I am indebted, most of all, to my wife, Ricki Morell. I am blessed to share my life with a brilliant journalist and editor. She spent countless hours on the manuscript, pushing me to rewrite and refusing to let me send it before it met her high standards. She has taught me much of what I know about writing—not to mention life, love, and the proper use of the semicolon.
JOHN HECHINGER, a senior editor at Bloomberg News, was a 2011 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service and a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for his reporting on education. Before joining Bloomberg in 2010, he was a senior special writer at the Wall Street Journal, where he focused on education and finance. A graduate of Yale University, he lives near Boston with his wife and daughter.
NOTES
I spent more than two years reporting and writing True Gentlemen. I visited college campuses in ten states and interviewed scores of students and fraternity alumni. I reviewed thousands of pages of documents from public-records requests and court files and visited university and Sigma Alpha Epsilon archives for historical materials. I attended SAE gatherings, including the fraternity’s biennial conventions and annual leadership school. Some of the reporting has its roots in a series of Bloomberg News articles about fraternity deaths that I wrote with my colleague David Glovin and which appeared from March 2013 through March 2014. I did much of my additional reporting for this book during the 2015–2016 school year. Although firsthand reporting informs most of the book, I benefited enormously from the excellent work of historians, sociologists, and journalists who have written articles and books about fraternities. I’m also indebted to the work of campus reporters who have long been the first line of inquiry into student organizations.
Introduction
I attended Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s John O. Mosely Leadership School, convened aboard the Royal Caribbean ship Majesty of the Seas, from August 2 to August 7, 2015.
$3 billion in real estate: See Sean P. Callan, “The Chapter House Rules; How Corporate Structure Can Handcuff a House Corporation,” Fraternal Law 122 (Cincinnati: ManleyBurke, November 2012), p. 3, at http://fraternallaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Fraternal-Law-Newsletter-November-2012.pdf.
eight hundred US campuses: For these and most of the other statistics about membership and members, past and present, I relied on the North-American Interfraternity Conference.
About 40 percent of US presidents: The North-American Interfraternity Conference counts Bill Clinton, who is an honorary member of Phi Beta Sigma, a historically black fraternity. Clinton also belonged to a service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega at Georgetown University. See http://nicindy.org/about/notable-fraternity-alumni/political-leaders.
2014 survey: “Fraternities and Sororities: Understanding Life Outcomes,” Gallup-Purdue Index, February 4–March 7, 2014, at http://products.gallup.com/170687/fraternities-sororities-understanding-life-outcomes.aspx.
60 percent of all donations: Response to public-records request, April 2016.
just above toxic-waste dumps: “FIPG Risk Management Manual,” January 2013, p. 2, at http://fea-inc.org/Websites/fea/files/Content/5454667/FIPG_MANUAL.pdf.
One in six men: This is my estimate. The North-American Interfraternity Conference counts 380,000 members. About 2.4 million men attend four-year universities (both public and nonprofit) full-time, according to US Education Department data. No one can be entirely sure about changes in fraternity market share over time because fraternity statistics haven’t always been tabulated reliably. One book placed the high-water mark in the 1920s, at almost 12 percent of undergraduates: Clyde Sanfred Johnson, Fraternities in Our Colleges (New York: National Interfraternity Conference, 1972), p. 89. Heather Matthews Kirk, a spokesperson for the Interfraternity Conference, told me the group has kept consistent data for the last ten years. Her survey of editions of Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities, the bible of the movement, places the modern record at 401,460 in 1990, up from 195,712 in 1981.
36 percent of students: University of Alabama website: http://ofsl.sa.ua.edu.
336,000 brothers: Figures on initiates and information about members, as well as discipline of chapters, are from Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s website, at www.sae.net.
claims the distinction: Brandon E. Weghorst, ed., The Phoenix: The Manual of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (Evanston, IL: Sigma Alpha Epsilon, 2012), p. 152.
ten people died: Examining news reports, court records, and interviewing officials, my colleague David Glovin put together a database of more than sixty fraternity deaths from 2005 through 2013. See David Glovin and John Hechinger, “Fatalities in Michigan Spotlight Deadliest Fraternities,” Bloomberg News, January 31, 2014, at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-31/fatalities-in-michigan-virginia-spotlight-deadliest-fraternity.
