“Although I’m pretty much past it by now, I do see what he’s going through,” Burford said. “I even thought about emailing him to tell him I’m rooting for him.”
Both Burford and Lohse came forward to the media about the incidents of hazing they said they underwent during their pledge terms at SAE. Burford pledged the fraternity as a freshman but dropped before he officially became a brother; he told his story to The Daily Princetonian a year later in April 2010. Lohse, on the other hand, joined his chapter as a sophomore — Dartmouth freshmen cannot rush — and continued on to become “Pledge Manager” before speaking with Rolling Stone in March.
While Greek organizations are officially recognized and regulated at Dartmouth, the Princeton administration does not recognize fraternities and sororities. Similarly, Dartmouth has had a long-standing ban on freshman rush while Princeton’s analogous policy will take effect on Sept. 1.
Though both say they had similar experiences at SAE, their aims in whistle-blowing are diametrically opposed. Lohse said in an interview with the ‘Prince’ that by whistle-blowing he hoped to begin a discussion that would eventually lead to de-recognition of fraternities and sororities while Burford said that by telling his story he sought to push the Princeton administration to recognize Greek life.
Lohse said he would have liked to see Dartmouth’s Greek organizations replaced with co-ed social houses. Burford said that by recognizing Greek organizations Princeton could reduce incidences of hazing.
Considering the impact of Lohse’s and Burford’s stories together allows for a broader evaluation of the impact of recognition and a freshman rush ban on hazing. If true, Lohse’s allegations demonstrate that at Dartmouth, neither recognition of Greek organizations — which Burford had hoped Princeton would consider — nor a ban on freshman rush — the policy the University administration recently approved — would necessarily eliminate or even reduce the severity or frequency of hazing incidents.
Lohse accused Dartmouth’s celebrated Greek system, to which roughly half the student body belongs, of sustaining a culture that promotes nihilistic hazing, assault and abuse. He provided detailed accounts of his perverse and noxious hazing experiences in an opinion piece in Dartmouth’s student newspaper, The Dartmouth, in January. This received a vastly hostile response from both his peers — who continue to angrily attack his claims in online comments — as well as the Dartmouth administration, Lohse said.
“The Board of Trustees would never let anything serious happen to [Greek life] since many of them were involved in Greek life as undergrads,” Lohse said. “At Dartmouth in particular, there’s a lot of denial about what goes on. We all know what happens, but we need to accept that and decide how to change it.”
Ironically, Lohse said he and the other pledges were forced to sign no-hazing contracts to the administration on one of the first nights of the hazing process. “It’s all very Orwellian,” he said.
According to Wes Schaub, Dartmouth’s director of Greek letter organizations and societies, Dartmouth responded to Lohse’s allegations with a “thorough investigation” of the fraternity, he said.
“[Dartmouth’s SAE chapter] was found responsible for some of the charges, and they have a list of sanctions that they have to complete, which include an internal review process and [oversight in] rewriting their new member education program,” Schaub explained.
While Lohse only came forward after performing some of the very acts of hazing he was reporting, Burford pledged SAE during the fall of his freshman year but dropped in order to avoid having to haze future students. His interview with the ‘Prince’ marked the first time that serious hazing allegations at Princeton had been made public since fraternities returned to campus in the 1980s.
“It was interesting to know that people are doing the same things at other Ivy League schools,” Burford said about the accusations Lohse brought. “When he [revealed his story] up at Dartmouth, the administration was on the side of the Greek organizations.”
Indeed, Dartmouth’s Undergraduate Judicial Affairs Office dropped all 27 initial charges against its SAE chapter. Charges are pending against the entire organization.
On the other hand, Burford said he felt that Princeton’s administration was much less supportive of Greek life than Dartmouth was when he filed his accusations two years ago.
“Whenever I went around to talk to President [Shirley] Tilghman or other administrators, I got the impression that they didn’t like Greek organizations and were waiting for an excuse to kick them off campus,” Burford explained.
Until deciding to implement the ban on freshman rush this spring, however, the University had not made any policy changes concerning hazing or Greek Life. At the time of Burford’s exposure, Tilghman told the ‘Prince’ that she considered fraternities and sororities “antithetical to Princeton’s educational mission” and that she was considering banning them, recognizing and regulating them or continuing the current policy of nonrecognition.
Burford and Lohse both said that in their experiences multiple pledge brothers were hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, and students violated both university regulations and state law in various ways during the pledge process.
