The fraternity had been recognized on the campus since 1943.
The violations were discovered after a member filed a complaint, triggering an investigation by the national organization. The hazing process included pledges lining up in dark rooms with loud music playing, The Baltimore Sun reported. Fraternity members would shout at the pledges, shove them and require them to hold physically demanding positions.
In 2001, then-junior Alexander Klochkoff was found dead on the front porch of this university’s chapter. The fraternity was not kicked off the campus, and his death was later attributed to party drug GHB.
The fraternity has been “fantastic” since its return, Supple said, adding that it is probably “atypical” from the more established chapters that have drawn national attention.
“This group just came back and was colonized by idealists looking for a true values-based fraternity experience,” Supple said. “The question would be, in 20 years when they’re established again, would they still have that same kind of unabashed idealism?”