Chapter 1: Drinking Games
To reconstruct George Desdunes’s final night and morning, I relied on the voluminous record of the investigation into his death. These sources include the 580-page transcript of the trial of three students accused and later acquitted of hazing Desdunes: New York v. Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, Max Haskin, Ben Mann, and Edward Williams at the Tomkins County Courthouse in Ithaca, New York, May 21–23, 2012. I also relied on documents related to the Desdunes family’s civil case against the fraternity: Marie Lourdes Andre v. Sigma Alpha Epsilon et al., New York Superior Court, Kings County, filed September 7, 2011. The case file includes records related to the police and prosecutors’ investigation, including witness statements, text messages, and forensic records. Unless noted, quotations are from trial testimony, depositions, or statements to authorities.
twice the legal limit: I used the Cleveland Clinic’s online blood-alcohol content calculator. See www.clevelandclinic.org/health/interactive/alcohol.asp. If Desdunes, who weighed 170 pounds, drank nine ounces of 80-proof (40 percent alcohol) liquor in half an hour, his blood alcohol would have been .15 percent.
Built in 1915: Information about the house, its history, and its members is from the chapter’s website, at www.sae-cornell.org/public6.asp.
In December 1776: For history of Phi Beta Kappa and the Kappa Alpha Society and the early social fraternities, see William Raimond Baird, Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities, vol. 9 (Menasha, WI: G. Banta, 1920), pp. 4–7.
the “collegiate revolution”: Roger L. Geiger, The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 365.
“well-known drinking bout”: Nicholas L. Syrett, The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), p. 156.
“fiery flavor of sin”: John Addison Porter, Sketches of Yale Life (Washington, DC: Arlington Publishing Company, 1886), p. 225.
At Ohio’s Miami University: Walter Benjamin Palmer, The History of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity (Menasha, WI: G. Banta, 1906), p. 231.
SAE’s birth in 1856: For the early history, I relied on a 1,500-page, three-volume history of SAE by one of its most important leaders: William C. Levere, The History of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, vol. 1 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Sons, 1911), p. 25.
Pale and with brooding gray eyes: See William C. Levere, “The Life of Noble Leslie DeVotie,” serialized in the SAE Record from 1906 to 1910, in the Levere Memorial Temple library, Evanston, Illinois. See also Nancilee D. V. Gasiel, “Rediscovering DeVotie,” SAE Record, undated.
mediocre students and troublemakers: Landon Cabell Garland letters, University Libraries Division of Special Collections, University of Alabama, boxes 636–638. DeVotie grades exceed 96, while others were in the 70s.
“tended only toward evil”: Ibid.
a stormy day with choppy seas: William C. Levere, “Death of DeVotie,” SAE Record 30 (1) (May 1910).
seventy-seven cases of beer: Alex Hickey, “IUPD Raids SAE Party; President Arrested,” Indiana Daily Student, February 5, 2002.
apocryphal story: Members tell many versions of the
Paddy Murphy story. See Cole Garrett, “Legend of Paddy Murphy,” May 2015, USC Digital Folklore Archives, at http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=29677.
One of the movement’s fiercest advocates: For the life of William Levere, I relied on Joseph W. Walt, The Era of Levere: A History of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, 1910–1930 (Evanston, IL: Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, 1972).
David Starr Jordan, another teetotaler: Syrett, The Company He Keeps, p. 177. Syrett also provided me with archival documents from his research at Stanford University.
equivalent of $6 million today: The Phoenix: The Manual of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, 2012, p. 182. The building cost $400,000 when it was dedicated in 1930.
“underage drinking clubs”: Simon J. Bronner, Campus Traditions: Folklore from the Old-Time College to the Modern Mega-University (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), p. 246.
“Kegs, party balls, beer trucks”: “FIPG Risk Management Manual,” p. 2.
