Frat Boys: Inside America's Fraternities Page #6

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he missed from you. And, uh...

That's not true, by the way. Well,

then he's lying. Someone's lying.

I didn't think he's lying, cos

he showed me all the others.

Any more questions?

Yo! All in favour of initiation

of Jordan Cole, raise your hands.

INDISTINC PHONE RINGS

Damn. Yeah, what's up?

All right, bro.

See ya. Oh, sh*t!

I have to go down the boys' house.

At 11.40.

Damn.

I've been told to come to the

President of the fraternity's house,

Ando's apparently there

as well, so...

I have no idea what's going to

happen, so...we shall see.

After hours of waiting to know

if he has been accepted,

Jordan has one final tradition

to endure.

We just tell them after the vote

that, "Hey, come over,

"we really want to talk to you

about what happened."

And we'll bring him in,

surround him,

"Hey, I'm sorry, but

you just didn't make it."

We let 'em walk out of the house,

they're all upset,

he doesn't know what to say.

And then you're like, "Hey,

just kidding! You made it through!"

LAUGHTER:

Congratulations!

Did we get you? You guys!

Just freak him out a little bit,

it's just a tradition we got going.

We all had to go through that,

it was a very bad feeling.

Congrats, you're in, good luck.

You've got a long week!

It just makes you realise how

much you can lose by losing this

brotherhood

and how much you like it.

I mean, I was in tears

when this happened to me.

I'm like, "No way, no way this is

happening". It was funny.

Oh, man!

Yeah, it was... They got me good!

I won't lie, they got me

really good.

That was a huge weight

lifted off my shoulders,

I'm very happy about that.

Jordan has been ordered to come

straight to the house to join

the other successful pledges for

a week of initiation rituals.

Any ideas what they have planned?

Haven't got the slightest clue.

Well, good luck. Thank you, sir.

HORNS BLARE:

It's our secret, yes,

they all talk about it,

and you're not supposed to ask,

but they make it very clear

that, you know, what happens in the

process is part of the brotherhood,

and it stays within the brotherhood.

During his second year

at university,

Terence was initiated

into a fraternity.

The first thing that we learned,

I'll never forget it,

it was like a greeting, and you say,

"Greetings, sir, we are pledges

of Tau Kappa Epsilon

"and we will do whatever it takes

to obtain brotherhood, sir."

They would have us take this

deep breath and we'd go...

HE INHALES:

And they went, "OK, hit the floor"

and then with the blindfolds on,

we'd have to just fall down

onto our hands

and then we'd start doing push-ups

or whatever else

they wanted us to do.

The hegemon is the person

who administers the physical

discipline, you know,

for the fraternity, and he was huge.

His job is to make sure

that the people getting

inducted into this brotherhood, that

they have, like, paid their price

and they are proving that they're

worthy to be called brothers.

Very often, fraternity brothers

that have been hazed together

then are in fact turning

the tables the next year

and trying to make it so that either

the new pledges go through

exactly what they went through,

or certainly maybe even more.

If it's easier,

then they're not demonstrating

their commitment to the fraternity

and how they are worthy to be

joining this fraternity.

So they make it harder.

Initiation rituals involved Terence

being beaten with a boat paddle.

They called it the hostage position.

You lie on the floor with your hands

behind your head with a blindfold on

and as you progress, you start to

lose pieces of clothing.

Yeah, I got a beating so bad...

There was broken glass on the floor

and sludge and rocks and dirt

and you're all scratched up.

I just remember I was lying there

on that floor and, uh, I didn't

think I was going to make it.

By the end of the week,

Terence passed out...

..and woke up in hospital.

They'd split my skin open. The blood

had pooled, became infected.

My liver started to shut down.

And, uh, they told me

I came really close.

They did four surgeries on me

altogether, they gave me three

units of blood to keep me alive

and, er,

I was in the ICU for a week.

But this is my branding.

The triangle.

So they have a cattle brand that

they had specially made

for us and they heat it up over

a fire like they do with cows

and I got held down and...

From his hospital bed,

Terrance learned he had made it

into the brotherhood.

I was in. You know?

I'd made it through.

I earned the right to be

part of the brotherhood

and got a T-shirt with the letters

on it, but when I realised that they

weren't coming to the hospital,

nobody came to visit me...

Uh...

They checked up every once

in a while,

but they were just

so concerned with themselves.

After that, I just realised that

I didn't want to be a part of it.

Back in Florida, it is time

for Jordan and the other pledges

to be initiated into the Gazoni

Family brotherhood.

One of our goals this week is to

really break these guys down,

you know, find out, you know,

what we can do to build them

up into better men.

This is something that is strictly

within our brotherhood.

It's truly a treasure that you

want to keep close to your heart,

so you don't want to share with

anyone else.

The Gazoni Family have asked us

at this point to stop filming.

The two primary reasons that we

can't have cameras around this week

is because we have events where

brothers really open up emotionally.

The second reason is,

these events are private and if...

..they were filmed and shown to

people, then it wouldn't be

a surprise to the incoming

pledges about what we do.

See, I thought that it

was about putting pledges through

a lot of kind of mental

and physical pain.

I'm going to take the Fifth

on this one.

I just...

What do you mean? I don't know.

I don't know how to respond to that,

honestly.

Does hazing go on?

No.

I can assure you we do not

beat kids. Does not happen.

That is something

I can tell you 100%.

I want justice, because what

they did to me was...awful.

Terence was beaten so severely,

it put him in intensive care.

His former fraternity have handed

him an out-of-court settlement,

but Terence now wants to sue

the individual brothers

he says were involved.

Hey. Good to see you.

Good to see you.

I haven't seen you in a while!

You know Karen? Hi, Karen.

To have hurt Terence this much

and to have put him

in hospital for this long with

such life-threatening injuries is

absolutely unprecedented.

Why don't you sit here

and we'll just talk about the way

the deposition is going to work.

We're going to prepare the case

to be presented to a jury.

You've never had your deposition

taken before? No. OK...

So let's talk about it.

I don't even know what it means.

It's a part of the legal process

that involves him

being questioned

by the defendants under oath.

Which is a process that usually

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