Do Asian Fraternities Haze Harder?
Between 2005 and 2013, three pledges died in Asian fraternity Lambda Phi Epsilon’s hazing activities.
When I was in high school and college, I heard horror stories of people dying in fraternity hazing. I was against the whole idea of fraternities in the first place, but a lot of my friends were in frats. I remember the president of an Asian fraternity on campus reaching out to me about joining the frat.
I didn’t want to join a frat. I particularly didn’t want to join an Asian frat for a variety of reasons. I found solace in my cross country team, and I didn’t want to join an organization that revolved around my racial identity anyway.
But there was another reason. Asian fraternities had a reputation for particularly brutal hazing compared to your average American fraternity. I can say this because I’m Asian and knew friends in Asian fraternities — they never got into specifics but what they talked about sounded like horror stories. Between 2005 and 2013, three pledges died in Asian fraternity Lambda Phi Epsilon’s hazing activities.
At the time, I thought: do Asian fraternities haze harder? At the time it made sense. This might sound stereotypical about my own race, but culturally, Asians can be really intense, and that’s not a generalization…
