Op Ed: Don’t Ban Branding

Recently, AD has come under fire in the national media for a branding scandal, after one new member got an infection after being branded on his buttocks.  The college has vowed to crack down harder on “hazing” activities such as this one, but I, and many others, feel that this action is grossly misguided.  Banning all branding is not the solution.  If we outlaw branding, branding will only be driven further underground.  Instead, the college needs to establish safe branding practices, and public, college sanctioned spaces for ass-branding, to ensure infections like this never occur again.

Let me be clear.  Dartmouth is a college, and college students are always going to brand each other’s asses.  There’s no way around it.  If you put together a lot of young, intelligent people, away from their parents for the first time, the natural conclusion is that they will start ass-branding. Even in the most repressive environments, teenagers will find ways to create lasting and permanent burn marks on each other’s butts, even without the proper branding tools, and all too often this means using unsafe branding techniques such as irons or hair straighteners.  Unfortunately, brands created with these methods are likely to become infected, and students who iron each other’s buttocks in secret are unlikely to seek help for such injuries.

The  real problem is that we teach young people that ass-branding is something illicit that should be done in secret.  Studies have even shown that even something as simple as branding the family crest into a child’s rear end at holidays or family gatherings makes them more likely to practice safe branding practices in the future.  Unfortunately, with its zero tolerance policy, Dartmouth is encouraging the same repressive attitudes towards branding that lead to unhealthy behaviors. 

Another common misconception is that the incident that happened at AD happened because of the fraternities.  People mistakenly believe that, if it were not for “pledge term”, this young man’s ass would have escaped unscathed.  Unfortunately, this is far from true.  When we get rid of frats, the branding goes underground, to the freshman dorms, in what are known as “room branding parties”, unsupervised orgies of debauchery and sizzling ass cheeks.  Unfortunately, in unsupervised environments such as this one, safe branding techniques are rarely practiced.

So, instead of the draconian measures proposed by the college to end all branding of asses, a measure which is unfortunately unfeasible, I propose a system where safe branding is allowed, and even encouraged by the administration.  I imagine Phil Hanlon taking a hot iron to an incoming freshman’s ass during orientation at a branding mixer in Collis Commonground, and a new system of BIPA’s, brand infection peer advisors.  Branding is simply a fact on college campuses.  Either Dartmouth can embrace this, or it can continue its zero tolerance policy, driving branding even further underground.

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-LB ’15