A screening of the controversial "Hell Night" video and audio tapes came to an abrupt end last night when English Professor Tom Luxon, who was presenting the recordings, stormed from the room because he said he was offended by the "general atmosphere of disrespect."
The video included scenes from the secret initiation ceremonies of hell night at Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity in 1987. The audio tape was a recording of hell night at Alpha Delta fraternity in 1988. Luxon said he planned to play both tapes and follow them with an open discussion and analysis.
The explicit nature of the Alpha Chi video tape and the AD audio tape have long troubled fraternity members, who thought the tapes were being used to discredit them.
After students uttered comments that Luxon termed "disrespectful," he stopped the Alpha Chi video after five minutes, saying "Look, I don't have to take this shit," to the audience. He then exited out the back door of the lounge in Topliff residence hall, where the presentation was held.
The entire presentation, including Luxon's opening remarks, took about 25 minutes. When he started the program, Luxon said he anticipated the discussion would last around 90 minutes.
After Luxon's abrupt exit, students expressed dismay, saying they thought Luxon overreacted to the comments.
Nearly 150 students attended the presentation, including large numbers of fraternity members from both Alpha Chi, AD and other houses.
The presentation began at 8:00 p.m. When Luxon entered the room with the recordings under his arm, tension rose to a level that one student said could be "cut with a knife."
Luxon gave a 15-minute introduction to the recordings where he tried to ease the tension.
"This slides into polemic very quickly," he said. He urged the audience to observe the material first and reserve judgments and opinions for the debate that would follow.
Luxon then described the tapes he would be playing. He described the video in which Alpha Chi pledges, dressed in penis costumes, were told to drink a liquid that immediately induced vomiting.
Luxon continued to describe various other activities in terms and in a tone some members of the audience later said they found judgmental.
"I think he was immature in expecting that it would be a one-sided discussion -- that only his viewpoint would be heard," Michael Goode '98 said. "His comments were clearly one sided and antagonistic toward our cause."
Since the Alpha Chi video is silent and poorly edited, Luxon said he would provide narration and would give his interpretation of events in the video that were not easy to understand.
Luxon then sought to define the importance of initiation in the life of an organization.
"In initiation rituals, organizations take pains to demonstrate through language, through ritual practices, through repetition of ritual practice and through symbolic dress and activity what is most important about that organization," he said. "This is no different."
Nevertheless, Luxon was careful to say that the activities on the video was not routine. "We are not seeing the everyday life of a fraternity," Luxon said. "Don't think that you are."
Luxon ended his introduction by suggesting what students "should be looking for is what can you tell from the ritual actions, what can you tell from the repeated actions, what can you tell from what's said in the audio-tape, is most central to being a brother."
He admitted this was only his point of view and asked if there were any other perspectives in the room.
Adam Medros '96 took issue with the importance Luxon attached to "hell night" ceremonies.
"Representing this as a culminating experience and final initiation rite in fraternities is probably a little inaccurate," Medros said from the back of the room.
Medros cited formal initiation ceremonies as the more important component of the initiation ritual.
"So, [hell night] is an excludable part of the initiation ritual and has no real significance to what those are?" Luxon replied. "If there are other rituals that are more central, I for one would like to see them, would like to hear them and would like to know about them."
As Luxon started to play the Alpha Chi video, the lights went down and attention was riveted to the large screen television.
The footage was of a dimly lit fraternity basement in which Alpha Chi pledges had gathered, dressed as penises.
Luxon pointed out one pledge who was apparently dressed as a post-mastectomy woman. In the place of the amputated breast was a bloody hole and the intact breast was the object of another pledge's tongue.
The audience frequently laughed at the video, prompting Luxon to ask at one point, "This is funny?"
As the video played, showing pledges intermittently vomiting and acting for the camera, Luxon continued to give commentary.
He interpreted one scene where two brothers were making a pledge drink an unidentified substance while sitting across a table as an "interrogation," a term which clearly riled some members of the audience.
At this point, Alpha Chi brother Carlos Sanchez '96, who was sitting on a couch in the middle of the room, asked aloud: "Can you let us judge it for ourselves?"
Luxon stopped the tape and replied, pointing to the door: "I've seen [the video] over 20 times and if you don't like [the commentary] then get out."
Luxon then resumed the video but was visibly disturbed. Thirty seconds later, he jumped out of his seat by the television and announced he was stopping the tape and leaving. "You know, that remark really pissed me off," he said.
When the members of the audience objected Luxon said he would put the video back on only if the members of the audience who had spoken out would apologize.
Despite pressure from the audience, Sanchez and the other members of the audience who criticized Luxon did not apologize.
Luxon took the tapes, headed for the door and chastised groups in the audience for creating a hostile atmosphere.
Students interviewed after Luxon left were almost universally disappointed with Luxon's reaction.
"I think that he completely overreacted. He should have expected that people were going to react like this. I mean, he works at this school, he knows that people are supporting frats," Rachel Federman '98 said. "I don't even think what they said was really rude. He should have just let it slide because this was for discussion anyway. He knew it was going to be a controversial issue."
Many of the fraternity members present said they felt Luxon's commentary was deliberately slanted against them.
"We viewed his commentary as contradictory to his plea for impartiality," said Michel Brudzinski '96, former president of Alpha Chi. "I think a lot of people came to just watch the video and were wary from the beginning of him infusing his own politics into it."
Luxon said in a telephone interview last night from his home in Norwich, Vt., that the fraternity members "made me feel so uncomfortable, so ridiculed that I couldn't take it."
"It's a sad comment on the state of the power of fraternities that they can hijack an event like this," Luxon said.
Sanchez said later he thought it was odd that Luxon wanted him to apologize."I think it was ironic that the same professor who railed against peer pressure threatened to leave unless my peers could pressure me into apologizing. And apologize for something innocuous," he said.
Luxon said he thought that many fraternity members were "acting like small children." He said he felt comfortable leaving because he was volunteering his time, and expected a "modicum of respect."
"Several comments were made in a hostile manner," Luxon said. "I simply don't need that."
Craig Allen '97, a member of Sigma Nu fraternity, said he thought "people went a step over the line in both directions."
"I think [Luxon] sort of overreacted, and I think the comments were kind of rude," Allen said. "But I almost expected that ... I think [Luxon] felt very threatened.
"I think some of [Luxon's commentary] was necessary, because there wasn't a lot of sound on the video ... but some of it was obviously biased, I thought," Allen said. "He obviously had an opinion and he was showing it in his comments."
