15 Super Weird Hazing Stories From Members Of Sororities And Fraternities That Left Me Speechless
A while ago, Reddit user u/Vargolol asked "Fraternity/Sorority members of Reddit, what are some of the weirdest things you had to do while you were 'hazed in' to the house?"
Hazing is a tradition in Greek life where pledges go through "initiation rituals" in order to gain acceptance into a fraternity or sorority. While many instances of hazing just involve completing weird, unusual, or challenging tasks, there are also many instances where hazing challenges are harmful or dangerous. This has led many colleges to start to investigate and ban the often problematic tradition.
The hazing rituals they experienced were quite...unique. Here are the most unusual ones:
1."We did something called 'bows and toes.' We would be berated and asked seemingly endless questions about our fraternity history, all while balancing on our elbows and toes."
2."My grandfather had to strip down to his underwear, get cooking oil poured over him, then get feathers dumped on him. Then he and the other pledges were dropped outside of town in the middle of the night and told to hitchhike back. He still laughs about it, though."
3."We were put on cleaning duty. We had to clean the fraternity house, top to bottom, after each weekly pledge meeting: trash, toilets, kitchen, dishes, and so on."
4."We often got put in team-building situations where it was us (the pledges) against the active members. There was a team-building exercise where one member was given a difficult task. We could choose to help or not to help. If we chose to help, we all had to go through whatever the difficult task was. If we chose not to help, we would be punished with wall squats for a certain amount of minutes, a certain number of push-ups, or something like that. Any other pledge could join in and take some amount of that time away by doing it themselves."
5."We were put into a dark room filled with fog machines, strobes flashing at their highest setting, semi-blindfolded, with heavy metal blaring, while we had to navigate an obstacle course and answer questions or recite the Greek alphabet, fraternity mottos, or sayings."
6."We had a strict no-hazing policy but I remember some 'voluntary hazing' activities like going out into the woods outside town and doing a campfire or stump-cutting (finding a torn-down tree and using anything other than axes to tear the stump out of the ground)."
7."I walked into a fraternity house once and saw a pledge duct-taped to the wall wearing skis and goggles while drinking a beer. He didn’t seem to mind."
8."I had to be a human alarm clock. This mean I had to make an alarm noise outside someone's room until they came out or 'snoozed' me, at which point I'd have to go back off in 10 minutes."
9." While active members are watching TV, playing video games, eating dinner, or engaging in other leisurely activities, the pledge must make a mean or angry face and get into a gargoyle-type position, staying there until dismissed."
10."We basically had to be a chauffeur, errand boy, personal chef, bartender, and more to any initiated member."
11."Various dinnertime hazing activities included, but were not limited to, trading clothes with someone much bigger or smaller than you for the amusement of the active members, having food (preferably something sloppy and mushy) shoved in your pockets and shoes before having to do 1,000 jumping jacks, and pledges being used as human shields during food fights."
12."My fraternity hazing was pretty much all drinking-related activities. One involved stripping down to our boxers, crawling, and having cold water thrown on us."
13."My brother, on the other hand, had to chug a bottle of the hottest sauce from Buffalo Wild Wings with no other drink allowed until it was gone."
14."The process itself wasn’t bad, but part of the initiation was pretty gross. The sisters all got together the smelliest, squishiest, stickiest foods they could find and dumped it all over us. Honey, pickle juice, vinegar, ketchup, flour, eggs cracked on our heads, and syrup."
15.And lastly, "We had difficult tasks assigned that would only be doable as a group. For these, we were often put into two or three teams and told the winners would get something good while the losers would get punished. This was a test to see if one team would screw over the other(s) or if we'd forgo a reward to spare the other team's punishment by all working together."
