The Basement

They take the men down of the dank basement. The temperature hovers around 40 degrees, but as the night goes on it will get colder. Windows are missing, and the men can see their breath. Sewage has backed up; the concrete floor is covered with three inches of gray water strewn with cigarette butts, garbage and dark chunks. They ask the men questions, and when they don't like the answers, they make the men get down in the water.

Two nights later the men are taken down again. They order them up onto a bench and pass them a five-gallon bottle of water. When they don't like the men's answers, they order them to drink. And drink. And to pour the bottle over their heads.

The water makes the men dizzy, the room taking on an eerily bright cast. The huge man rages and orders the fans turned up full blast. There will be no mercy in the basement tonight. The water, the questions, the water, the questions. One bottle is downed, then two, then three, then four--more than 20 gallons drunk or poured over the shivering bodies of the two men.

They warn the men not to urinate, but the gallons must go somewhere, threatening to burst their swollen bladders and engorged stomachs. The men pee themselves, the warm waves of urine spilling down their legs, humiliation a small price to pay for the momentary respite from the cold. They retch up the water in long arcs, vomiting till they're ordered back up onto the bench and handed another bottle and another. Finally one of the tormentors has a different sort of question: "Did you know you could die from drinking too much water?"

The time is nearly four a.m., Wednesday, February 2, 2005. Down in the basement no one thinks twice about the Geneva Convention's ban on torture. This is not Guantánamo Bay or Afghanistan or a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe. Mike Quintana and Matt Carrington are students at Chico State University, pledges at the Chi Tau fraternity. During the next hour the tormentors, the men they hope to call brothers, will determine whether they live or die.

Wired into our frenetic, high-tech world, we find it easy to forget the origins of male rites of passage, to think only of their most recent incarnations: rituals passed down by sports teams, college fraternities or the Boy Scouts. But few traditions are more ancient than forcing a boy through painful tests of courage and will to shatter his adolescence. Bloody beatings, wounds that scar, harsh ordeals in the wild--for thousands of years these have been the ways a boy becomes a man.

Classic male initiations began by ripping the boy from his mother. As Alex Haley showed in Roots, boys of the Mandinka tribe were literally kidnapped, removed to a male camp, run through rites of hunting and fighting, and then publicly circumcised. The myth of man carving his character and place in the world through dangerous, noble deeds has a timeless appeal. By the early 19th century American men placed huge stock in proving their manhood before other males. What actually made a man, however, was somehow mysterious. "The reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. "It lies in the man; that is all anybody can tell you about it."

Young men went west; they sought oil or gold, or they searched out a stage on which to prove their manliness. Matt and Mike went to Chico State. Over the years, the school has made a name for itself, earning notoriety in this magazine and others for its comely coeds and legendary party spirit. Chico would seem the ultimate California university town, and it is true that the quaint old Western downtown is crowded with bars. But Chico is far closer to Oregon than Los Angeles, lodged in the sparsely populated northern corner of the state. General John Bidwell founded the city in 1860 and planted lovely trees of endless variety, which now tower over the wandering creek that ambles through the pleasant campus here. Snow occasionally blankets the foothills in winter, agriculture and mining are the region's big industries, and a few miles away lonely stretches evoke New Mexico's high-mountain desert. Sacramento, the closest city of note, is more than two hours distant; San Francisco is three. Unless you happened to have grown up in this city of about 80,000, Chico is a long way from home.

Those fortunate enough to attend prestigious universities may find it easy to dismiss a young man who would choose Chico State and join a fraternity with a reputation like Chi Tau's. But the lives and character of the handful of youths in this drama reveal a far more complex reality. The fate of Matt Carrington and Mike Quintana rested on those who had most recently survived the ordeal, the pledges from the class just before theirs, called the junior actives. The logic--common not just to fraternities but to other male-dominated places as well--is brutally simple. Those who have just endured the abuse get first crack at dishing it out, their authority unquestioned. They've got bump.

Jerry Lim proudly wore the title of pledge general, a fitting one, since he had served in the Air Force. Short and intelligent, Jerry had hauntingly bad luck. His father left when Jerry was a year old; his mother was suicidal. Jerry scored brilliantly on the SAT and was accepted by the University of California, Berkeley, but his mother pushed him to join the Air Force. Jerry hated the military, leaving after three years to enter UC Santa Barbara at the age of 21; he partied there and soon flunked out. One month after his mother killed herself Jerry moved to Chico and rushed frats for the free beer, only to discover he actually liked the guys at Chi Tau. In spring 2004 he pledged, aspiring to be pledge master the next semester.

John Paul Fickes, a slight, ethereal boy, spent a lonely first semester with his grandparents, 30 miles away in a rural hamlet. A soccer player in high school. John Paul didn't drink or think of himself as a typical frat guy but found friendship with some "really smart" Chi Tau guys. The holder of a 3.9 high school GPA, who adored theater and dreamed of studying law, John Paul was impressed that many in the frat were putting themselves through college. "They liked me," he has said, and he was asked to pledge in spring 2004. "They thought I was a cool guy."

Mike Fernandez, a strapping kid with good grades, was another gifted athlete drawn to Chi Tau. His first night in Chico his roommate, Ken Dandy, took him to a Chi Tau party. Beers were being sold from a soda machine, three bands were jamming, and the house was packed with at least 500 people, girls lifting up their shirts and flashing. Ken fell for the frat, pledged that fall and soon became Chi Tau president. He convinced Fernandez that the guys were cool, that pledging was the best decision he'd ever made. Ken, who was on the Chico debate team, could be pretty persuasive. Fernandez said he also couldn't help (continued on page 70)Basement (continued from page 60) but notice that his roommate, a "chubby guy with a beard," was suddenly going to cocktail parties in a three-piece suit, "all these hot girls hanging off him."

