An excerpt of the following article has been posted with written permission from Carrie Wells of The Baltimore Sun.
Hazing at Md. colleges includes humiliation, coercion, hospital trips
By Carrie Wells/The Baltimore Sun
Photo by Kenneth K. Lam, Baltimore Sun
In their zeal to join a fraternity at Towson University, Brad Notaro and his fellow pledges submitted to a battery of humiliation and abuse.
At the direction of students they hoped would make them brothers at Pi Lambda Phi, they ran and performed jumping jacks for hours on end, crouched under a cold shower holding a bag of ice, ate raw flour and drank a bitter concoction that made them vomit.
Now it was Hell Week — the culmination of the pledge process — and Notaro, 18, was nearing a breaking point. For three days, he said, the brothers forbade him from sleeping and forced him to drink alcohol.
To cope with the stress, Notaro said in a recent interview, he took anti-anxiety medication — and collapsed inside Towson's Albert S. Cook Library. According to a police report, paramedics found him "unconscious … not moving and exception[ally] pasty and pale."
Brad Notaro, a senior marketing major at Towson University, helped found Theta Chi, a new fraternity at the college that forbids hazing of its members. Two years ago Notaro was found unconscious in Cook Library where he collapsed. During pledging, he was not allowed to sleep during the final...
Brad Notaro, a senior marketing major at Towson University, helped found Theta Chi, a new fraternity at the college that forbids hazing of its members. Two years ago Notaro was found unconscious in Cook Library where he collapsed. During pledging, he was not allowed to sleep during the final... (Kenneth K. Lam, Baltimore Sun)
The next thing he remembers was waking up in a bed at St. Joseph Medical Center, his mother at his side, recovering from an ordeal he said he "would never wish on my worst enemy."
The trial that Notaro, now 21, and his fellow pledges said they endured in the fall of 2011 is one of more than two dozen incidents of alleged hazing detailed in hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun through the state Public Information Act. The records from Maryland's public universities, which investigated allegations involving fraternities, sororities and athletic teams, shed new light on rituals long cloaked in secrecy and shame — incidents that often peak during fall "Hell Week" initiations.
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