After the pictures and accounts of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib surfaced, Rush Limbaugh opined that the incident wasn't torture or a human rights violation, but merely “sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun.” Leaving Mr. Limbaugh's questionable equivocation aside for the time being, our out-of-control domestic judges are now fulfilling Rush's prophecy and charging four fraternity members with torture for a case of hazing gone bad.
At Chico State, Matt Carrington, a 21-year-old a pledge in the already de-chartered Chi Tau fraternity died during "hell week" after being forced to consume gallons of water and engage in physical activity. The fraternity brothers were initially charged with hazing and involuntary manslaughter, but Judge Robert Glusman recently insisted on adding the charge of torture, which carries a potential term of life in prison, on the grounds that, “U.S. soldiers were charged with torturing Iraqi prisoners for doing far less than what happened in that basement.”
The Chi Tau "Hell Week" does not seem like a pleasant experience that most people would choose to endure. According to the San Francisco Chronicle,
pledges were told they would spend their nights sleeping in concrete bunkerlike holes, where the windows have no glass, it was so cold they could see their breath and graffiti on the walls told them they were less than men if they quit,
One night the pledges were told to do strenuous physical exercise in 2-3 inches of raw sewage. Another night, they did it in the freezing cold. The night that Mr. Carrington died, brothers watched a movie and asked the pledges trivia questions, and told them do push ups and consume large amounts of water when they answered the questions incorrectly. Mr. Carrington collapsed while doing push ups and died two hours later of water intoxication.
Besides the grueling hazing, there are many reasons why many people would not want to join the Chi Tau chapter at Chico State. The fraternity had already lost their charter two years earlier, so they weren't even an official Greek organization. Of the four students charged with torture in the incident, one is 25 and two aren't even students. I can't imagine joining that type of fraternity. In fact, I don't know anyone who would pledge a fraternity when they were already 21 years old. Nonetheless, Mr. Carrington was an adult who chose to do all those acts in his own volition.
What both Judge Glusman and Mr. Limbaugh fail to recognize is the difference between what is voluntary and what is coerced. This distinction may seem minor to judges and talk radio hosts, but it is what distinguishes murder from suicide, rape from seduction, slavery from employment, theft from charity, and torture from hazing.
While I am not condoning what happened at the Chi Tau fraternity house, even if it was voluntary, it seems to be less sadistic than what happened at the prison. According to the suppressed internal investigation into the prison, the activities of the prison guards included,
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
More importantly, those who had these abuses inflicted upon them were not there by choice. They were picked up off the street and forced to endure the brutality of the American prison guards. They couldn't just walk out and leave the jail, nor did they consent to the mistreatment so they could join a club with the soldiers. It should also be noted that not all of the victims at Abu Ghraib committed "crimes against the coalition." Many were common criminals, and even suspected insurgents who were later exonerated.
In contrast, Mr. Carrington voluntarily consented to the abuse. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Carrington would have never been allowed to join Chi Tau had he tried to walk away from the abuse he endured," and that "Of five pledges who had hoped to join the fraternity, only Carrington and Quintana made it through u2018Hell Week' and into the basement." In other words, he was free to leave and not join the fraternity anytime he wanted. Three of his fellow pledges did exactly that, and decided that being a member of the fraternity was not worth putting up with the hazing and left. No one stopped them. They may have "told them they were less than men," but in no way were they coerced.
Was the hazing in the Chi Tau basement stupid, dangerous, and irresponsible? Yes. People do stupid and dangerous things every day. I can't imagine why anyone would voluntarily get in a boxing ring against a heavy weight boxer, base jump off a sky scraper, or jump 100 over a gulch on a speed bike, but many people do these acts and sometimes they die. No one suggests that the fault lies with anyone besides those who chose to take such risks.
While at the College of William and Mary, I was in a fraternity. My junior year, one of our pledged walked out of a pledge meeting while he was being hazed, and then decided to drop out of the process all together. No one stopped him from doing anything. He told the administration what happened and our fraternity lost its charter. It will be brought back in 2008 and filled with the people who couldn't get into a fraternity la the Tri Lams in Revenge of the Nerds. Within a year or two, they will be hazing again. This happens to a fraternity almost every year at William and Mary and at almost every college campus with a Greek system in the country. Despite the best efforts of the national chapters and the university administrations, hazing still is pervasive within almost every fraternity at every school.
I'm not writing this because I think that hazing is a positive social good, but simply that it happens to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of students each year, it's not going to go away anytime soon, and only very rarely does a tragedy like the one at Chico State occur. The reason is a combination human nature, the fact that it's a long established tradition, and most of all because you have a bunch of post-adolescents with no responsibility and their parents' money while attending colleges where they can graduate in five years while barely attending class. Although I have never heard of a fraternity that made their pledges consume gallons of water, almost every single fraternity that I know of has their pledges do large amounts of strenuous physical exercise under unpleasant conditions. Despite what I'm sure most Greeks would say, this could have happened at almost any chapter at any school.
What happened to Mr. Carrington was tragic, but at the end of the day it was his choice to make stupid decisions, and no one else should bear any legal responsibility. I can sympathize with his family, because hundreds of thousands of other fraternity members like me all consented and participated in similarly stupid and irresponsible decisions with few, if any, consequences, but I can also sympathize for the four fraternity members who may spend the rest of their lives in prison for the exact same reason.
August 26, 2005
