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It’s my sophomore year in college in Georgia, and my best friend has reached his goal of crossing over and joining a popular Greek fraternity at our school. Becoming a frat boy was never my thing, and I have no issues with my friend choosing that path, but he spent all Christmas break trying to convince me to pledge the upcoming spring.
I was finally convinced when he explained the huge network I could tap into by pledging. I was already known on campus for throwing parties, and I want to get into the music business. According to my friend, he had heard a bit of buzz within the frat that I was being scouted to be a recruit for the upcoming line.
One weekend, several of the Bruhs from the frat invited me and some of my friends to a party. They assured me they could get me a meeting with a big dog who was also a member of the fraternity and a prominent figure in the music industry. This was a win-win for me because I was pursuing becoming an artist.
The guys came through, and a meeting took place two weeks later. It was more than promising, but they also made it clear that the next steps would be contingent upon me making it through and crossing over into the fraternity. I was impressed but still hesitant. I talked it over with my girlfriend Lana who was intimately familiar with Greek lifestyle. Her father and grandfather are both in a fraternity, and she knew how deep their networks could run. I decided officially to pursue Greek status.
Lana and I are really close. We’ve been together since a chance meeting at a party last year where we shot pool and just really clicked. She was doing a double line, pledging to become a member of a coed service fraternity as well as pursuing status as a “sweetheart,” which basically sounded like young women who entertained the fraternity I was looking to join.
I personally thought she was way too fine to demean herself in that manner, but she was into it, so I figured if she liked it, I loved it. We were both pledging and going through it.
Things progressed quickly once my line was selected. We were lined up from shortest to tallest and were examined like specimens. It felt like we were slaves on an auction block — it just felt wrong.
Then we went through this whole procession of choosing an “ace” — which is determined by height (the shortest guy leads the pledges). First I was identified as the “ace,” but an hour later after standing shoulder to shoulder with a line brother, it was decided that I was a hair too tall and became the deuce instead. That minor change would change everything for me. As the deuce, instead of my best friend being my Dean of Pledges or DP over me, it was now another guy named Greg.
Greg is about 25 and what you would consider to be a super senior. He isn’t friendly, is difficult and overly demanding, but constantly pumps rhetoric about brotherhood and bonding. We’ve had to do things like go get him food at odd hours, wash his clothes, and even let him use our vehicles.
Greg seems to really have it out for me, and it’s gotten to a point where it’s become unreasonable. One day he forced some of my line brothers to go to the ATM and take money out to give to him.
He confiscated our cellphones and made us walk around the perimeter of the campus just to get to a class a few feet away. He also doesn’t allow walking on the grass after 3 p.m.
As Hell Week finally arrived, I was reaching my true limit. They turn up the hazing heat, and the pressure builds to a point where only the strong survive. We were kept up until 6 or 7 in the morning and then had to go straight to class from the frat house, only to return after class to continue to be hazed. I was exhausted.
The culmination of it all is Hell Night, the last night of Hell Week.
On that particular night, the Frat guys were having a heated conversation about how I should have been “the ace” instead of the “deuce” and how the current ace wasn’t built for the task to lead. Out of nowhere, one of the frat guys became so angry that he clotheslined the ace, sending him flying backward over the couch where he lay motionless.
Eventually, I ran over to him and realized he was alive but couldn’t move at all. Those dudes, including Greg, got scared and started to flee like roaches do when the lights come on. I was nervous too but wasn’t going to leave my brother on the floor all alone. People were clamoring over one another to get away from the scene; meanwhile, you could hear police and ambulance sirens off in the distance.
He ended up being hospitalized that night with some sort of fracture. After being questioned by the police along with my other line brothers, all I wanted to do was find a place of comfort. We were instructed not to talk to anyone but each other about what really happened. Instead of going home, I went straight to Lana’s apartment.
When I got there, her roommate cracked the door and told me Lana was sick and didn’t want company. I sidestepped her and walked up to Lana’s bedroom door. As I was knocking, I turned the knob and opened it to find Lana and Greg wrapped up in her bed.
I saw mouths moving, but I could hardly hear anything the way my heart was pounding. The only thing I heard in my mind was Greg saying to me, “We’re brothers; we share everything.”
Eventually, I heard sounds again, and it was Lana saying, “You knew what it was.”
I guess she was right, I just didn’t want to admit to myself that Lana belonged to the frat, that she was their property.
After months of the police completing an investigation over the incident involving the pledge, I learned that our line was going to be brought back to cross. The decision to leave Lana was an easy one, but I find myself conflicted about moving ahead with crossing. Even the brother who was injured is back to complete his crossing.
With my future being the biggest thing to think about, this question is on my mind: Should I cross in order to gain access to the network that could help my success in the music industry or should I cut my losses because of what happened with Greg and Lana?
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NOTE: This story has been edited for clarity and grammar.
