We would welcome the opportunity for dialogue with the Cornell administration, which unfortunately has not yet occurred. Decisions on complex, emotional issues should involve all affected, especially when organizations and events are impacted.
The problem runs deep at Cornell. It’s deeper than any one frat, deeper than any generation of students and certainly deeper than can be solved with any one action or suspension. It’s the result of misogynistic, hierarchical organizations that are themselves rotten to the core.
Prove my point a little better, I dare you. Before I had even pinned my last column (about the toxic culture that some “men only” clubs promote) to my wall of accomplishments, another fraternity fiasco rocked the campus. In case you missed it, Zeta Beta Tau was found to have held a “pig roast” for their new members, in which brothers were encouraged to sleep with as many women as possible. In the event of a tie, the guy whose conquest weighed more would win. I know this topic has been written about ad nauseum, but I’m not here to talk about how disgusting, or degrading to women, these actions are.
Welcome back to Cornell, Spring semester edition. A legion of eager freshman are undertaking recruitment for Greek organizations. Students have begun to edit their resumes in hopes of joining their dream business group on campus. Early last week, I was sitting in Libe replying to emails when I overheard a freshman sharing how eager he was to join a selective organization on campus. He shared how “incredible” the people in this organization were, how “pumped” he was to go through recruitment, and how “excited” he was to be hazed.
I’ll preface this column by stating my intentions. I’m here to attempt to calm down these masculine macho men we see too often in many of the fraternities here at Cornell, and to approach this subject through my experience with it in the Marine Corps. That’s right, I’m a jarhead. During boot camp, we were legally and illegally hazed. The specificities of my treatment are best left unsaid because quite frankly, they were disgusting and atrocious, and absolutely insane, but there was some purpose to this hazing.
There’s a moment about halfway through Andrés Muschietti’s new film It, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name, where the band of kids (“The Losers”) are discussing the monster that’s been haunting them. The monster is a being that takes various shapes but prefers that of a demonic clown, and the kids realize as they listen to each other that it has been appearing in the form of whatever they fear the most. Mike, whose parents burned to death, sees their charred arms struggling to get past a door; Eddie is a hypochondriac due to his mother’s emotional manipulation, so he’s stalked by a leper; Beverley, who has a sexually abusive father and is afraid of how the arrival of her period will challenge her father’s insistence on her remaining “daddy’s little girl,” faces a sink erupting in a fountain of blood. Finally, Richie, the comic relief of the group, is asked what he is most afraid of. In response, he pushes his glasses up his nose, shivers and mutters, “Clowns.” Rough luck, Richie.