College Alcohol Study: Henry Wechsler and Toben F. Nelson, “What We Have Learned from the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 69 (2008): 481–490. See also Henry Wechsler and Bernice Wuethrich, Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses (New York: Rodale, 2002).
minors drinking themselves unconscious: University of California at San Diego, disclosed in public-records request.
more than 130 chapters: Sigma Alpha Epsilon website, 2010–2016, “Chapter Health and Safety History,” at www.sae.net/2013/pages/resources/2013-parents-chapter-risk-management-history.
falls from windows and porches: Caitlin Flanagan, “The Dark Power of Fraternities,” Atlantic, March 2014, at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-dark-power-of-fraternities/357580.
surpassed all others: John Hechinger and David Glovin, “Deadliest Frats Icy ‘Torture’ of Pledges Evokes Tarantino Films,” Bloomberg News, December 30, 2013, at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-30/deadliest-frat-s-icy-torture-of-pledges-evokes-tarantino-films.
became easier to sue: For discussion of liability and fraternities, see Kerri Mumford, “Who Is Responsible for Fraternity Related Injuries on American College Campuses?” Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy 17 (2001).
sixth-worst risk: “FIPG Risk Management Manual,” p. 2.
national fraternities came up with a strategy: See David Glovin, “Frats Worse Than Animal House Fail to Pay for Casualties,” Bloomberg News, March 28, 2013, at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-28/frats-worse-than-animal-house-fail-to-pay-for-casualties. See also Flanagan, “Dark Power of Fraternities.”
Lee John Mynhardt, a senior at Elon University: Glovin, “Frats Worse Than Animal House.”
“risk-management” policies: Ibid. See also Flanagan, “Dark Power of Fraternities.”
Marie Lourdes Andre, Desdunes’s mother: For the heartrending account of a mother’s discovery of her son’s death, I relied on Michael Winerip, “When a Hazing Goes Very Wrong,” New York Times, April 12, 2012.
The court sealed the proceeding: Ibid.
confidential settlement: April 23, 2017, e-mail from Clark Brown, SAE general counsel.
Cornell Alumni Magazine: “Fraternity Man,” Cornell Alumni Magazine (November–December 2010), at http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=894&Itemid=9.
Barnum, the president of the chapter, and his parents sued: Eric Barnum, Mark Barnum, Sally Barnum v. Lloyd’s, London et al., New York State Supreme Court (2015), 153485/2015.
Chapter 2: Broken Pledges
In December 2013, I interviewed Justin Stuart for more than five hours, first on the campus of the University of Maryland and then several more times by phone. To document his account, David Glovin and I tried to speak with every fraternity member who could have been a witness. None of the pledges who joined would comment. A pledge who chose not to join, Max Kellner, confirmed much of his account of what happened during the first night in the basement. Stuart provided us with copies of text messages from members that confirmed his account. His father offered e-mails that detailed correspondence with the college administration. Through a public-records request to Salisbury University, we obtained scores of pages of records detailing Stuart’s report to the school and to the campus police. The disciplinary board backed his account. Some of the reporting for this chapter originally appeared in Bloomberg News: John Hechinger and David Glovin, “Deadliest Frat’s Icy ‘Torture’ of Pledges Evokes Tarantino Films,” December 30, 2013, at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-30/deadliest-frat-s-icy-torture-of-pledges-evokes-tarantino-films.
“fagging”: Hank Nuwer, Wrongs of Passage: Fraternities, Sororities, Hazing, and Binge Drinking (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 100, 123, 238.
fraternities favored “tubbing”: Nicholas L. Syrett, The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 151–153.
“The practical joke is war…”: G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin, “The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and the Comic,” American Journal of Psychology 9 (Worcester, MA: Clark University, 1897–1898), p. 23. See also Michael Kimmel, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), which contains an excellent chapter on fraternity hazing and its use to enforce a certain vision of masculinity.
“horseplay” or “rough house”: Syrett, The Company He Keeps, p. 152.
an entire issue of the Record: I examined decades of issues of the SAE Record, SAE’s magazine, and the Phoenix, its pledge manual, at the library of Levere Memorial Temple, SAE’s headquarters, in Evanston, Illinois.
University of Maine survey: Elizabeth J. Allan and Mary Madden, Hazing in View, College Students at Risk: Initial Findings from the National Study of Student Hazing (Collingdale, PA: Diane Publishing, 2009).
