Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 1, 1990 TAG: 9006010646
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
AMONG the many things I suppose I will never understand is the male doctrine of pain: the proposition that giving and enduring pain are part of the rite of masculine passage, that hurting others and accepting hurt from others without flinching are signs of manhood, that to do so is not only a virtue but ennobling and uplifting.
Most of us, sooner or later, give pain of one sort or another and all of us, being mortal, suffer pain of one sort or another at some time in our lives; but why pain should be considered good in itself, or why inflicting pain should be considered an act of benevolence, are mysteries to me, as I suspect they are to most thoughtful people.
I am put in mind of all this by a letter from an angry reader in Lexington who calls me a "cry baby" for a recent column deploring the incident of hazing at the United States Naval Academy that ended in a woman's withdrawal as a midshipman and the token - but only token - punishment of the Annapolis upperclassmen responsible.
My angry reader also enclosed part of an article by ex-Secretary of the Navy James Webb, the relevant paragraphs of which defend hazing as an instrument of training and claim that hazing enabled him - Webb - to endure hardship in Vietnam.
The reader's additional point was an implicit one: to defend hazing at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, now under attack by the United States Department of Justice for its male-only admissions policy. I had suggested, as a former cadet, that hazing at VMI, a venerable feature of barracks life long winked at by VMI officials, might await any women ordered admitted by federal courts.
That hazing is an old tradition at the various military academies of the nation - and in many ordinary colleges and universities - scarcely needs emphasis. As recently as the 1950s, freshmen at many colleges were required to wear beanies and perform certain rituals before upperclassmen; hazing of fraternity pledges was notoriously brutal in many places. But most of that vanished, as much else vanished, during the campus upheavals of the '60s - disappeared, that is, except at the federal military academies, and at VMI and the Citadel.
I will not burden you with the details, many of which are widely known anyway. Suffice it that, despite differences from place to place, hazing is both mental and physical, often dangerously physical; that it aims at breaking the will, and if necessary the personality, of the person being hazed; and that in the end it is claimed to be "character-building."
This is especially true at VMI, which defenders of its male-only admissions policy contend creates something called "male bonding," supposedly a conviction of fraternal unity that only "the Rat line" - i.e., the hazing of freshmen - can bring. This nonsense - which has its true foundation in the common male impulse to do to others what has already been done to him - lies at the heart of VMI's stubborn, and costly, attempt to stave off the inevitable day when it is at last compelled to enter the real world of fair play.
Having gone through that "Rat line" myself, and having once taken great pride in having endured its endless barbarities with seemly stoicism, I recognize the impulse. But it is a sham and an insult to the intelligence of everyone, not least the taxpayers of Virginia who contribute so generously to VMI's support.
For the message of hazing is as simple as it is untrue: It is that learning can only be accomplished by breaking the spirit; that friendship can only be won by destroying the personality; that discipline can only be taught by cruelty and brutality. That is VMI's credo, and it is indefensible. Violence is so ubiquitous in contemporary America that no institution pretending to call itelf "educational" has any business creating more.
by CNB