PRINCETON, NJ — Being the President of Princeton University has its responsibilities. Controlling the direction of the nation’s most prestigious research institution, managing the affairs of one of the most intelligent faculty bodies in the world, and overseeing the education of an internationally-acclaimed undergraduate body, to name a few. But recent administrative investigations suggest that this authority may come at a cost: pledge-hood.
With the public inauguration of President-elect Christopher Eisgruber not weeks away, rumors of secret pre-inaugural initiation rites have stunned the Princeton community. The University, which has begun investigating the charges, says it is seriously concerned by the evidence presented so far, which may represent the most aggressive case of hazing the University has ever seen.
The Committee on Discipline filed a complaint yesterday against the decidedly cryptic Society For Princeton University Presidents, asserting that their practices of “grave-kegging, vodka-boarding, and ritual bloodletting are categorically ill-advised and shame the very institution they are meant to uphold.”
Grave-kegging refers to the custom of exhuming corpses from Princeton’s local graveyard and, as the Committee explains, “having a drink with Woodrow”. The committee has even cited the Society for hosting ‘illegal games of chance’, a charge relating to its sponsorship of alleged ‘Frosh Fights,’ a betting sport in which freshmen engineers are made to physically brawl for a higher grade.
Should these accusations to be true, the repercussions could wax severe. Eisgruber would most likely lose his position, and the faculty involved could be forced to leave the University, or worse, become regular donors.
Though evidence is clearly mounting, Eisgruber, when asked to comment on the charges, responded vaguely.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What presidency?” he muttered to the wall, sliding out of a blood-stained cowl and mouth gag.
“He definitely sounds like he’s hiding something,” a St. A’s member confirms.
But while circumstances seem to point to the truth behind these strange rituals, many wonder if Eisgruber is the type of man who would willingly submit to such abuse.
Sources close to the incoming president confirm his affinity for the hard-party life, suggesting that participating in a routine frat initiation would not be beneath the one-time Rhodes Scholar.
“The guy’s a total frat star in the first place. This just kind of fits him,” laughed a close friend. “You should have seen him at faculty parties. One hand on the Shiraz, the other executing a perfect military press. The guy was unstoppable. Girls used to call Eis-man, like the character from Top Gun. Seriously, call him that. I swear he’ll freak.”
With hazing allegedly playing a key role in the progression of each University president, many question Princeton’s strict policy against the practice among its undergraduates.
“Tilghman’s attack on the frats may have been a retaliatory measure for her own hazing experience,” one administration official purported. “She may have just been a little bitter about having to salt her whiskey with one of Woodrow Wilson’s rib bones that we—that the suspected ritual calls for. If that was a real thing of course. Which it’s not.”
While the committee’s charges are withstanding, an official indictment has not been made against the society supposedly responsible. Official records relating to the upcoming inauguration have not been altered or destroyed to remove Eisgruber’s affiliation but still list him under his strange and much-puzzled-over alias, “Pledge-Fuck”.
– CJS ’16. Illustrated by KX ’16.