“developed ‘pledge ass’”: Charles M. Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), p. 176.
blindfolded and forced to wear a backpack: Rick Rojas and Benjamin Mueller, “Defiant Baruch Fraternity Pledge Fought Back in Fatal Hazing,” New York Times, September 15, 2015.
shocked them with a cattle prod: Stephen Keller, “Former Fraternity Leaders Sentenced,” Daily Texan, April 29, 2008.
“Brown Bag Night”: John Hechinger and David Glovin, “Cal Poly Brings Back Freshman Pledging After Lobbying,” Bloomberg News, October 15, 2013, at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-10-15/cal-poly-brings-back-freshman-pledging-after-lobbying.
a litany of hazing: Josephine Wolff and Matt Westmoreland, “In the Hot Seat: Hazing at Princeton,” Daily Princetonian, April 25, 2010.
kiddie pool full of vomit: Andrew Lohse, Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2014), p. 69.
consistency of “black leather”: Carrie Wells, “Hazing at Maryland Colleges Includes Humiliation, Coercion, Hospital Trips,” Baltimore Sun, November 22, 2014.
Chapter 3: Sexual Assault Expected
I attended Ethan Turner’s criminal trial on Friday, February 12, 2016, and from Tuesday through Thursday, February 16–18, as well as his sentencing on Thursday, April 7. The account of the SAE party and its aftermath relies primarily on court testimony. I also examined records related to the trial and criminal investigation, including statements by Ivan Booth and Evan Krumheuer. Through his lawyer, Turner declined comment. I was not able to secure an interview with Chaz Haggins. I interviewed his mother, who provided details about her son and told me she believed her son was innocent. I met Gabriela at the courthouse and later interviewed her by phone in February 2017. I offered to use a pseudonym, but she said she preferred to use her real name. After Turner’s sentencing, I spoke with Gabriela’s parents, who provided more details about her life both before and after the party.
most likely to be sexually assaulted in her first months: “Factors That Increase Sexual Assault Risk,” National Institute of Justi
ce, October 2008, at www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/campus/pages/increased-risk.aspx.
sexual assault represented 15 percent of liability losses: Mick McGill, vice president, client advocacy, Willis Group, August 12, 2011, presentation, claims 1998 to present.
one and one-half times more likely: Christopher P. Krebs et al., “The Campus Sexual Assault Study,” National Institute of Justice, October 2007, p. xv.
three times the risk of rape: Meichun Mohler-Kuo et al., “Correlates of Rape While Intoxicated in a National Sample of College Women,” Journal of Studies of Alcohol 65 (January 2004): 41.
indisputable link between alcohol and… sexual assault: Krebs and Lindquist, “Campus Sexual Assault Study,” p. ix.
one in five women: Christopher P. Krebs et al., “Campus Climate Survey Validation Study Final Technical Report” (Washington: Bureau of Justice Statistics Research and Development Series, January 2016), p. 73.
Stanford student named Brock Allen Turner: Liam Stack, “Light Sentence for Brock Turner in Stanford Rape Case Draws Outrage,” New York Times, June 6, 2016.
“No means yes”: Sam Greenberg, “DKE chants on Old Campus Spark Controversy,” Yale Daily News, October 14, 2010.
“luring your rape bait”: Janel Davis, “Georgia Tech Disbands Fraternity Responsible for ‘Rapebait’ E-mail,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 4, 2014.
members cheered on pledges: Tess Bloch-Horowitz, “On Living in Fear of Telling the Truth: My Experience with SAE, Retaliation and Title IX,” Stanford Daily, May 20, 2015.
“Freshman daughter drop off”: Elisha Fieldstadt, “Old Dominion University’s Sigma Nu Frat Suspended During Probe into Sexually Suggestive Signs,” NBC News, August 25, 2015, at www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/old-dominion-universitys-sigma-nu-frat-suspended-during-probe-sexually-n415056?cid=par-time-article_20150824.
“when I rape you”: “NC State, Pi Kappa Phi Decry ‘Unacceptable and Offensive’ Book,” WRAL.com, March 20, 2015, at www.wral.com/nc-state-fraternity-placed-on-interim-suspension-after-embarrassing-scary-book-found/14528066.
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