Fraternity Membership: A Death Wish
Membership plays a vital role in the politics of the United States. In the United States, the most successful politicians all have something in common: membership within a Greek-letter organization. These Greek-letter organizations are de facto segregated, with men finding power and exclusive membership in their all-male fraternities with women desiring membership being forced to join all-female sororities. Racial minorities often feel that they are not welcome in the mainstream majority-white fraternities and sororities, and find membership within Multicultural Greek-letter organizations. The social class structure of Greek-letter organizations represents the social class structure of American society, with white men at the top followed by white females, and racial minorities at the bottom.
In December of 2017 A.D., Centre County, Pennsylvania District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller unleashed a Grand Jury Presentment that exposed the dark power of fraternities at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). Essentially, Penn State allowed the fraternities to operate as they desired to guarantee a wealth haven for the University. Parks Miller found that members of fraternity Beta Theta Pi at one point had a racial slurs party on their porch, yelling the n-word at an African-American student walking past the house.
Another fraternity forced prospective members to drink a mixture of semen, urine, feces, and alcohol in one night of hazing. Yet young men continue to pledge these fraternities, knowing that if they get initiated and become an official member of the cult, they have a chance to yield large rewards later in their lives. The American fraternity system is a modern-day reincarnation of Dionysus and his cult and many young men will do whatever it takes to find membership within it.
In The Bacchae, Dionysus offers a chance for mortals to become something larger than themselves. Tiresias is seen as a wise old man in The Bacchae. He states that “to the gods, we mortals are all ignorant,” and dancing with them and praising them is the only path towards wisdom. But Tiresias is blinded by Dionysus’s political utopia. Michael Ignatieff states in “Conventions and Misgivings” that political utopias “are a form of nostalgia projected onto the future as a wish.” Ignatieff compares these utopias to dreams, and notes that just like dreams these political utopias “have a timeless immunity to disappointment in real life.” Dionysus rules through power-knowledge, a way in which modern administrative elites manage their institutional populations.
In The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken, Peter Euben brings up the powerful dialogue of modernization sustaining drug abuse, religious cults, alcoholism, child abuse, wife-beating, teenage suicide, and communicative mush. All of these characteristics are attributable to Dionysus and his cult, and all of these characteristics are attributable to modern-day fraternities.
Fraternity members are constantly being arrested for drug dealing, and they report higher sexual assault rates than anybody else on a college campus. Infamous pedophile Jerry Sandusky was known to be in and out of fraternity houses at Penn State. TCU student Andrew Walker committed suicide on October 25, 2018 A.D. just weeks after being arrested for hazing a prospective fraternity member. Fraternity members have Googled how to save pledges when their rituals have led to pledges becoming unconscious with alcohol poisoning, even when trained medical advisors are in the house supposedly sleeping, leading to the death of prospective members. In the eyes of Antigone, this was all prophesied long, long ago.
The 2016 A.D. film Haze alludes to fraternities being one large religious and ritualistic cult. Haze follows the hazing death at a school and the political outrage that ensues on campus because of it. The film begins with the Bacchae quote “slow but sure moves the might of the gods” also known as “though slow be its advance, yet surely moves the power of the gods.” This is spoken by the Chorus, who notes that any mortals who get in the way of Dionysus are ignorant.
Membership within The Bacchae is very much broken down into two groups: those who find membership within the knowledgeable crowd and those who find membership within an ignorant crowd. Tiresias agrees with The Chorus that those who stray away from Dionysus will be left in the crowd of the ignorant. But critics of Dionysus would much rather be ignorant than taking part in orgies and questionable rituals. Although fraternities see themselves as members of the knowledgeable and “it” crowd, critics will say that they are in fact members of the ignorant crowd who have lost all respect for ethics and morals.
A mother in Haze notes that her son Zac Green was killed in a hazing activity while pledging, the time in which Zac was attempting to win membership within a fraternity. Zac was forced to drink mass amounts of alcohol which resulted in him lying in the corner of the room unconscious with alcohol poisoning. During the hazing, Zac’s skin began to turn blue and it became obvious that he needed to be taken to a hospital, yet nobody dialed 911 and it appeared that the fraternity brothers were more worried about the house liability and future membership than they were with Zac’s life. Some members even took pictures and videotaped an unconscious Zac Green lying on the floor dying. He was then drugged out the front door by fraternity members who laid his body on the front sidewalk, which would become his deathbed.
Pete, a pledge who witnessed Zac’s killing becomes Antigone and seeks to get revenge on the fraternity members. But just like Antigone, he is blinded by his own stubbornness and cannot see that he is not much different from the fraternity members. He is high on marijuana the majority of the time that he is attempting to seek revenge on the fraternity members.
