Instilling Honesty in Veiled Organizations
The Incident
I felt mugged…
If you have ever been lied to, you know the devastating feeling. The sick-to-your-stomach, punch-the-closest-wall, paralyzed-and-can’t-even-begin-to-think feeling. You trusted someone. You may have even defended the person or the lie they sold you.
These feelings are just one part of the destruction that lying and secret-keeping inevitably leave in their wake. Relationships are severed, organizations slide into chaos, situations are publicly broadcast—destruction reigns. The magnitude of it may vary, but destruction always follows deception.
That’s exactly what happened.
The chapter told me they had it covered: “Don’t worry, the event will not cross the line into hazing, it’s just a funny, bonding brotherhood event.” I trusted that they were being honest with me. At the time, I couldn’t fathom these men looking me in the eyes and lying to me.
Nine years earlier, secrets ran amok, and I called for a chapter review. Though it reduced membership to 18, the chapter review orchestrated a cultural change that resulted in eliminating unacceptable behavior and rewarded acceptable behaviors that aligned with our values and mission. This effort was affirmed year after year as the chapter begin to make drastic improvements.
Fast forward nine years—things couldn’t have been better! They just won best fraternity on campus; members had achieved academic success, won intramurals, and had a track record of outstanding civic service and philanthropic engagement. The chapter had been awarded as a top five chapter nationally with countless individual awards.
Yet, underneath the accolades, secrets ruled, lies were justified, deception only perpetuated the persona of honesty and greatness.
The specific hazing event was a relic from the past that had been in place for decades, unbeknownst to me (nothing new, right?). As I found out later, this event had ranged from “just fine” to “on edge” to “completely out of control” in the past. What the brothers had failed to recognize is that hazing has a life of its own. Some people believe they can control hazing. Therein lies the issue. We rarely have control over any of those things. Hazing’s magnitude may appear to be controlled, but the past few years in fraternities and sororities have shown us there are always exceptions to the behavior we think we have managed to control.
The year in question, the brotherhood event went from a funny bonding activity to a crude, rude, disrespectful, shocking violation of values, boundaries, and human decency. Immediately following this hazing event, the deception and secrecy began. A cover-up was used to deny or defend the embarrassing actions or errors made by members. Because the persona created had to be kept up, the illusion of success had to remain intact.
Lies never fix things, they never make things right, it is just a matter of time before the lies are exposed and the implosion occurs.
Once the event was exposed—and the gravity of what the consequences might be—I had men falling apart emotionally, as they dealt with guilt, shame, and fear. Relationships, though damaged, are what kept the chapter together. The house corporation board president and I encouraged student leadership to talk through the situation (honestly this time) and create an action plan to move us forward. The long and short of the plan: removing certain members, implementing programming, and taking time to acknowledge, apologize for, and learn from what they had done wrong. Members stepped up to claim ownership and responsibility while solidifying their commitment to accountability. They were a chapter of leaders, and these actions proved it. They were returning to our values, our mission, our brotherhood.
Developing or Doomed?
Though each fraternity/sorority has its own founding story, they all generally share one thing in common: they were started as secret societies. Secrets are not unique to fraternities and sororities, and lying is not isolated to our members. In fact,
Humans lie two times a day on average (DePaulo, 2003).
Young adults between 18 and 29 lie the best (Arcimowicz, 2015).
Most often, women lie to make others feel good and men lie to make themselves feel better (Feldman, 2002).
Dishonesty shapes our brains, making future lying easier and future lies bigger (Ariely, 2016).
The more we repeat a lie, the more we believe it. (Ariely, 2013).
We lie to make ourselves more likable, seem more competent, to avoid criticism or loss, to avoid causing someone else discomfort or sorrow … the reasons are endless. Why do we lie in fraternity and sorority? Similar reasons. We lie to protect our reputation, to cover up past incidents, to keep the illusion of a healthy organization intact, to create bonding opportunities (or so we say). The justification we create is much like any other lie; we are not in it for ourselves, we are looking out for the whole organization, for our brothers or sisters, for our institution. Potentially we lie because we have rewired our brain to make the lie our truth.
Can we move past lying and deception in fraternal organizations that were founded (and maintained) in secrecy?