Tufts University has suspended all social activity at its fraternities for the rest of the semester after receiving several allegations of hazing and sexual misconduct in recent weeks, administrators said.
The university has launched “multiple investigations of several Greek organizations” and issued cease-and-desist orders to four fraternities, administrators wrote in a campuswide e-mail sent Friday. Spring recruitment for sororities and fraternities has been voluntarily suspended.
The article that pulled the lid off . . .
CW: extreme sexual,
physical, and gendered violence, explicit sexual content
A
previous version of this article named Tufts University Fraternities where
incidents of bias
and assault took
place. In order to protect the identities of our sources—whom we don’t want to
identify to protect their safety on a small and insular campus—we have decided
to take the names of these fraternities out of the
article.
Tufts tour guides
will tell you that fraternities
at Tufts are different, they are full
of nice
guys, and are nothing
like frats at state schools.
Yet, I know a woman who was
sexually assaulted at a fraternity formal and a trans person who was called a
faggot by brothers as they walked down Pro Row. I know people who have been
turned away from parties because they weren’t blonde, White women, and someone
whose rapist was protected by his fraternity for over a year, until it was
discovered that he had over five pending assault cases against him. I know
people who have had to bear witness to parties that openly mocked their
marginalized identities.
Fraternities have,
and will continue to be, hotbeds for campus violence: racialized
violence (Tufts fraternities historically denied
Black students entry), sexual violence (fraternities protect rapists under the
guise of brotherhood), gendered violence (foundational to fraternities is misogyny),
and physical
violence (the hazing that I and countless others
experienced can be categorized as assault).
Fraternities claim to be
founded on values like “brotherhood” and “loyalty” and “trust,” but in reality
are institutions rooted in White supremacy, queerphobia, heterosexism, and
transphobia.
For these reasons, Tufts
needs to follow the path of the other NESCAC schools and abolish
fraternities—once and for all.
(I should note that in this piece, both because of my own
direct experiences and because it’s impossible to cover everything wrong with
fraternities in one article, I will focus on how fraternities at Tufts objectify
women, reinforce compulsory heterosexuality and cisheteropatriarchy, and enact
physical abuse on people during pledging.)
~~~
My first year of Tufts I
rushed a fraternity. The majority of my friends were White cis women, most of
whom had just joined sororities. I hadn’t found community yet, and while I had
friends—even mentors—I felt like I needed something else. I was seeking
validation in all the wrong places. So instead of investing in my
already-established relationships, in my clubs and interests, I decided to join
a fraternity. I wanted to be included in an organization and a system that I had
previously thought would never accept me. I wanted approval from the men who had
rejected me all my life. And, they wanted me too! My queerness became a token
status for the straight brothers, a way for them to seem progressive and
accepting.
I joined what was supposed
to be one of the “good” fraternities, one with nice guys and low-key
parties—only now do I realize there is no such thing as a good
fraternity.
~~~
The first night of pledging
I was blindfolded and brought into a basement of an off-campus house where I
took a shot of what I think was Fireball and then was welcomed to the
brotherhood. That night was supposed to be a “fun night;” it wasn’t when the
“real pledging” began. I had to serve brothers beer and get to know their names.
Then, they brought two women—neither of whom were Tufts students—into the
basement, who proceeded to disrobe and have sex with each other on a mattress on
the basement floor while we were all told to watch. When I asked to leave, I was
told I could step towards the back but couldn’t exit the basement. I was
pressured to stay, and too afraid to defend myself. Forcing someone to watch sex
acts can be categorized as assault under Tufts policies.
I stood there watching
18-year-old boys perform oral sex on these women. I watched as they were told to
see who could bring one of the women to orgasm first. I watched on the outside,
often turning my eyes away, horrified and disgusted, standing next to seniors in
the fraternity enraptured by the scene, standing next to Tufts alumni who had
returned to this off-campus basement to watch this “tradition.” I stood there
knowing this would be the last night of my membership in the fraternity. If this
was the night when nothing “bad” was happening to us, I couldn’t even begin to
fathom what the rest of the process looked like. (It is important to note that a
member of this fraternity has told me that this tradition no longer takes
place.)
When it was all over and
the women left, the brothers brought us into a room upstairs. They sat us in a
circle and told us to memorize—in a moment that felt unbelievable—everyone’s
names and allergies. We weren’t allowed to leave the room until we completed
this task. They brought in a garbage can and told us if we had to pee or puke,
do it in the garbage can. We were told to name the garbage can and the other
pledges decided to name it “Mia Khalifa.” Mia Khalifa is a porn star; these boys
named a bucket of urine and puke after a woman.
I dropped the fraternity
the next morning and was warned that I could not tell anyone what I had
witnessed the previous night. And the truth is, I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t
tell anyone because within just 12 hours of being inside I had already
internalized the mentality they were trying to create. I was scared of the
brothers, scared of the house, scared of everything it represented. Within 12
hours, I was already silenced—my values and morals and beliefs already placed
behind the fear I held for these boys. After all, this was a good fraternity. I
didn’t want to ruin their image.
~~~
When I stepped into the
basement of that off-campus house that night in January of 2015, I sought
normalcy and normativity. But it took me a while to realize that even though I
thought normal meant good and right, it actually means violent, and oppressive,
and queerphobic, and there shouldn’t be anything normal about being fed shots or
forced to do homoerotic and homophobic tasks or made to eat other pledges’
vomit. There should be nothing normal about sexual assault. But, here at Tufts,
this is the norm. This happens every winter when boys rush
fraternities.
So, I have to come to the
conclusion that fraternities must be abolished. That I will not and cannot stand
to have this culture pervade my campus, a culture that propagates violence, that
enforces rape culture, that administers binaried ideas of gender, that tokenizes
and fetishizes queerness, simultaneously using it as a way to seem progressive
and as a tool of hazing. I cannot walk down Pro Row without thinking about what
has happened on that street, who has been harmed, who has been violated, who has
been abused, and how my university has continued to let this happen for over a
century because the majority of the men who join fraternities are White, because
they are often wealthy and cisgender and straight, because they are ones who
donate after graduation and fund the new buildings that seem to be popping up
everywhere these days and comprise the Board of Trustees.
Tufts should abolish
fraternities and invest in true community building, communities not founded in
violence but rather in love and shared values. First years who come into their
second semester feeling without community should be able to find it without
turning to hazing and institutions rooted in oppression.
Zeta could become Rainbow
House, which has been trying to get an independent house (instead of an
apartment) for over 20 years. DU could become a collective. 123 could become a
first-generation student center, ZBT could be a Mixed Race student center, and
Pi Rho could be an Indigenous student center. The Group of Six could become the
Group of Nine.
~~~
My narrative alone warrants
the abolition of fraternities, and so many other things happen that are just as
terrible or even worse. This should scare us. If what I went through happened in
a “good frat,” one that first years aren’t warned about, what is happening in
other frats? What is happening on Pro Row when we go to sleep and frats haze?
What have the frat brothers we all know done to each other, and done to
themselves?
I’m sure everyone reading
this has a story or a rumor they have heard about a Tufts fraternity, one they
don’t want to believe. I think it’s time we start believing the rumors, we start
acknowledging the fact that fraternities’ presence on this campus cannot be
justified, and that every time we step into a fraternity, or defend a friend’s
presence in a fraternity because they are “nice,” we are only serving a system
that has proven itself indefensible. We are beyond a point where these
institutions can be reformed. Next time you find yourself in the basement of a
fraternity on a Saturday night, I ask you think to about what happens there when
you aren’t invited.
# # #
