Death by ‘brotherhood’

They were all dead set on recruiting us as soon as I started my freshman year. Fortunately, I wasn’t a boy, but fraternities still came up to me, wanting to introduce me to their sister sororities. I didn’t care much for groups or showy offers of friendship, so I kept turning them down.

That was the best decision of my college life.

One by one my classmates were tapped to join fraternities, sororities, and organizations. They told me that if I didn’t join any group, I’d be called a “barbarian.” I laughed and held that name proudly. So be it. Barbarian it was, I thought, if it meant I didn’t have to attend meetings, be claimed by some group for my every achievement (“Oh her? She’s my sis,” made me cringe), or be hazed. (READ: St. Benilde student dies in suspected hazing)

Don’t even kid yourselves here. They were all hazed, even if they told you they weren’t. 

They were all hazed

One by one my dorm mates would come home at twilight with their heads down as I, the resident barbarian, smoked cigarettes in the stairwell by myself, scoffing at their “non-barbaric” ways. One boy couldn’t even walk and had to be carried to his room by his “brods.” A friend dressed his wounds and spoon-fed him all week because the skin of his legs burst open from being paddled so hard. (READ: UP hazing injured 17-year old)

He was happy that the hazing was over and he had become a frat brother, but it wasn’t his brods who nursed him back to life. 

One girl, the smartest in my class, spent the whole day washing her hair with detergent because a senior brod “shampooed” her with an entire can of red floor wax. She told me they felt her up too, sticking their toes between her legs while she was blindfolded. “But it’s okay,” she said, “because they’re like my kuyas (older brothers). They’re just initiating me out of tradition. Walang malisya (no malice).”

I tried not to laugh at the logic of that.

My roommate Ting* came home one morning and showed me her legs. The skin on her calves was tender, hot, and completely black. She said that her brod whipped her with an electrical cord until he was satisfied that her legs turned bruised and dark. She said it was okay because it wouldn’t leave a scar. And this was just for a vet school org! 

Membership benefits

I asked them what the benefit was to all of this, and they said that they got copies of professors’ old exams. “Isn’t that cheating?” I asked, and they rolled their eyes. (They did in fact get advanced copies of actual tests the morning of the exams. A brod who worked with the professor would leak them a copy.)

“It’s so you can get a good job out of college. A brod or sis will help you,” I was also told. I shrugged and thought, “Isn’t that what an education is for?” I must have seemed so dumb and naive in their eyes.

To me, joining orgs (including Greek-lettered ones) for that purpose was an admission that one didn’t have what it takes to get a proper education and a good job. Already blessed with scholarships in the University of the Philippines, these neophytes still felt insecure, still felt the need to latch on to some group, and were convinced they would still be nothing even if they studied hard and got their degree.

Fraternities and orgs gave one the connections to perpetuate the Pinoy trait of palakasan (pulling strings), except that this was sanctioned by schools. University officials themselves belonged to fraternities and orgs, and often extended special favors like those for a classmate of mine who got into UP without even taking the UPCAT (UP admission test).

The chosen few

I once talked to Joel*, a relative who joined a popular UP fraternity and would not shut up about that fact. In his room, he had his Greek letters on display, and two paddles on the wall. He bragged about the one that had holes in it. “This is so when you smack them, their skin bursts through those holes. It hurts for a longer time and creates the most horrible welts.”

He laughed about his own hazing. He was made to eat pandesal with a whole brick of butter. They also attached surgical forceps to his belly and made him jump up and down. They beat him, paddled him, and humiliated him. And then he became part of what he called “the chosen few.”

Around that time, a neophyte was killed during hazing rites at their Diliman chapter. Joel said that what they did to the boy – stuffed him in a sleeping bag and kick him around – was pretty routine. Then he laughed and said, “Eh hikain pala! (He was asthmatic!)” as if it was the boy’s fault that that he died.

The autopsy revealed that he drowned on his own vomit and suffocated.

I then learned about seniority, and how a senior brod could make you do whatever he wanted. He told me the story of how a senior brod once asked then President Marcos to hide under a desk, and that Marcos obeyed. The senior brod later disappeared, but that’s another story. Joel also taught me how to make a pillbox, a homemade explosive device they use during frat wars.

I met other frat men, and even dated one who carried a gun because his frat always got into rumbles. I met a guy who dropped out of school because he blew off both of his hands making pillboxes. I saw boys not much older than children running with lead pipes and crowbars around campus because someone gave someone the evil eye.

Even in classrooms, the boys from the most violent frats always addressed disagreements by threatening you with physical harm. They always say they’d get their brods to go after you, as if they’re mindless rabid dogs.

Sometimes, I think that’s all they are.

‘You’ll never understand’

Joel and I are grown now. He has a teenage son of his own who simply laughs at his father’s fixation about his college years and his fraternity brods. Joel did get his jobs and all his social circles from his frat connections. Some bosses really just look for the best brod for the job, and that’s their loss.

Ting and all my other classmates did get decent jobs, but we all mostly did anyhow. A few of their org sisses and brods didn’t make much of their lives, but no amount of connections can help that.

I still wonder if initiations, hazing and memberships are worth their benefits afterwards.

Perhaps, these groups gave my classmates the families and friendships they otherwise wouldn’t have. Many of them were from the provinces and were probably scared about not knowing anyone in school.

The frat men I knew were pushed into fraternities by their own fathers, believing this was what made them men and gave them access to that secret world, where one volunteered his own son to strangers to be beaten up, and sometimes even killed.

I still don’t know if it’s worth accepting physical assault and risking one’s life, especially at the young age of 17 or 18. Even in the tamest of orgs, there was always a point where initiation rites went too far, where a Muslim would be forced to drink alcohol, and where girls were sent to “entertain” their brods.

In my own dorm’s initiation rites, boys were made to pull down their pants and “fuck the wall.” As a tall, strange girl, I was blindfolded, doused with water, yelled at, and harassed. The other girls got derogatory names written on their skin with markers, toothpaste smeared on their hair and faces, and some even got felt up.

I guess tormentors think it’s all fun and games, and of course, it’s tradition – the perverted kind that school officials, dorm managers, and even parents condone year after year, until some kid dies. Then they wash their hands of that “accident,” issue a press release, but change nothing.

I can hear the frat man Joel tell me that because I’m a barbarian (and also a woman), I’ll just never understand. But if it means that these fraternities are able to harm each other as a show of manhood, and kill someone’s teenage son in the name of “brotherhood,” I’m really glad that I’ll never get it.

I guess that makes me a barbarian then, right? Unable to comprehend loyalty by way of violence, friendship by way of threats, and a long, multi-generational tradition of subjugation and murder. Thank god I will never understand. – Rappler.com

*Names have been changed

Shakira Andrea Sison is a Palanca Award-winning essayist. She currently works in finance and spends her non-working hours avoiding frat men in subway trains. She is a veterinarian by education and was managing a retail corporation in Manila before relocating to New York in 2002. Her column appears on Thursdays. Follow her on Twitter:@shakirasison and on Facebook.

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