Ken offered his friend an elaborate Chi Tau history: Founded in 1939, the frat became affiliated with Delta Sigma Phi in 1956, and all the famous Chico guys were Delta Sigma. Except Fernandez knew his pal was laying it on thick. Chi Tau lost its national charter because of what Ken termed a "bad rap around school," and Fernandez was dubious of his friend's claim that we "can go back to Delta Sig anytime we want." Fernandez made the dean's list and was surprised to meet guys like himself, who were "really into school, focused." The closer--what pushed him to pledge--was the Chi Tau rush party in February 2004. They called it the Snow Social and carted in bales of hay and truckloads of snow from nearby Butte Meadows. They built a ramp and slid down it on snowboards and toboggans. "Just ridiculous," said Fernandez of the blowout, during which he snuggled up to more than a few coeds. "The girl-to-guy ratio was three or four to one."

Finally, there was Gabe Maestretti--Gabby, as his brothers affectionately called him--sumo-wrestler wide, topping 300 pounds, with a bowling-ball head. Gabe had wrestled in high school and played football till he blew out his knee. No dumb jock, he had acted in Twelfth Night and Macbeth. At Chico he played the part of the fun-loving pledge favorite, the jolly Falstaff. He majored in psychology, but partying took its toll. For two straight semesters he couldn't pull off Cs, and in late 2004 Gabe flunked out, reduced to working as a bouncer down the street at the raucous Madison Bear Garden.

Matt Carrington's first choice of schools was UC Santa Barbara, but when his Chico acceptance letter arrived in the summer of 2004 and there was no word from Santa Barbara, he headed north. By August he'd moved to Chico. Then, out of the blue, his Santa Barbara acceptance letter arrived, delayed by a computer error. Matt took it in stride, telling his mother he'd already begun preparing for the start of school, saying, "It's just meant to be."

The antithesis of the stereotypical frat boy, Matt was a polite, well-mannered young man, adored by his mother and extended family. He'd been taking psychology courses for fun but was good at math and well organized, and hoped to become an accountant. For the past two years he'd shared an apartment with his father, rekindling a lost bond. Rangy, with a long, earnest face and jet-black hair, Matt was athletic though never the sort to join school teams. He was shy, and perhaps that was why a close family friend suggested he take her room in a little house in Chico after she'd graduated. Matt's two female roommates found him achingly sweet and soon drew him out for living-room study sessions lightened by episodes of Friends.

Through this family connection, Mike Quintana and Matt Carrington became pals. Matt's friend had asked Mike to look out for him. Whereas Matt was a bit awkward around girls, Mike had looks on his side: an easy, drowsy expression to match his tousled brown hair. He liked to party, and Matt couldn't believe the way he'd walk right up to some guy at a frat house, start talking to him and the next thing you knew he was in and chatting up the chicks. Just like that he dragged Matt around to a bunch of frats, decided Chi Tau was the one and invited his new friend along for the ride.

Matt said he was too busy, but Mike talked him into it, and soon the two were caught up in the fall pledge tradition: endless calisthenics, late-night runs to buy beer or pizza for the brothers, raising and lowering the flag in front of the frat, cleaning house, various and sundry humiliations. In late September they dipped down to southern California for the obligatory road trip with three fellow pledges. Mike's toughest task was to walk into a store in boxers, grab a beer out of the fridge, open it and ask, "Where's the Vaseline?" Matt had to swap shirts with a homeless man and make an appearance as a hooker in a miniskirt and heels on a crowded Los Angeles corner. As winter approached, the number of pledges dwindled. One quit, another was tossed for fighting, and a third left school. Attrition brought the fall class of 2004 down to just Matt and Mike. Quick-witted and good-natured, Matt earned the moniker Super Pledge, but he confessed to his mom that he was exhausted and just wanted it to be over. As the holidays neared, word came down that their pledge class was being held over. They'd have to wait until after winter break for Hell Week.

•

Joseph Web smacked two freshmen in 1684 to become the first Harvard man expelled for hazing. The practice traces its origins to ancient Greece, where young scholars were often bloodied by wild pranks. In the Middle Ages what was called pennalism involved beatings with books or frying pans, the forced drinking of urine and public humiliation. University students had to suffer the abuse if they wanted to become professors or doctors, and Martin Luther famously advised, "You'll be subjected to hazing all your life."

Throughout the 19th century freshmen at major universities were forced to run errands for upperclass-men and serve as the butt of harsh practical jokes. "Fagging" was firmly ensconced at English public schools, with domination the rule; a younger student was a senior's fag--meaning he fetched food and drink--valet and whipping boy in one. Hazing gradually became more dangerous. One night in 1873 a Cornell pledge abandoned in the countryside plunged to his death in a gorge.

More than two students a year have died in hazing incidents over the past three decades. Highly publicized deaths and injuries have led more than 44 states to pass statutes to criminalize hazing. Although most fatalities have occurred with college fraternities and involved alcohol, hazing has become endemic on high school and college sports teams as well, and a flurry of illicit photos recently posted on badjocks.com has spawned investigations at several universities. A recent NCAA survey of more than 325,000 college athletes reported that the majority had been hazed and that 20 percent of those had been subjected to ritualized beatings, kidnapping and/or abandonment.

Is this hazing, brutal punishment or torture? Many assume torture requires interrogation, but that changed with the photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. There was a weird familiarity to those disturbing pictures. Except for their setting, a military prison, the images looked straight out of a fraternity, with the sadistic emphasis on nudity and sexual humiliation. Abuse rarely falls within neatly prescribed bounds. The incidents at Abu Ghraib resembled hazing, punishment and torture all at once. The abuses and gross humiliations carried out there and at Guantánamo drove home an old truth: Men have been torturing and committing (continued on page 142) Basement(continued from page 70) sadistic acts since time immemorial.

