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I just saw Goat. A film about fraternity hazing. The dialogue was spare. The torture, frequent.
I was lucky. I never pledged a fraternity. I remember my freshman roommate coming home from hazing. He said they locked the pledges in a basement room, bags over their heads, listening to a tape of a baby crying all night. I’m sure that was just the start of it all. He slept for a day when it was over.
“Is it really worth it?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “But I guess that’s just how it is. And then we get to do it to the freshman next year. Get our revenge.”
That drunken malaise is a broken record in Goat, breaking these young men down into subservient beings (aka pledges).
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My roommate was a tall, legacy student, who loved gangster rap and held conservative political views at a largely liberal college. He was a perfectly nice guy—he probably still is. But joining he became cool, or at least in, with a particular crowd. The athletes. At a Division III school like mine, the athletes really weren’t all that special, but they still carried the strong force of the legacy of popularity from high school. And you could tell they were having a lot of sex at drunken parties. Which was appealing to an 18-year-old boy like me, if a little scary.
Goat captured that experience well. The younger brother, trying to join his older brother’s frat, finds himself quickly ‘hooking up’ with some ‘random’ girl on a Wednesday night while partying, but he commits the cardinal sin of saying “I think I love you,” as they begin to have sex, which entirely freaks her out.
That drunken malaise is a broken record in Goat, breaking these young men down into subservient beings (aka pledges). It’s what you might imagine, but worse. At least for me, because I know that could have been me. Especially the main character. His hair was down to his shoulders, like mine was in high school. He’s kind and sensitive. But he wants to be one of the guys too. And to be one of the guys, at this school, you needed to be in a frat. As his roommate told him, to paraphrase—“If we don’t get in, we’re nothing. We couldn’t go to any other parties. We couldn’t show our face around campus.” The frat is everything.
What in the world could create a culture that would motivate men, boys really, to do this to each other?
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And in nearly every scene they drink. They are forced to drink, sometimes beer, usually hard alcohol. Don’t be a pussy. Drink. After a few drinks, not only is good judgment and helpful inhibition gone for the pledges, but for the “brothers” doling out the commands, any notion that they are not a sergeant, or for that matter, a slavemaster, is gone. No one’s worried about injury, or alcohol poisoning, or free will. You signed up for this! Because if you didn’t, you’d be a loser, for life.
I had a friend who moved away after eighth grade with his family. He was a small kid, very smart. And I remember he could do 100 crunches, because he was a wrestler. I didn’t keep in touch with him in high school, but my second week of college I saw his name on a flyer. Some students, who were protesting the presence of frats at our school, had copied an article about a kid who had died during hazing for a frat. They had made him drink until he couldn’t drink anymore. And then they made him drink more.
What in the world could create a culture that would motivate men, boys really, to do this to each other? Why would anyone want to prove their manhood, if it amounted to this shit? There is a sickness to adolescence that some people grow out of buy many don’t. The feeling of chronic insecurity, of learning that life is a competition, and we all have something to prove. In other words, insanity.
When I was watching the film I felt an invisible wave of gratitude pour over me, from the back of my neck, up over my scalp, down on my shoulders, into my chest. Gratitude that I did not have to go through this torture, that I was just okay enough with not being popular, that I didn’t believe I could ever really fit in with frat boys. That I didn’t go to a big party school. That I was still alive and had survived the minefield of insecurity that is adolescence and young adulthood.
So much of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood is about fitting in, but what if we didn’t have to? Then pledging a fraternity, or trying to prove we’re men, or drinking more than we want to…well there is no motivation for such non-sense. I wish I could get in touch with my childhood friend and say, “You’re brilliant, funny, a good person. Do your own thing. Just be yourself.”
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Photo: Getty Images
I think the point the writer missed, which the critics and praise seem to miss, is that teens and young adults are drinking and pressuring each other and themselves to the point of ridiculousness, arrest, and even death – regardless of it falling under the label of Greek life. Greek life is a red herring.
OMG you poor soul. My heart goes out to you. Such angst and turmoil you must have suffered. I pray for your soul and human spirit. I can not understand your level of pain. I was born into a blue collar family. Once I got to a state college I was a mis-fit GDI )God dammed independent…not frat worthy. So I went to Vietnam for 3 tours of duty. My job was search and rescue. Saved a few but mainly at 18/19 yrs. old I bagged up a few but mostly cold bodies. I do have a problem understanding your… Read more »
I had a buddy in ‘Nam that when have back couldn’t keep a job to save his life. He was always being told how serious it was if quality control of plastic lids in containers wasn’t just right. Then he’d flip out about how serious hiding in a slough with snakes and leeches apparently didn’t count as serious compared to plastic lids. Lol! Totally out the dude. Never forgot him. He was a mess for quite awhile. And now we’re talking fraternities and hazing. Gotta laugh really.
Oh good. An article about fraternities from someone who has never participated in a fraternity.
Empathy (and decent journalist) comes from understanding. Understanding does NOT come from a movie called “Goat”.
I first pledged a high school sorority that wasn’t yet about drinking, but it was about embarrassing and demeaning pledges and then it moved on to silly tea parties. Didn’t think I’d do it again in college, but a senior on my swim team wanted me for her “daughter,” and I was in need of a big sister, being very naive in a huge school. “The pledging was definitely nonsense, but my “mother” kept an eye that no one was too tough on me. The girls running the nonsense clearly loved acting TOUGH and punitive if you weren’t obedient. I… Read more »
Thank you for sharing this story.
Powerful lesson, Brian. Thanks.
Great. You saw a film. Bfd. You didn’t pledge. I restarted my frat colony on my campus. And so proud of what we did. 16 brothers. Community service was a big deal to us. So was drinking. Bfd. It was the 70s. . THE oldest frat in the country. The absolute first. We as a colony decided we would not haze. No seats. No branding. We were progressive in thought. In the late 70s we were the pussy frat. We didn’t care. We know what was right. Many others followed. You speak from a hearsay of information from one source,… Read more »
Mr. Schwartz is well within his right to post the story on the website and hazing is a problem http://www3.babson.edu/student-life/community-standards/hazing/Pages/hazing-facts-and-myths.aspx
Don’t like his story, the file a complaint with GMP to get it removed.
One of the most insightful observations about “greek” culture came from a young woman I met in college who explained why she was disinclined to join a sorority: Sororities put this huge emphasis on “girlish-ness”. In the way they talk, behave, tag Facebook photos – it’s always “Tri-Delt Girls”, “Chi-Oh Girls”. I’m sure that it can be fun, but I’m a woman now. I’ve moved on. Fraternities aren’t so different, in my experience. You get a bunch of young men reveling in boyhood, an integral part of which is proving that you are a man. It also manifests in language;… Read more »
Some of them. My brothers became leaders. One a Navy flight wing commander. Another an army colonel. Another, my little brother, a president of one of the biggest credit unions in the country. Another a civil rights lawyer. Another a head now of a big auditing firm. And NONE OF US had familial pull. Not one of us. I’m so goddamn tired of listening to the progressive snowflakes and their whining. Frat boys. Sorority sisters. Yes, some are a real trip. But look past them to others who have character. They’re all around. I have 16 Direct Brothers who are.… Read more »
Lot of whining from a conservative snowflake like you.
And that’s just plain snide that adds nothing.
And by the way is more of a personal attack and I have no clue why your posts aren’t deleted as such.
You plain snide adds nothing and you are do personal attacks as well and your posts should bet deleted as well. As I have stated before, you don’t like it filed a compliant with the GMP.