From stories submitted anonymously to the website hazedandconfused.com, describing the tasks reportedly carried out by undergraduates in pledging prospective fraternities or sororities. Visitors to the site are encouraged to vote for their favorite stories.
Pledges have to wear the hell mask and answer questions about our frat. The hell mask is a gas mask with the filter removed and a short hose screwed on in its place. When the pledge gets a question wrong, a brother pinches the hose shut so the pledge can’t get any air — until he is jerking, bucking, kicking — then lets it go and asks another question.
Any time we weren’t doing something that we were specifically allowed to do (like going to class or sleeping between the hours of one a.m. and six a.m.) we had to stand with our toes and noses pressed firmly to the wall. Sometimes the brothers would make us hold dimes to the wall with our noses. If we dropped the dime, we got various punishments.
We got our pledges stupid drunk and put them into a room with flashing strobe lights. A brother then walked in with a can of rainbow sprinkles and poured it all over the floor and told them to sort them by color. It took them just under ten hours.
A few times during winter nights, they would make the pledges in my sorority get naked outside, they would throw water on us, and then they would cover us in snow.
Every semester my fraternity hosts a night where the pledges are forced to race to down gallons of milk, play beer pong with milk, and just straight-up chug excessive amounts of milk. By the end of the night the house reeks of vomit and curdled milk, and we send the pledges off to bed without allowing them to wash up or shower.
Every night our entire pledge class was forced to line up and strip completely naked. We were all then blindfolded, and, at random, three of us were kicked in our lady parts, full force, by our sisters wearing soccer cleats. The three that were kicked had to yell out “COOTER CARNAGE” before they fell down. If one failed to do so, three more were selected at random, and the drill continued.
We had to make coffee by grinding coffee beans in our mouths.
We bought all the pledges those electric-shock collars that you give your dog that zaps them when they bark. We put them on all the pledges in the basement and had them bark like dogs.
When I was pledging during Hell Week we lived in a closet pretty much day and night for four days straight. The worst thing they did while we were in there was spray a massive amount of pepper spray into the air. The pain was excruciating; not only our eyes and faces but our entire bodies were on fire.
While I was pledging all of the brothers had us take off our shoes and socks. Then each of us were forced to hold a fifteen-pound weight with our arms straight out for fifteen minutes. Unfortunately the weight we were holding up was right above one of our pledge brothers’ bare feet, so if you couldn’t hold it you dropped it right on his foot. One kid ended up going to the hospital with three broken toes.
One thing I loved was when we made them dress up like lawn gnomes with beards and everything and randomly sit outside the house and random places around campus all weekend.