Popular sociologists have recently reported on bullying by girls, labeling the perpetrators queen bees, with some researchers arguing the politically correct notion that violence is learned behavior. Girls, they say, can be just as nasty as boys. While it may be true that a handful of women helped humiliate prisoners at Abu Ghraib, throughout history the physical torture, beating and killing of prisoners is nearly always performed or directed by men. Violent-crime statistics worldwide belie the notion that, as a group, women are as brutal or antisocial as men. Whether in Detroit or a remote third world village, men perpetrate roughly 90 percent of violent acts. The interesting question is why some men and not others.

•

Late on the night of Sunday, January 30, 2005 Matt and Mike are taken down to the basement of the Chi Tau fraternity house, ankle-deep in the filthy stew. Graffiti is scrawled on the walls: the names and dates of pledge classes, phrases such as "Remember the slaves" and "It's only in the mind." The basement has a foul, musty stench.

Mike remembers how often he's seen members spit and piss here, but what he feels is the freezing cold, the winter air rushing in through the broken basement windows. General Lim's title would seem to put him in command, but it's really a mob scene, the cavernous underground room packed with abusive, screaming men. The night begins. The pair are made to get facedown in the water, forefingers and thumbs pressed together in a triangle for delta push-ups. Football burpees and up-downs. Wall-sits. Down onto their backs, into the murky water, legs and arms up in the air.

"I'm a little cockroach," they must sing, the filthy water splashed in their faces. It's cold, and they're exhausted and humiliated. Toward the end, after a couple of members have become ugly drunks, Mike realizes Jerry Lim may be pledge general, but he's also the only one protecting them from the dicks.

The night ends at five A.M. Jerry lets them change out of their soiled, wet clothes, and they crawl behind the washer and drier into sleeping bags in a cement cubby. It's the sort of nook a homeless person might call home. The tiny basement window is shattered, and their corner is no bigger than a crawl space, crowded with pipes and the drier duct. They close their eyes, but there's no sleep.

After a warning from a plumber that the pledges could get hepatitis from the filthy water, they are granted a basement reprieve. Pledge Olympics is Monday's theme, and the night begins with games in the living room. Foreheads against the handle of a baseball bat, the pledges spin until they can barely stand. They swing at a flattened beer can. They might as well try to hit a fly. Up the stairs they run--three flights, 10, 20 times. Again and again. It's exhausting, but there's no cold, no sewer water, only a few members screaming in their faces. Gradually the night morphs into an impromptu baseball game, the goal of exhausting and humiliating the pledges forgotten. Near dawn, Jerry, knowing his charges had a rough Sunday night, takes pity on them and lets the two clamber into his top bunk for a couple of hours of sleep.

•

General Lim orders the pledges down to the still-wet basement floor for delta pushups. It's Tuesday night, 11 p.m. He shouts out a refrain, and they repeat, "I will never make Jerry Lim look bad again!"

"Pledge position number one!"

Jerry yells.

They fall into the push-up position.

"Down!"

They drop.

"Up!"

They rise, shouting, "I!"

On they go, one push-up for each letter in the refrain, pressing out 34.

Jerry is good and pissed. They've fucked up raising the flags, neglected to wear plastic bags on their shoes and generally made him and the other junior actives look like pussies. The senior members have been giving Jerry grief all day, and he's had it. The pledge general is going to "wipe his hands clean" for the night. He's barely slept the past two nights and has class in the morning. He won't stay in charge for the entire night and won't hold back his fellow junior actives. Jerry Lim isn't going to be nice anymore.

"What's my delta alpha?"

"Sir, Long Duck Dong, sir."

Matt has memorized the Chi Tau blue book, the frat's bible, and snaps back correct answers, including the members' nicknames, or delta alphas, but Mike slips, and when he does, Jerry explodes. The pledges are ordered out of their shoes, socks and shirts, and stripped down to their blue jeans, the windchill from the fans making it feel barely above freezing. They are ordered to look only at a smelly old shoe that hangs directly before them from the rafters.

Into the pledge positions they go--dozens of delta push-ups, plenty of bur-pees and thigh-shaking wall-sits. Hell Week embraces the interrogator's standard method of total mental and physical control. Pledges can eat only what they are given. The general hands the pledges an "apple" (an onion) to eat, chased down by a couple of "cookies" (two cloves of garlic).

It's nearing midnight. Across town in the university library Mike Fernandez is finishing up his calculus home-work when he gets a message on his cell phone. Ken Dandy, the upbeat Chi Tau president, has a news bulletin: "I just want you to know that Hell Week has started and you have now gained your full rights as a member. I highly encourage you to come over and use them."

Ken is a friend, but the call unsettles Fernandez. He hated his own initiation, the members yelling and shouting at him, making him feel worthless. He wondered what was wrong with these guys. How could they take such pleasure in these sadistic rites? He had promised himself that after he got through it he would not be like them.

The week of push-ups, shivering in pools of ice water, sleep deprivation--it all made Fernandez so ill that when it was finished he checked himself into the university clinic. The nurse returned with a policeman. Fernandez wouldn't talk. He might have wrestled for Chico State, but he knew if he ratted out his brothers half a dozen of them would beat the shit out of him.

•

Exactly why young men in groups bully others is something of a mystery. Jane Ireland, a forensic psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire, has investigated the phenomenon in dozens of U.K. prisons and thinks she has the answer. In a recent study of 1,253 inmates from 11 prisons, Ireland made the remarkable discovery that 71 percent of the so-called bullies were also victims.

The finding challenges current thinking about bullying in prisons and schools. The surprising conclusion of Ireland and fellow researcher John Archer: The majority of bullies are victims who bully for protection or status. Contrary to previous theories, the findings suggest victim-bullies do not display any unique personality or type, says Ireland. Instead, bullying is largely a function of survival. There is a Darwinian element to it, and in prison victims must bully or be doomed to spiraling abuse. "You can start as a victim and make your way up to a bully-victim," she says. "By bullying someone you make yourself a little less vulnerable."

