Andrew Lohse, a smart middle-class kid from New Jersey, pulled a string to ensure his place at Dartmouth, one of America's elite eight universities, the Ivy League. He'd worked hard all through high school to keep his marks high and jumped through the right extracurricular hoops, but still his acceptance was in doubt.
Lohse's grandfather Austin, by then deceased, had gone to Dartmouth, so Lohse called in a favour with one of his grandfather's friends. The old man made some calls. That's how it seemed to work.
He made the cut and then the life he had dreamed of was right there for the taking – a four-year degree in one of the nation's most famous universities, one that Wall Street understood and smiled upon. Tuition alone would cost nearly a quarter of a million.
But on this track there's always another hurdle.
To really make it, to earn the right to strut rather than walk about the campus, to get some respect – get some girls – to begin a Wall Street path, Lohse needed to be accepted into the right fraternity.
And that is how in a moment of triumph after a year of networking he found himself covered with regurgitated booze in a private room in the basement of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat house. He was an initiate – a pledge – and the young men who he hoped would accept him as a "brother" were standing around him chanting, "Boot on his head! Boot on his head! Boot on his head!".
The vomit flowed through his hair and down the side of his face and some slid down his back to gather in his underwear.
"Boot" is a Dartmouth term for vomit, and once the drunken pledge that was spewing over him had emptied his gut, Lohse would be a step closer to admittance to the inner sanctum.
Later he would be baptised in a wading pool filled with a cocktail of vomitus, semen, piss and shit. Later again he would conceive of and prosecute new torments for later pledges. He'd thrill at the thought that the rolled banknotes the brothers used as cocaine straws bore the signature of the United States Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, a Dartmouth SAE alumni.
But now, with the vomit warm on his head and back, he was just glad to be a little closer. If he could just hold out for a few more weeks of his pledge initiation, he'd be part of the elite.
For the fraternity system – a network of more than 6000 chapters on 800 campuses nationwide – the new year has been tough. A spate of public relations catastrophes has led to renewed calls for what is known as the Greek system to be either scrapped or massively reformed.
Although allegations of a gang rape by frat boys at the University of Virginia has been found by police to be unsubstantiated, that development has been overwhelmed by other incidents.
The most prominent involved another SAE chapter, this one at the University of Oklahoma. Earlier this month, shaky phone camera footage of SAE brothers on a bus chanting an obscenely racist ditty was leaked.
"There will never be a nigger in SAE," the boys bellowed joyously.
"You can hang him from a tree
"But he can never sign with me
"There will never be a nigger in SAE."
The two young men identifiable in the video have been expelled and have made public apologies, and SAE has closed the chapter. On Friday the University of Oklahoma released its own investigation, which found the chant had been learnt by students during a national leadership cruise sponsored by the fraternity, and that it was part of SAE's "institutionalised culture".
The nationwide shock created by the release of the video has at least served to distract from other scandals.
A Pi Kappa Phi chapter at North Carolina State University was closed this past week after a "pledge book" was found filled with racist and sexist slogans. "It will be short and painful, just like when I rape you," one page of the book says.
"If she's hot enough, she doesn't need a pulse," another said.
"That tree is so perfect for lynching," read another.
Last week, Penn State University closed a chapter of Kappa Delta Rho after some of its members were accused of setting up a private Facebook page carrying images of incapacitated near-naked women and others of hazing rituals and drug use. A police investigation has begun.
A Sigma Chi chapter and five students were suspended this month after allegations of hazing that the school president called "disturbing", while the Sigma Alpha Mu chapter at the University of Michigan was disbanded and several brothers charged after members allegedly trashed a ski resort.
Just this week, Dartmouth began investigation into another of its fraternities – Alpha Delta, the inspiration for the movie Animal House – for branding members, it was reported.
Two West Virginia University Kappa Sigma students face charges over the hazing death of 19-year-old Nolan Burch.
Indeed, looking back over recent years, the instances of bad and criminal behaviour by fraternities, particularly in secret initiation hazing ceremonies, are too numerous to count. It is easier to look at the death toll.
According to a Bloomberg News analysis, there were 60 fraternity-related deaths between 2005 and 2014.
In this list, SAE features so prominently – with 10 deaths – that last year JP Morgan Chase refused to insure them. The move caused the fraternity's national body to ban the pledging process among its chapters, which in turn prompted outrage from powerful alumni, including the famous Texas oilman-turned-investor T Boone Pickens.
To understand how a system with such a record has continued to resist reform for so long, you need to know something of its history.
Students began establishing fraternities – and later sororities – in American universities and colleges during the 1800s when schools still acted in loco parentis and exerted significant control over student lives. Students wanted to build a space that was their own.
As they matured and spread across the country, the tradition of secrecy became entrenched and most maintain their own secret symbols, traditions, mottos and even languages. The secrecy has served not only to add to the mystique of fraternities, but to make them difficult to reform or, if circumstances demand, investigate.
Lohse argues that the secrecy extends to the physical space of the fraternity houses, which exacerbates the dangers faced by pledges and by guests, particularly women, who attend parties. Most frat houses have public areas as well as private and even secret rooms protected by punch code known only by the brothers. In these spaces the pledges are brutalised and, as a result, Lohse argues, brothers internalise the idea that in them normal societal rules do not apply.
The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape and sexual assault on campuses that premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, found that a common campus nickname for SAE was Sexual Assault Expected.
