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Our efforts were considered marginal at best, but would be accepted for the time being. We were fed a delicious dessert of chocolate pudding. At the bottom of the pudding bowls were small chunks of something that looked suspiciously like Ex-Lax. (It wasn’t; we found out later it was Hershey’s chocolate!) We were sent off for another round of house cleaning. This round lasted until after midnight, at which point we reassembled, got yelled at some more, did some pushups, and received our assignments for the week. First, though, we were handed back our toothbrushes, which had all been used either in the cleaning of the bathrooms or the cleaning of the kitchen. Most of us looked at them with horror.

Each pledge, now known as a neo, or neophyte, was assigned a task. Leo, the shortest of us, was assigned to measure the Hoosick Street Bridge in body lengths. By this they meant his body lengths; he would be laid down and the road would be marked, then he would be lifted and carried head to toe and another mark would be made. This would be done sufficient times to generate a statistically useful sample. Joe Bradley, a very straight laced fellow, was assigned the task of Condom Control Officer, and would have to quiz each brother and neo about their preferences and again come up with statistical modeling. I was handed a gigantic 44G bra. My assignment was to measure the quad down at Russell Sage College, a girl’s school, and get the bra signed by as many girls as possible. Two brothers would be assigned to supervise.

There would be a treasure hunt, and we were given lists of the treasures to be found. Most of us stared at the list and simply groaned. Nobody knew where we would find anything! Some of the items included a stripper, a cop, mustache hairs from a Dean, a signature from the owners of the Canty-Hammett Hot Spot (a black bar on Hoosick Street), and so forth. Point values were assigned to the items, and demerits for bad behavior during the week counted against the points.

We were given another bowl of chocolate pudding and sent back to work. At eight the next morning, sleepless, we were fed and sent to our classes. To ensure that nobody skipped out and went to the dorms and slept in, we had to get signatures in our notebooks every hour between classes from a brother somewhere on campus. After classes were over we had to head back to Kegs for more work.

And so it went for the rest of the week. Our second night we got about two hours of sleep. Our third and fourth nights we got about three. Our pledge boxes were repeatedly ransacked, and strange items were added and subtracted. The brothers made sure we had time to do our assigned tasks. I got dragged down to Russell Sage Tuesday afternoon and handed the bra and a black magic marker. I had made one full pass across the quad, stopping every time a girl came up and asking her to sign the bra. About half signed and half were disgusted. I got a crick in my back from all the up and down movements.

One of the girls must have complained. As we started our second pass, a security guard came up and hustled us off to the Dean of Students, and told her about our offense against human decency. He must have been new, since she just smiled and sent us on our way. I did, however, ask if she would sign the bra. She snorted and said I was pushing my luck, but she signed it nevertheless and we went back out to the quad.

On the way back, I asked the guys to drive us over to Hoosick Street. I had them drop me off out front of the Canty-Hammett Hot Spot. They were nervous about leaving me, but I wasn’t. I was the only white face in the place, but I just walked up to the bar and sat down on a stool. “Can I get a beer?” I asked.

The black bartender looked me over curiously. “What do you want?”

“What’s on tap? You got a Budweiser?” I asked.

He shrugged and silently poured me a glass. I pulled out my wallet and laid a five on the bar. He left it there and just watched me. I drank some beer as the room watched me. “Is Mister Canty or Mister Hammett in?”

The bartender nodded. “I’m Ron Canty. What do you want?”

“Nice to meet you, sir. If you could just sign one of these bar napkins for me, I’ll finish my beer and get out of your way.” I slid a napkin towards him from a pile at the end of the bar.

He rolled his eyes and snorted with laughter. “What is this, another frat stunt?”

“Yes, sir, that is exactly what it is!” I finished my beer and pushed it forward for a refill.

He refilled my glass and slid it back. “This is one of them silly ass white boy things, ain’t it?”

I stuck my hand out. “Carl Buckman, silly ass white boy. How you doing, sir?”

He laughed at that and signed a bar napkin. I stuck it in my pocket and finished my beer, thanked him again, and left. Outside, I found my keepers nervously standing around the car, worried I was being mugged in the all black bar. I handed them the napkin and climbed into the car. I was also given five demerits for drinking.

I wasn’t the only one to catch demerits, of course, and Tuesday night we discovered egregiously bad behavior amongst the neos. Jerry Modanowicz had flipped the bird to a brother on campus. As punishment, he was to paint the offending digit Wednesday morning, in shades of magenta and gold. In response, we all painted our middle fingers magenta with gold fingernails, although we almost had to tie Barry Lewis down to get him to agree. This was considered a sign of superior moral character by the brothers, by the way!Meanwhile, a different form of punishment was being meted out to us. During our hours of sleep, hidden loudspeakers were blasting “The Morning After”, the sickeningly sweet theme song from last year’s The Poseidon Adventure over and over at us. We started singing it back until they realized we couldn’t be broken, and they stopped.

Thank God the professors knew what was happening. No tests or assignments were given to anyone that week, since this was happening to hundreds of us all over campus. Every frat did Hell Week the same week. The only time we had to sleep was in class, and the only time the teachers complained was when we started snoring.

It got seriously weird Wednesday night. We were asked if we had our new maps of Danbury, and then we were blindfolded and handcuffed, and then loaded into the back of a panel truck. We drove for what seemed like hours, but it was actually only about fifteen minutes before the truck stopped. We were let out and lined up, our handcuffs removed, and finally we were left standing in a row. After about five minutes, a voice behind us cried out, “What the fuck are you assholes waiting for?” We slowly took our blindfolds off and found we were at the edge of a parking lot facing the Hudson River. We all looked around and saw that behind us, across the street, one of the brothers was waving to us from the door of a bar. Nobody knew what was going on, but we ran across the street. The brothers were all buying us beer, as much as we wanted, and we all got wasted.

Thursday night we had to give our reports on the tasks assigned to us. Leo reported how many Coglans the Hoosick Bridge was long, including sub-Coglan units, like Coglanarms and Coglandhands. I presented the 44G bra and gave the measurements and counts of girls. The supervising brothers gave out with various humorous anecdotes about our performances.