The harsh prison environment starkly illuminates the social forces that transform a victim into a bully. At the bottom in the bullying hierarchy are the so-called lambs, the victims subjected to the most abuse. It is no coincidence that researchers label them with a term reflecting feminine vulnerability. The group Ireland terms reinforcers, "the men who often clap and cheer and encourage the action," stands in the middle.

Henchmen align themselves with "a bully with a lot of status, someone very aggressive," says Ireland. Interestingly, henchmen "more or less do the bullying." Indeed, one of the ironies of bullying is that the wolf, or pure bully, need not always directly bully. Henchmen carry out his orders.

A strong offense, it seems, is the best defense. "Aggression is a valuable behavior among younger male groups," says Ireland. "If you're quite aggressive, it actually protects you." At many fraternities--Chi Tau included--rites of initiation ensure that new recruits, not unlike new prisoners at a jail, are abused and victimized. By giving recently victimized pledges the title of junior actives and granting them unchallenged authority to harass the next pledge class, fraternities ritualize and encourage the transformation of victims into bullies. "The fraternity initiation highlights the dynamic nature of bullying," says Ireland. "It's not about a person's characteristics. It's the environment that drives the bullying. It's where you are."

•

That Tuesday, movie night as they call it, Mike Fernandez arrives in the basement just after 12. Rex Garnett, a Chi Tau brother, carries down an old TV, his Xbox and some poker chips. He brings three electric fans, too. Trent Stiefvater, a junior active, joins him on the couch and starts counting out the chips. Fernandez throws his arm around Matt. "You all right, buddy? You wanna quit? Don't worry," he says.

"Sir, no, sir," Matt says.

"Knock that shit off," Fernandez says.

"You don't have to call me sir."

"Yes you do!" shouts Jerry, who then heads up to the kitchen.

Fernandez glances at his cell phone. It's 12:50. Jerry returns with a full five-gallon jug of Alhambra water.

"Water makes pledges grow!" he growls.

Jerry hands the pledges the bottle and recites the drill: Balance on the bench with one leg raised, head between the rafters and no touching the house, and drink till you can't drink anymore. Then pass the bottle to your pledge brother.

"All right," Jerry says. "You have 10 minutes to finish this jug."

The poker table faces the pledges; the players are Rex Garnett and junior actives Jerry Lim, Trent Stiefvater and Richard Hirth. John Paul Fickes and Mike Fernandez watch the game and the slapstick Bernie Mac comedy Mr. 3000 on the old TV. They sit on a lumpy couch and chairs, joined by a few older members and other brothers who come and go.

Bare foot up, leaning on his pledge brother, Matt starts to drink. And drink. He passes the jug to Mike.

"Take one for the homies!" yells a member.

Mike hoists the bottle over his head, the icy water splashing down, soaking his pants.

Mike has never felt anything like this before. It's cold like when you stick your arm in a bucket of ice water, cold long after it stings and goes numb. With half the bottle finished, Mike notices the room brighten. He feels tipsy. If he spills just a little, Jerry and the others shout abuse.

They yell at them to drink more. And they taunt, "You better not piss yourself! Don't piss yourself!"

Then there's Jerry coming in close, playing the good cop, whispering, "Go ahead. Everyone has done it. It's the best way to keep warm."

Mike fights the fullness in his bladder, but Matt keeps passing him the bottle. They've drunk or poured out nearly the entire thing, five full gallons.

Mike can't hold back anymore. "Sirs! Peeing! Sirs!"

•

In our modern civilized world will most men intentionally inflict pain on others? Isn't that the dark realm of criminals and sadists, society's fringe? In 1961 Stanley Milgram, a young psychologist, orchestrated a series of experiments at Yale to find out. His newspaper advertisement for one of these said he was investigating memory and learning. Recruits, both men and women, were divided into teacher and learner roles. The teachers recited a list of two-word pairs, and then the learners, each strapped into a miniature electric chair with electrodes attached to their arms, were read a word and attempted to remember its mate. The teacher punished the learner for errors by flipping an electric switch. The first shocks to the learner were minor, less than 20 volts. As the number of errors increased, the shocks became far more powerful, the subjects crying out in pain and even fearing for their life.

The majority of the teachers kept flipping the switch--all the way up to 450-volt shocks. Twenty-five of the 40 subjects, Milgram wrote, "obeyed the orders of the experimenter to the end, punishing the victim until they reached the most potent shock available on the generator." Of course, the shocks were a fiction, the learners actors. But the teachers believed the elaborate electric panels, switches and electrodes were genuine. They thought the screams were real, and some believed the victims might even die by their hand. The fundamental lesson, wrote Milgram, was that "ordinary people, simply doing their jobs and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible, destructive process."

•

Mike figures the night must be nearly done. They can't possibly do this much longer. But Rich Hirth grabs the bottle, walks up to the kitchen, refills the container, carries it down and hands it back to the pledges.

"Water makes pledges grow!"

Mike can't imagine drinking another sip. But Matt keeps drinking, and so does Mike. One question wrong and they're paying the price, drinking for 15 minutes. Two bottles are downed, and Mike is ready to walk right out the door. He asks his friend if he wants to quit, and Matt says no.

Trent Stiefvater hears Jerry shout, "You're messing up! You're messing up!"

Trent is a hunter and scuba diver accustomed to cold. During his Hell Week he'd simply cupped a hand before his face and let the water run off, faking it. But Trent takes pride in the Chi Tau rituals. He has learned the bawdy songs. He cares. To his mind, his fakery proved his ingenuity, the power of his survival instinct. These pledges are simply messing up.

