peatedly, young Richard Swanson failed three times to down his
piece. Determined to succeed, he finally got the oil-soaked meat into
his throat where it lodged and, despite all efforts to remove it, killed
him.- Punishment. In Wisconsin, a pledge who forgot one section of a ritual
incantation to be memorized by all initiates was punished for his er-
ror. He was required to keep his feet under the rear legs of a folding
chair while the heaviest of his fraternity brothers sat down and drank
a beer. Although the pledge did not cry out during the punishment,
a bone in each of his feet was broken. - Threats of death. A pledge of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity was taken to a
beach area of New Jersey and told to dig his “own grave.” Seconds
after he complied with orders to lie flat in the finished hole, the sides
collapsed, suffocating him before his prospective fraternity brothers
could dig him out.
There is another striking similarity between the initiation rites of tribal
and fraternal societies: They simply will not die. Resisting all attempts
to eliminate or suppress them, such hazing practices have been phenom-
enally resilient. Authorities, in the form of colonial governments or
university administrations, have tried threats, social pressures, legal
actions, banishments, bribes, and bans to persuade the groups to remove
the hazards and humiliations from their initiation ceremonies. None
has been successful. Oh, there may be a change while the authority is
watching closely. But this is usually more apparent than real, the
harsher trials occurring under more secret circumstances until the
pressure is off and they can surface again.
On some college campuses, officials have tried to eliminate dangerous
hazing practices by substituting a “Help Week” of civic service or by
taking direct control of the initiation rituals. When such attempts are
not slyly circumvented by fraternities, they are met with outright
physical resistance. For example, in the aftermath of Richard Swanson’s
choking death at USC, the university president issued new rules requir-
ing that all pledging activities be reviewed by school authorities before
going into effect and that adult advisers be present during initiation
ceremonies. According to one national magazine, “The new ‘code’ set
off a riot so violent that city police and fire detachments were afraid to
enter campus.”
Resigning themselves to the inevitable, other college representatives
have given up on the possibility of abolishing the degradations of Hell
Week. “If hazing is a universal human activity, and every bit of evidence
points to this conclusion, you most likely won’t be able to ban it effect-
ively. Refuse to allow it openly and it will go underground. You can’t
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 67