Don't Read About Dartmouth's Fraternity Pledging While Eating
If we've learned one thing from reading Janet Reitman's look into fraternity culture at Dartmouth, it's that there's a lot of vomit involved. Reitman, who has a thing for investigating strange, secretive societies -- she wrote a book called Inside Scientology -- interviews former Dartmouth fraternity brother Andrew Lohse for Rolling Stone about his experiences as an SAE pledge and brother at what she calls the "most corporate" of Ivy League schools. Lohse came to Reitman's attention when he wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper describing the gross stuff he underwent to gain entrance into his frat. "I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges' ass cracks," he wrote.
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Reitman's Rolling Stone profile takes a much deeper, much grosser dive into Lohse's experiences. After reading it, all we have to say is: Ew. We've gone through and picked out the particularly nasty things these pledges had to do, most of which involve or lead to what frat boys refer to as "booting":
"Shut the fuck up right now!" a brother in the front seat barked, shoving a bottle into Lohse's hands and ordering him to drink. It was MD 20/20, known as Mad Dog, the toxic beverage whose high alcohol content – 13 percent – and cheapness has made it popular with homeless men and hard-partying college boys everywhere. Lohse chugged. The stuff tasted like Lysol.
Then there's this precious (probably blurry) memory:
Later that night, Lohse, now very drunk, faced a Review brother who had wanted to blackball him. The brother held Lohse's embossed bid card in one hand and a lighter in the other. Ten cups of beer sat on a table. "Do a quick six in the time it takes for this to burn," he told Lohse, setting the bid card on fire. "Go!" Lohse chugged, but was only up to his third cup when time ran out. Seeing his future go up in flames, Lohse vomited all over himself – at which point the brothers told him they were just kidding.
If you think that's bad, wait until you learn what a "vomlet" is. Read the rest of Reitman's piece in Rolling Stone.