"Get your leg up!" he orders.

Mike raises his foot off the bench an inch.

Trent closes in on Mike's face. "That how far you think it should be?"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

The pledge lifts his leg higher and tumbles to the concrete.

This ritual has a dark undercurrent, something no one has dared to tell the pledges. Mike is the black sheep, and many members don't like him. They claim he has disrespected women at their parties. Fernandez went to the meetings and listened as the brothers spoke of their determination to get rid of this guy. Gabe, Mike's big brother, told Fernandez, "I fuckin' hate Mike. I want him out of this fraternity so bad." But it's not that simple. "The only way to really get rid of pledges," Fernandez said later, "is to weed them out through the hazing."

•

The ultimate answer to why men are prone to violence may lie in biology. Aggression gives males a rush. "It's not surprising that males like to engage in sex and win fights," says Ruth Wood, a neurobiologist at the University of Southern California. "When they do either of those things their testosterone levels go up significantly for a couple of hours." Wood has recently performed experiments demonstrating that hamsters will essentially self-administer massive doses of testosterone--not unlike a human steroid junkie.

If animals and men crave surges of testosterone, which helps to explain basic urges for aggression and sex, there's another factor. Sex is inexorable. In nature polygynous male animals--and yes, that's what a man is--fight their way to impregnating as many females as possible. "Overwhelmingly, the majority situation in mammals is one of polygyny, not monogamy," says David Barash, a biologist and professor of psychology at the University of Washington at Seattle. Antler-crowned male elk and massive male elephant seals strive to be the most vicious and promiscuous harem masters possible. It's brutal head-to-head competition with few winners--and lots of losers. "For every harem master who may succeed in impregnating as many as 30 elk," says Barash, "there are 29 angry, resentful and rather violent bachelors."

Which is why in nature--and in humanity--we find not only harem masters but dominance hierarchies. Baboons and macaque monkeys are rigidly hierarchical, like fraternity brothers. Are young college men that different from elk and elephant seals fighting to win females? Only those males tough enough to survive the fraternity initiation gain access to the hundreds of sorority girls. "If I were a biologist setting up a study that would be most likely to evoke strong patterns of violence in men, it would be similar to a fraternity," says Barash. "It's a situation of male-male interaction. All these wannabe silverback male gorillas, and only a few of them will actually succeed."

•

The third bottle seems impossible; Mike's stomach feels bloated like a football. He takes a sip and suddenly turns to the trash can and spews a seemingly endless stream of water laced with the thin remains of the pledge apple. Five minutes later Matt too vomits up water.

Mike feels drunk and disoriented, but they have to keep drinking and answering the questions because they want to make it through the night.

When, around 1:30 A.M., Fernandez comes back down with his frat brother Corey Williams, the scene is surreal. John Paul, the gentle, quiet junior active, seems "so into the ritual," Fernandez has said. He's yelling, lecturing the pledges on house history, "determined," said Fernandez, "to make men out of these guys." The night has turned the former lamb into a henchman.

Fernandez approaches the pledges just as they finish the third bottle. "I'm going to give you one piece of advice," he whispers. "Don't drink all that water. Spill it behind your neck if you have to."

Then Fernandez gives a wink only they can see and says loudly, "Guys, don't piss yourselves!"

At that, Fernandez looks up and sees Gabe stumble down the stairs.

"Hey, Gabby, what you been up to?" says Trent as Gabe tumbles onto the couch.

"I'm so drunk, I just want to pass out."

Just like that his eyes shut, and he's fair game. Trent shoves the butterball Gabe, Fernandez tugs on the giant's chin hair, and Carlos Abrille, the house manager, joins in. Wrestling is a favorite house diversion, Gabe usually flattening his brothers until they cry uncle. That's how he got his delta alpha, his nickname: During his Hell Week they made him roll over the other pledges, nicknaming him after a monster truck called Grave Digger. Now, like a pinned tag-team wrestler, Gabe roars out of his slumber and cries for help. Trent reaches into Carlos's pants and gives him a wedgie. Five minutes of roughhousing later, Gabe has once again crashed.

Twenty minutes afterward Jerry loses a big hand in the poker game, throwing it in for the night. A little more water and the night will be done. Jerry announces that his first lieutenant, Gabe, is now in charge. But John Paul remarks that Gabe has passed out.

"You're in charge till Gabe wakes up," Jerry tells John Paul before leaving. "It's almost over."

So John Paul, a 19-year-old freshman who moved into the house two nights before, takes the helm. He orders the pledges to pour the water over their shivering bodies, figuring it's more painful to freeze.

The big guy stirs, hunched over on the couch, squinting and growling. "Why the fuck aren't the fans going? J.P., turn on the fan! Why the fuck aren't the flags up?" Gabe bellows. "Hell Week and you're just fucking us over."

A few minutes later Fernandez returns after hanging out upstairs. Gabe stretches out a hand holding the now empty water bottle. "Mike," he says.

Fernandez asks, "How many times has it been filled up?"

"Don't fuckin' worry about it."

"Aren't they done already?"

"Don't fuckin' worry about it!" Gabe thunders. "Just go!"

Fernandez starts to argue. Then Gabe pulls the junior-active trump card.

"Bump!"

Shit, Fernandez thinks as he takes the jug. You can't say anything back to bump.

•

Why water? Through the ages torturers have forced innumerable victims to drink water for the simple reason that it terrifies them with the overwhelming sense of drowning. During the Inquisition, torturers knew the amount should never exceed two gallons if the victim was to stay alive. Recently the CIA has reportedly held terrorist suspects underwater--a procedure euphemistically termed waterboarding. Less known are the Category III interrogation techniques outlined in a once secret U.S. Army memorandum written in October 2001 to the commander of the joint task force at Guantánamo Bay. They are extreme methods of torture that required the approval of the commanding general: "exposure to cold weather or water (with appropriate medical monitoring)" and another standby of the Inquisition, the "use of a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation."