These instances at Princeton and Dartmouth are not the only times SAE has been involved with hazing controversies within the Ivy League in the past few years. In February 2011, Cornell sophomore and SAE member George Desdunes died of alcohol poisoning after an alleged hazing incident.
Cornell, which recognizes Greek organizations and follows a delayed rush policy in which freshmen can only rush in their spring semester, derecognized its SAE chapter for at least five years after the incident.
Lohse said he believes that this trend in SAE may be related to the institutional culture of the national fraternity.
“SAE is one of the older, more prestigious national fraternities,” Lohse said. “The idea of elitism and the true gentleman might seem to build into the hazing — it did at the Dartmouth chapter.”
On the other hand, Burford said he did not know if the excessive hazing was specific to SAE.
“SAE chapters at different universities don’t really talk to each other, so it’s not like there’s a single, overriding culture at play,” Burford said. “The national SAE organization puts on a big show of being really anti-hazing — their website’s homepage was an anti-hazing slogan for a while — but they don’t really carry through on their message.”
Representatives from the SAE national headquarters did not respond to requests for comment.
Universities affected by such excessive hazing have taken measures, of varying effectiveness, to address this problem — namely, banning freshman rush and reconsidering official recognition of Greek organizations.
Princeton’s ban on freshman Greek involvement is being implemented at least in part to address hazing concerns, according to University Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee ’69.
“We heard testimony from lots of people that the longer you’re here, the more capacity you have to make decisions for yourself as to whether you’re going to participate [in hazing activities] or not,” Durkee noted. “Peer pressure is particularly intense when you’re new on campus. The freshman-year prohibition was to make sure that any students who might have to cope with the question of hazing would face those questions after they had been here for at least a year,” he explained.
But Dartmouth’s long-standing ban on freshman rush, on the other hand, is unrelated to hazing concerns, Schaub said.
“Our process of deferring recruitment doesn’t have anything to do with hazing,” Schaub said. “Everyone likes that first-year [students] aren’t going through the recruitment process and that they have time to get to know each other and get adjusted to college.”
While Dartmouth does not allow freshmen to participate in the recruitment process, it does officially recognize 16 fraternities, 9 sororities and three co-ed houses — though other unofficial Greek organizations also exist — which, in theory, gives the College the authority to regulate hazing practices.
“[Recognition] is a two-way street,” Schaub said. “The institution has to offer things [such as housing] that students find attractive to want to maintain that recognition. Institutions also have to be careful, because sometimes removing recognition doesn’t really get rid of an organization.”
Schaub explained that sometimes de-recognition only serves to clear the rules that an organization would have to follow without limiting its influence on campus.
“That organization can then do much more harm to the campus and the community in general, because there are no controls,” he said.
As a result of the possible unintended consequences of de-recognizing a fraternity, Schaub believes that “removing recognition should be the last straw.”
But Lohse said he does not think de-recognizing Greek organizations would make hazing worse, calling this argument “flawed thinking.”
“If de-recognition is a last resort [as Schaub said], then it’s time for the last resort now,” Lohse said. “When is the moment to [fall back on] the last resort — when someone dies? Or do we go to the last resort when we’ve identified that it’s a problem? It’s a problem — we can’t deny that anymore.”
His proposed solution to Dartmouth’s hazing involves creating co-ed social houses instead of “these highly sexualized, really gross spaces,” he said. “I don’t think we would have hazed others or gone binge drinking if women were present. Co-ed reform is a realistic target.”
The co-ed social houses that Lohse suggests bear some similarities to the eating clubs that Princeton currently offers, since the eating clubs are independent organizations with facilities recognized by the University.
Since Princeton does not recognize Greek organizations, the school does not have the tools to discipline them, which allows the type of hazing Burford described to proliferate without regulation. But the lack of regulation also means that Greek organizations lack housing or University affiliation in any way, which generally means fraternities and sororities have a smaller influence on campus social life, Durkee said.
“The likelihood of recognition happening at Princeton is exceedingly low,” he explained. “For almost 30 years now there’s been concern on the part of the Trustees about the role of Greek organizations at the University. I think there would be very little support for recognition. At this point, most of our focus is on the recently adopted policy regarding freshman-year rush.”
Correction: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this article misstated the current disciplinary status of 27 SAE members and the organization. The hazing charges against students were dropped by the Dartmouth Undergraduate Judicial Affairs Committee. Charges are still pending against the organization. The 'Prince' regrets the error.
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