Initiation or Outright Hazing?

At the beginning of last week, I started hearing whispers around campus about a baptism. I got really excited because baptisms are one of my favorite things in the world, even though I've never made it through a single one without crying, but that's a different blog entry. As it turned out, they weren't talking about real baptisms, but the traditional initiation the upper classmen do to the 1st years. I thought, "This could be fun," so I made sure I brought my camera on Friday. It was nothing like I could have ever imagined! If anyone had watched from the outside, they would've been on the phone with the Geneva Convention human rights activists. It was torture!

First, they told all the 1st years that they had a huge all-subject comprehensive test in the library at noon. And they really did hand out a mock test and let them sweat for about 20 minutes. Then they ambushed them and duct-taped their hands and plastered over their faces.


Here's Sara setting up and a shot of all their shoes tied onto the balcony.


After the ambush n the library, they dragged them along a plastic slide that was covered in water, oil, and other goop and into a bucket at the end full of icky water. Then, as you can see, they threw pieces of paper all over them, smeared orange food coloring on their arms and continued to occasionally dowse them with water and talcum powder while they read them "their rights." Then came the line up, so they said, for a picture, but really they dumped more buckets of water on them, during which, I must say, I got a great shot of my poor student Jaime getting it full in the face.


It was hard to watch because I have almost all the 1st years, so they were MY kids! Here's my student David with his face still plastered.

Fortunately, they all took it with much more grace than I ever could have, and when all was said and done, and the duct tape was removed, they were apparently still friends. Here are Angie and Carolina.

Crazy stuff!!!