•

Now on their fifth bottle, Mike tells Matt to pour the water into his mouth and let it spill to the floor, not in order to stop drinking but because it's so heavy.

"Don't fucking spill the water on my house!" Gabe screams.

Mike Fernandez and Corey Williams have come and gone again. Both worry about the pledges' safety, but ultimately Fernandez goes home and Corey heads back to his room. It's after three. By now Mike and Matt have each peed themselves half a dozen times and vomited water twice.

Grave Digger has a new question: "Did you know you could die from drinking too much water?"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

He orders them down into their lukewarm excretions--slowly, till their arms shake. They slap to the concrete. He makes them start over. When they can't do another push-up he orders them back up, making Mike hold the bottle while Matt drinks.

"You fuckups!" shouts Grave Digger.

Halfway through the fifth bottle, Corey returns. "Can I talk to them?" he asks.

Corey has Matt lower his leg and Mike put down the bottle. "The night's almost over," he says, telling them to just pour the water down their backs.

"Can I use the restroom?" asks Matt.

As Matt heads up the stairs, Gabe orders Mike to pick up the bottle. But as Corey tries to cool things down, the bottle slips from Mike's hands, smacks the bench and sprays Corey. Enraged, Gabe says they will pay for drenching a member, and a frustrated Corey leaves.

"You guys are doing push-ups!" shouts Gabe on Matt's return.

Grave Digger orders them down onto the concrete, taunting them. Matt is slow to get up, and John Paul notices he's pale.

Finally, the pledges nail four questions in a row. One more, John Paul says, and that's it for the night. Mike can end it right here.

"What was the date of Gabe's pledge class?" says John Paul.

"Spring 2002," offers Mike.

"You don't fucking know my pledge class!" Gabe hollers. "You're my little brother, and you don't fucking know my pledge class!"

Matt collapses after the first pushup, but the big man orders John Paul to hoist him up by his belt. With Grave Digger screaming, John Paul yanks Matt up by his britches. One more push-up, two more....

Down in the dark, cold basement for one more push-up, Matt collapses to the concrete in a seizure, flopping around like a fish, teeth clamped down like a bear trap. Mike sees his friend's eyes flash red and roll back in his head. A dazed John Paul watches Matt's hands curl up to his chest.

Gabe sits on the couch, staring in disbelief.

"Call an ambulance!" Mike yells. "He's having a seizure!"

Mike jams his fingers into his friend's mouth to stop him from biting his tongue, and screams. Gabe rolls off the couch, taking the fallen man's jaw in his great paws, prying it open just enough for Mike to extract his fingers. And just like that Matt's eyes shut as if someone is drawing the blinds. John Paul bolts up the stairs and pounds on Carlos's door, then remembers he left to get a burger. He shakes Jerry, but he won't wake up.

Downstairs Matt has gone limp and seems to be snoring, his head cradled in Gabe's lap.

Mike runs up to see if John Paul has called the ambulance. They meet on the first floor.

"What's going on?" John Paul asks.

The phone is in John Paul's hand. He has dialed 911. All he has to do is press the green button and help is on the way.

"Let's not jump," says Mike. "He passed out. He's snoring."

John Paul believes there's something seriously wrong, but it's four in the morning, and he doesn't want to believe the voice in the back of his head. He hits the red button, canceling the call.

Back down in the basement, Mike is crying, nearly hysterical as he sits by his unconscious pledge brother. Carlos returns from his burger run and coolly takes command. "Take some deep breaths," he orders. "Calm down."

Carlos starts talking about the EMTs in the frat who have handled similar crises. Mike listens to Carlos and Gabe. They're on top of it medically, in charge, as they've been in charge all night. Why would they lie? Carlos says they have to get Matt out of his wet clothes and rushes upstairs to get a blanket. John Paul looks dazed, and Mike throws himself down by Matt to help pull off his sodden pants. Matt has crapped himself, but Gabe isn't concerned, saying it's perfectly natural. Carlos returns with the blanket, and they wrap the fouled, naked pledge in it and a sleeping bag and carry him to the couch. Once they've got him settled, Mike runs upstairs to change into warm clothes.

Gabe asks John Paul if he's planning to go to class in the morning, and Matt blurts out, "Nooooo," his voice slurred, then lapses back into incoherent mumbling. He lifts himself slightly onto his side and vomits water.

As Mike returns, Gabe wraps a massive arm around him, sits him down on the stairs and hands him the sweatshirt off his back. He tells him he has to calm down. He won't let anything bad happen to Matt.

Mike returns to his friend's side, and Carlos says he's been talking, which makes Mike feel better. Everything, it seems, is under control. A few minutes later Carlos goes upstairs to his room to turn on his TV and eat his double Western bacon cheeseburger with fries in bed.

Gabe and John Paul have been talking to Mike for the past hour about pledging, sharing amusing stories to pass the time. Mike is sitting by his friend's head to make sure he's okay, when suddenly he notices Matt has grown quiet. He puts his hand by Matt's mouth and feels the faintest of breaths. John Paul hears Matt hiccup once, twice. Mike puts his face by his lips.

"Oh my God," he says. "He's not breathing. Call an ambulance!"

John Paul powers on his phone, but he just hasn't got it in him to make the call. He runs upstairs and pounds on Carlos's door.

"Matt stopped breathing," he says, handing him the phone.

Carlos takes the phone and runs to the top of the basement stairs and looks down. He calls 911 at 5:02 A.M.

Mike tips Matt's head back on the couch, clears the phlegm from his mouth and blocks his nostrils. He can't get him flat enough, so he moves him to the concrete. Mouth to mouth, Mike gives his friend two breaths every 15 seconds.