In a vocal match with Creon, Antigone announces “Your kings, led away to death. You will remember what things I suffer, and at what men’s hands, because I would not transgress the laws of heaven.” Antigone refuses to submit to Creon’s authority, and would rather find membership within her family than she would within Creon’s all-powerful state. But Antigone doesn’t become all family-oriented until Polyneices is denied a proper burial, and Pete was indoctrinated in the Dionysus cult of fraternities until he witnessed the fraternity kill a pledge.
Zac Green from Haze is equal to Polyneices from Antigone. Zac was denied a proper burial just like Polyneices and since he never made it past the pledging stage, he was never considered an official member of the fraternity. Polyneices being left outside the walls of the city symbolically shows that he never deserved membership within the state in the first place, and Zac being left outside the walls of the fraternity represents that he doesn’t deserve to be in the fraternity since he was an unsuccessful pledge.
A professor in Haze explains to a class of students that Dionysus is the god of wine, revelry, and ecstasy. Dionysus is equal to the fraternity and its initiated members. Wherever he traveled, he inducted new members into his secret, ritualistic passion cult, equal to the pledges in a fraternity. He notes that Dionysus claimed power over beautiful nymphs called the Maenads, equal to sorority sisters. Dionysus favored intoxication, ecstatic orgies, and frenzied dances as modes of worship. Pentheus, the king of Thebes, is disturbed by the deeds of Dionysus and his followers. He repudiated Dionysus’ claims of being a God and stood up to the dangers that Dionysus and his followers could pose on the rest of society. Pentheus is equal to modern-day fraternity critics who are able to prophesize the murders of pledges.
Even after the Greek tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides came to a reality when four college students were murdered while seeking membership within fraternities in 2017 A.D., young men still attempt to join these organizations. Why? In “The Dark Power of Fraternities,” Caitlin Flanagan explains that membership within a fraternity is often politically charged. When colleges attempt to shut down fraternities that have operated in illegal ways, the members often assert that “any threat to men’s membership in the clubs [constitutes] an infringement of their right to freedom of association.” Fraternities will then argue that when a member becomes a criminal, they are not acting within the vicinity of the fraternity.
In the Supreme Court case NAACP v. Alabama, it was ruled that freedom of association is an essential part of free speech due to the fact that membership in certain groups is often the only way that people are able to engage in effective free speech. It may be that certain people are too weak to express their opinions by themselves or that union workforce philosophy has crossed over to the social sector, but either way, fraternities and the voices they are able to give to individuals are not going away any time soon, no matter how many pledges end up getting murdered.
Fraternity members are always reminded to place the future of the organization over an individual, even if this individual is someone who was recently attempting to gain admission to the group, being killed in the process. When a pledge dies, a crisis management protocol gets initiated and “fraternity brothers do not attempt direct contact with the deceased’s parents,” leaving this job for lawyers and consultants (“The Dark Power of Fraternities”). Brothers often collude to keep information hidden from the victim’s family. A dead Pentheus is a useless and often problematic Pentheus. Why would members put up with this maltreatment? Because fraternities are able to act as an all-powerful Creon wreaking havoc on any Antigones who dare question their authority. Becoming a member of Dionysus’s cult yields a future as a Senator, Congressman, Fortune 500 CEO, Fortune 500 in-house lawyer, and Supreme Court Justice.
Fraternity membership is a death wish. Standing up against the fraternity is also a death wish. People who have spoken up for dying pledges have been verbally threatened and thrown against walls by villainous Creons who will do anything to ensure the longevity of the Dionysus cult. In the words of the professor from Haze, “lesson learned: don’t fuck with the gods.”
One of the fraternities who murdered a pledge in 2017 A.D. upheld the values: cultivation of the intellect, responsible conduct, mutual assistance, integrity, and trust. They would drill these values down pledges' throats along with boiled alcohol and leftover food milkshakes while paddling the pledges and performing fake brandings. On a cold winter’s night when a pledge lie dying of alcohol poisoning and these values mattered most, they would say “think about [the fraternity].” No cultivation of intellect; no intellect at all. No responsible conduct. No mutual assistance. No integrity. No trust. And no fraternity members at the pledge’s funeral.
References
Euben, J. (1990). The tragedy of political theory: the road not taken. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Euripides., & Franklin, D. (2000). Bacchae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Flanagan, C. (n.d.). The dark power of fraternities. (Cover story). The Atlantic, 313(2), 72–86,88–91.
Haze. Dir. David Burkman. 2017. Film.
Sophocles., & Woodruff, P. (2001). Antigone. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co.
