Colgate Kicks Out Fraternity for Hazing (for reading poetry to hazees?!)

AP ^ | 11/21/03 | AP

[shhrubbery!]

Colgate Kicks Out Fraternity for Hazing

ASSOCIATED PRESS

HAMILTON, N.Y. (AP) - Colgate University has kicked a fraternity off campus because of hazing new members, college officials said.

The Kappa Delta Rho chapter house in Hamilton, 45 miles southeast of Syracuse, will be closed at the end of the semester.

In the first reported incident, about 11 p.m. Sept. 24 off-campus in nearby Eaton, Madison County deputies reported finding a group of men in a field, some blindfolded and others reading poetry to them. College officials said it was preceded by underage drinking.

Two weeks later, the university placed the fraternity on two years' probation and barred alcohol consumption in the fraternity house. At a second campus conduct hearing this month, members admitted they hazed new members, including restraining them in a locked boiler room, forced them to stay up all night, humiliated them and dropped them off at remote locations.

"It was a very conscious decision on their part to resume the hazing," college dean Adam Weinberg told The Post-Standard of Syracuse. "They didn't have any desire to change. That's what's most disturbing."

The fraternity has about 60 undergraduate members, 23 living in the house who will be moved to university housing next semester.

"People are really upset around here today," said one fraternity member, who asked not to be identified, at the house Thursday.

Following an 18-year-old student was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning during a hazing incident last year, Colgate suspended Beta Theta Pi fraternity for several semesters.

In 2001, Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was shut down for a year for serving alcohol to the driver in a crash that killed four people.

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[shhrubbery!]

Hmmm, this is the first time I've heard of poetry reading as hazing. Sounds like a pretty punishing ordeal though.

[Moose4]

Hazing? If the poetry was by Amiri Baraka, it's a felony.

}:-)4

[raybbr]

Or Maya Angelou? That would be cruel and unusual.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Ping. :)

I trust you'll smile over this.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Not over the hazing, of course.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

You know what this can lead to.

[Soaring Feather]

Smile indeed!! Well, they could have picked a more pleasant surrounding than an open field.

Oh well, they were probably "Three Sheets to the Wind" anyway!!

:-)

[Jim Noble]

Underage drinking at a Colgate fraternity?

Oh, horrors!

Of course, when I went to Colgate in 1968, the drinking age was 18 and so was I.

Hamilton, NY in the winter offers little better for entertainment than continuous drinking. So, after the ill-advised rise in the drinking age to 21, what are the poor undergrads supposed to do? Lick icicles?

[TheBattman]

I think you missed the "underaged drinking" part.

I do have a real problem with the "hazing" rules as they have been enforced. I can totally understand the problem that exists with underage drinking ans well as some pretty violent behavior by some fraternaties.

The problem is, some behavior classified as "Hazing" is really just pranks that do not present any real danger. I shudder to think of the activities when I pledged that would now get a fraternity booted from a college - yet I never complained. I didn't complain because there was never any harm or danger. Certainly, I was kept up all night a few times, taken on blindfolded "adventures" and generally run through the wringer - but it was all in fun - and I would not undo any of the experience.

Go after those that beat the pledges, go after the ones who force-feed alcohol to pledges, go after those who otherwise cause real harm. But leave the harmless games alone....

[cinFLA]

Hmmm, this is the first time I've heard of poetry reading as hazing.

You missed the part about underage drinking ....

[ghost of nixon]

I remember poetry being a part of my college fraternity experience - but the poetry was all in the form of limericks chanted out loud at drinking parties.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Perhaps it was Vogon poetry?

[mountaineer]

Probably haiku, although listening to it while intoxicated would have to be an improvement.

[Darksheare]

I hope they weren't reading VOGON poetry to them.
Doug Adams would have found that vastly amusing.
And I am amused as well.
Thanks!

[Poohbah]

12 posts for the Vogon poetry reference. FReepers, we're slipping...

[snippy_about_it]

Oh my! Drinking and then being read poetry. Yikes.

[KDRaiderofthenight]

We were reading sections of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance." And the danger to passing motorists? We parked on the side of the road in a perfectly legal way. When the cops came, they didn't even ticket us for the parking, to show how safe it was.

The administration has exaggerated/left out important details about the charges that make the fraternity look worse than it actually did. And about not wanting to change? we offered them a plan that involved complete membership review, and national fraternity representatives overseeing all chapter operations for the near future. Getting rid of the fraternity makes no positive difference on the campus, and that is what we are most upset about.

[KDRaiderofthenight]

oh yeah, and the staying up all night? they were never forced to be awake, and when they were awake, they were usually playing pool or video games with older brothers, getting to know them better.

[uglybiker]

They were read several verses from: "Ode to A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in my Armpit one Mid-summers Morning".

It was reported that one cadidate was able to survive the ordeal only by gnawing his own leg off.

12 posts for the Vogon poetry reference. FReepers, we're slipping...

Only cuz I found it late.

[Jonah Hex]

"Poetry, well written, can be a spiritually uplifting experience. Badly written, it can be an experience of buttock-clenching horror.

The third worst poetry in the universe is written by Vogons, and frequently used as a form of torture.

The absolute worst poetry was written by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings. It involved decaying swans. Luckily, it was destroyed during the demolition of the Earth."