He's given Matt four breaths when he sees it: foam bubbling out of Matt's mouth, not blood-red but lighter somehow, orange.

"Fuck!" Mike says, terrified. The orange foamy blood just won't stop. It starts coming out of Matt's nose.

•

Before Detective Greg Keeney of the Chico police department began down the steps to the basement, he felt the cold rushing up. At the bottom of the narrow concrete flight, a uniformed officer waved a flashlight beam, and Keeney's eyes slowly took in the graffiti scrawled on the walls, the names and dates of pledge classes. Into the maze of rooms Keeney walked, the concrete slab and ripped Sheetrock walls spray painted with "Never give up" and "We own you." In one room the detective found a handmade coffin attached to a hoist so it could be lowered into a sunken pool of water. He thought the place looked like a dungeon, like something he'd seen in a movie. But it was the phrase written repeatedly in neat Gothic print that gave him pause: "In the basement nobody can hear you scream."

Just after seven A.M. Detective Sergeant Rob Merrifield and Keeney brought the half dozen frat brothers into the main room. Dangling from the ceiling were hundreds of wooden paddles--green with red lettering, each maybe a foot and a half long.

The first uniformed officers on the scene had collected the incident reports. "Tonight Matt and Mike where [sic] supposed to drink water in an uncomfortable position for several hours," read Jerry's brief statement. "They would be encouraged to urinate themselves, and the night would end with them taking a shower and going to sleep...." John Paul's account was more detailed and optimistic: "At approximately 3:45 Matt (a pledge) started going into convulsions.... He was warm to the touch. After about an hour on the couch Matt began puking up water. He became more and more coherent and at one time answered a question...." Carlos's statement never mentioned Matt's name: "At arrival heard that he was physically unable to stand. Picked him up from the ground and put him on couch. He was able to talk and was coherent. There was no alcohol involved. The person at hand did push ups [sic] and drank water, approx. three to four gallons...."

Standing before the anxious Chi Tau fraternity brothers, Merrifield didn't waste words. "I hate to be the one to have to tell you this," he said. "Matt didn't make it."

Gabe growled and slammed his fist into the wall. Mike began crying. Merrifield waited for Gabe to stop punching the wall. "We need to find out what happened to him," he continued. "We need your cooperation. We ask that you come down to the police station."

Gabe told the cop who took his statement that he wasn't there when Matt collapsed. "I was talking to somebody," he said. "I went upstairs, and I came back down, and he was just on the ground and he was kind of freaking out a little bit.

"Whatever happened it looks like it's going, it's passing. And then I was talking to John Paul, I think, and all of a sudden he's not breathing. We looked down, and he's got his tongue out and he's biting and, like, he's just spitting up mucus. So we're like, What the hell? So I looked at J.P. and I'm all, 'Go upstairs. Get Carlos, and call an ambulance!'

"I have my hand on his chest, and I'm all, 'Mike! You got to breathe for him. You've got to breathe for him, make sure he's breathing!'"

In another police interview room. Detective Keeney asked Mike if he was hungry and then went to see what he could scrounge up. A video camera was watching. Mike began absently biting his nails and then was struck by something he saw on his hands.

Keeney returned and slid over a doughnut on a napkin. Mike let out a long, anguished sigh, his eyes still on his nails and fists.

"His blood is still on my hands."

•

Dr. Thomas Resk, a forensic pathologist, unzipped the white body bag at Chico Funeral Home. Witnesses present for the autopsy included Detective Sergeant Merrifield and Detective Keeney. Resk logged the time as 9:05 A.M., February 3, and noted the subject's height and weight as 71 inches and 150 pounds, eyes brown. Time of death was 6:10 A.M. the previous day, the cause cardiac dysrhythmia, a fatal heart rhythm created by an electrolyte imbalance resulting from hyponatremia, or water intoxication. Resk opened the skull and found significant cerebral edema: Whereas a healthy brain has gyri, ridges of brain tissue, Resk noted a flattening of the cerebral gyri and a narrowing of the valleys between them, the cerebral sulci. The water Matt drank had swelled his brain tissue until it expanded like a balloon ready to burst--tight against his inner skull.

The pathologist's other main findings were pulmonary edema and vascular congestion of the lungs. The capillaries lining the alveolar spaces had ruptured, bleeding into the lungs and forming a pink frothy fluid that flowed into the trachea and out of the mouth. Resk could only speculate how much water Matt had drunk of the roughly 27 gallons he and Mike went through in about four hours. Resk's review of the medical literature made clear a fact that, at the time, seemed counterintuitive to the police: Drinking too much water can kill you. Matt died because he was pushed to drink himself to death, just as another pledge may die of alcohol poisoning.

The medical literature cites examples of marathon runners who have died of water intoxication, drinking so much that they too decreased the concentrations of the electrolytes key to transmitting nerve impulses and contracting muscles. Indeed, at least one other pledge at another college had died from ingesting massive amounts of water. Drinking a large volume of water can dilute the levels of sodium and chloride in the body to the point at which the heart and brain can't function. Symptoms include vomiting, confusion and seizures. Matt was doing what he could to survive--urinating, defecating, vomiting. But his body couldn't possibly shed the excess water as fast as he was taking it in.

At 12:15 P.M. Resk completed his autopsy and shared his notes with Mike Ramsey, the district attorney. The prosecutor wanted to know whether Matt might have lived had his brothers called 911 at four A.M., when he went into the seizure. Acting within the first 60 minutes after a serious injury can save a life; experts call it the critical hour. Resk knew that from the second Matt collapsed, his time was running out. Once dragged to the couch, the pathologist speculated, Matt was likely in a stupor, the condition that often precedes a coma. The pathologist told Ramsey there was no doubt that every minute counted. "They needed to call 911," Resk said. "He was a young, healthy kid. He was still breathing. I suspect he would have lived."

