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Fraternity Hazing and the Process of Planned Failure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2016

ALDO CIMINO
ALDO CIMINO*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

American fraternities have long engaged in hazing, subjecting their prospective members to curious and painful ordeals. Many fraternities also appear to incorporate planned failure within their inductions: near-impossible tasks where failure is punished with hazing. This paper provides evidence for the widespread use of planned failure in fraternities, describing its application in a modern hazing fraternity and presenting evidence of planned failure in other fraternities using interviews and decades of scholarly and non-scholarly accounts of hazing. Discussion is focussed on possible explanations for the existence and persistence of this ostensibly core feature of fraternity inductions.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 214 - 236
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

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2 This is an operational definition and not a claim about the “true nature” of hazing. Indeed, the hypotheses explored in this paper suggests ways in which hazing may be group relevant to fraternities. That said, hazing has attracted the attention of academics and policymakers because it appears unjustified and in need of explanation. This definition is an attempt to demarcate the induction practices that prompt such first-order intuitions.

3 See review in Cimino, Aldo, “The Evolution of Hazing: Motivational Mechanisms and the Abuse of Newcomers,” Journal of Cognition and Culture, 11 (2011), 241–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 These are common features of pledge books. See Alan Winthrop Johnson, “A Survey and Evaluation of Pledge Training in Three Undergraduate Social Fraternities for Men,” master's thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 1941.

11 My agreement with Alpha requires that I withhold certain aspects of their hazing practices, including the specifics of the nauseating food fed to pledges.

12 Two interviewees not included here are worth noting. One appears to have been at least mildly hazed (he noted that he had to clean and run errands for actives). Though he seemed somewhat hesitant to discuss his induction, he stated nothing that directly indicated planned failure as part of his mild hazing. Another interviewee was from the same fraternity as Steve, and thus his inclusion would have been redundant. Like Steve, he indicated significant planned failure, noting that it was present in “pretty much everything” in his fraternity's induction.

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