The filmmakers make the contended claim that one in five American women are sexually assaulted at college before graduation, and it places fraternities, with their hyper-masculine, boozy and secret cultures at the centre of the epidemic.
Lohse agrees. "Without the secrecy, you don't have a fraternity," he says.
Lohse broke the code of omerta dramatically in 2012 with a column in a Dartmouth newspaper detailing allegations of horrendous hazing practices, which evolved into a Rolling Stone article and then his tell-all book, Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy.
Lohse's initial allegations led to the university laying disciplinary charges against 27 SAE brothers. Eventually all the charges were dropped as investigators were unable to break the code of silence or find physical evidence.
But Lohse claims Dartmouth could have found evidence if it truly wanted to. The investigation did not have a chance, he says, because universities fear the power of fraternity alumni.
Not long after Dartmouth dropped the charges, another SAE pledge, Justin Stuart, came forward detailing a brutal eight-week initiation period at Salisbury University in Maryland in which he was beaten, forced to stand in bins of ice and detained in a dark basement for nine hours with German rock music playing.
"It honestly reminded me of Guantanamo Bay," he said. "It was almost like torture."
In this case, Salisbury University acted, suspending the chapter involved. The response was rapid. The investment executive, J Michael Scarborough, a founder of the SAE chapter, withdrew a $2 million donation to the university.
It is difficult to exaggerate the power and reach of the Greek system. It is estimated they take in $150 million a year in dues and own around $3 billion of real estate, all of it exempt from tax. In the current Congress, 39 per cent of senators and 24 per cent of House members are alumni of fraternities or sororities, as are 44 per cent of all US presidents and half of the top 10 Fortune 500 chief executives.
In case friends in high places are not enough to fight off calls for reform, the Greek system has now established a political action committee and hired lobbyists to work on Capital Hill.
In April, they will lobby for a requirement that universities take no action against fraternities until any criminal justice process has been resolved, to block any mandate that fraternities become co-ed and to block colleges from acting against whole chapters in response to single incidents.
And, despite the endless parade of bad news, fraternities and sororities continue to grow. Indeed an industry has grown in advising young women on how to best present themselves to the right sororities during the "rush" period of applications. According to The New York Times, consultancy fees can reach up to $8000, especially in the South, where the system is strongest.
Surveys show the number of freshmen considering applying to fraternities is growing rather than shrinking.
Fraternity alumni who spoke to Fairfax Media say this is because the majority of people who join them enjoy the experience, and the horror stories in the media do not properly reflect fraternity life. One SAE alumni pointed out that most American undergraduates leave home to attend out-of-state colleges with huge student bodies, and the fraternities are a comfort in the dislocation.
Another, Washington DC journalist Christopher Bedford, said he witnessed no racism in his multi-racial, multi-cultural fraternity and instead found his brothers to be mutually supportive. He liked that fraternities remained male only.
"There is a certain bonding that occurs when a bunch of men sit around a table and talk to one another, just as there is for women, I suspect."
He said the pranks the brothers played on one another were part of that. When asked whether he was subjected to hazing, which is now outlawed in 44 states, he laughed and said he could not comment on the subject.
And Bedford rejects the idea that fraternities should be banned or reformed for problems that are endemic in broader society.
But he agrees that some chapters of some fraternities can at times turn bad. "They are self-selecting, just like any company or sports team or group of friends, they can poison themselves."
This weekend, Lohse returned to Dartmouth to resume the degree that was suspended after he went public about his SAE chapter. With no evidence on his fraternity brothers, the disciplinary proceedings ended up focusing on the drug use and ugly behaviour he confessed to himself. Contrary to popular belief, though, Lohse says he was on leave from the school on his own terms.
When asked whether he was nervous about returning as a figure of notoriety, one who has been criticised by fraternities, college media and even the Wall Street Journal, Lohse says he has the backing of many in a faculty that more than once has voted overwhelmingly to ban the Greeks.
He says he will keep speaking out against the system.
The brotherhood
** Total undergraduate fraternity membership: 372,090*
** Number of men Initiated in 2013-14: 98,561*
** 6136 chapters on roughly 800 campuses*
** Greeks in 112th US Congress: 42 senators (42%), 101 congressmen (23%)
** Greeks in 113th US Congress: 39 senators (39%), 106 congressmen (24%)
** 50% of the top 10 Fortune 500 CEOs are fraternity men; 15% of Fortune 100 CEOs are Greek
**44% of all US presidents have been members of a fraternity
**31% of all US Supreme Court justices have been fraternity alumni
Sources: Compiled from member fraternities in the NIC Standards Compliance Report for the 2013-2014 Academic Year.
10 largest fraternities by members
Sigma Alpha Epsilon: 304,000 members
Sigma Chi: 300,000 members
Sigma Phi Epsilon: 289,000 members
Lambda Chi Alpha: 280,000 members
Tau Kappa Epsilon: 265,000 members
Pi Kappa Alpha: 240,000 members
Sigma Nu: 225,000 members
Beta Theta Pi: 183,769 members
Alpha Tau Omega: 181,000 members
Alpha Phi Alpha: 175,000 members
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that two West Virginia University Kappa Sigma students face charges over the hazing death of 21-year-old Jordon Parrish Hankins, instead of the hazing death of 19-year-old Nolan Burch.