•

The media descended on Chi Tau. TV trucks lined up, cameras pointed at the frat nearly the whole day, and the story quickly went national: the Los Angeles Times, Dateline, Good Morning America. The fraternity held a meeting, its 40 members jammed into an apartment, tempers flaring. "It turned into a lot of name-calling and blaming," said Jerry. "They called us stupid for talking to the police. A lot were blaming others for not being there. It got ugly." Attorneys' numbers were handed out. As John Paul put it, "The older members told us to keep our mouths shut."

The Chico Police Department and the district attorney's office continued their investigation despite the wall of silence. They faced a strange paradox. Kill somebody when you're driving a car while drunk, and you face a heavy felony manslaughter charge with a sentence of four to 10 years. Torture a kid in a fraternity, and the law is on your side. Hazing is only a misdemeanor under the California Education Code, rarely resulting in sentences of more than 30 days.

But on March 3, 2005 Ramsey astutely married hazing with involuntary manslaughter to charge Carlos James DeVilla Abrille, John Paul Fickes, Jerry Lim and Gabe Maestretti with felonies that carried penalties of up to four years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Mike Fernandez, Rex Garnett, Richard Hirth and Trent Stiefvater were charged only with hazing, with a maximum penalty of one year in jail. "We need to understand hazing is about power and control," Ramsey said at a press conference jammed with national media and broadcast live on Sacramento television. "It's about victimization."

Rex Garnett was the first domino to fall, agreeing to give a voluntary statement to the DA on April 28. Within days Rex was harassed and threatened by other defendants. The pugnacious Ramsey warned the defense that things would "not go good" if the threats persisted. The prosecutor had lost a childhood friend to hazing, sucked away in a nearby river, and understood the open wound of Matt's death. In the weeks after the pledge died, detective Keeney had kept the victim's cell phone activated to preserve it as evidence and couldn't understand why it kept ringing, until he learned the sad truth: Matt's family was calling to hear his voice one more time.

When Ramsey learned Mike Quintana, his main witness, would soon be abroad, studying in France, he arranged for a conditional examination to get Mike's testimony on videotape. Then the defense made a tactical error. It fought Ramsey's application of the Education Code, arguing that some of the defendants were not currently enrolled at the time of the incident, affording Ramsey an opportunity to submit a brief explaining how the hazing was not only dangerous to human life but essentially torture. "One might comment that whoever uttered the infamous statement that some of the atrocities alleged to have occurred in the Abu Ghraib prison were no more than 'fraternity pranks' may have had the Chi Tau fraternity and its brothers in mind," the brief read.

In August Judge Robert Glusman calmly noted in court that if he found Ramsey could not file under the Education Code, the prosecutor could probably bring torture charges. The sentence for a torture conviction is seven years to life. Gabe and his attorney appealed to the Carrington family for mercy. Fernandez decided to cooperate and got 30 days in county jail. Ramsey then pressed for guilty pleas with an unusual condition: The defendants had to recount their crimes to the media to publicize the dangers of hazing.

Late in the fall of 2005, at an emotional sentencing, the four main defendants entered felony manslaughter guilty pleas, and the punishment was meted out: one year for Gabe Maestretti, six months for John Paul Fickes and Jerry Lim, 90 days for Carlos Abrille. Pleading to misdemeanor hazing, Richard Hirth got 45 days, Trent Stiefvater a month. Gabe Maestretti would have to serve all of his 365 days--not a second off for good behavior.

Jail sentences and court-ordered public apologies are not the only means to mark the passing of a life. Some of the men jailed for Matt's death were angry. A few weeks after entering their pleas, the defendants consented to interviews with this magazine and Dateline. His handcuffs temporarily removed, with a guard by the door, Jerry Lim wondered why Matt didn't simply say, "I've had enough." Carlos Abrille bemoaned his discovery that the courage and manhood he sought in his fraternity were an illusion. "We're supposed to be a brotherhood, in tough times be there for each other," he said. "Whereas in this case everyone pretty much turned tail and saved face and ran out."

But those in the basement that cold February night didn't get far. "I really wish I'd stuck around and made sure it didn't happen," said a remorseful Mike Fernandez. "I wish I'd fought, like, tooth and nail and made sure they were okay." Barely filling out his prison issue jumpsuit, eyes filled with tears, John Paul Fickes said his crime taught him never to doubt his gut. If only he'd believed in himself. "I went along with them," he admitted. "That's the thing that hurts the most--the sorrow--knowing what Matt's parents have gone through."

Gabe Maestretti received the most jail time of anyone in the group, and the former high school ham seemed to enjoy his notoriety, the press interviews and television appearances. He said he remembered almost nothing of his role in Matt's death, and he was persuasive as long as you didn't read the detailed account he gave to police.

The men in the basement are haunted by what they've done. Often before bed Gabe closes his eyes and sees visions of Matt. "It's always there if I don't clear my mind," he said just before the guards returned the handcuffs to his wrists and took him back to the Butte County jail. "I've got to focus on other things. Someone will say something and it will sound like him. I'll see him out of the corner of my eye."

Even today you can see Matt. In the front window of his mother's home hangs a nearly life-size poster of him. He is sorely missed. The morning of Matt's death, after the horror of seeing his bloodied corpse at the hospital, his mother crawled back into his unmade bed, smelling her son in the clothes left in a heap on the floor. On the tidy desk lay a single printed page listing the New Year's resolutions Matthew Carrington will never get a chance to achieve.

The logic is brutally simple: Those who endured the abuse get first crack at dishing it out. No Questions.

Matt and Mike were caught up in the pledge tradition: calisthenics, beer runs, cleaning the house.

It's really a mob scene, the cavernous underground room packed with abusive, screaming men.