Chapter 16 - Six Tri-Alpha pledges
Led by their pledge mistress, the four pledges carried their overloaded backpacks off campus in the stifling afternoon heat. All five women were covered with sweat once they finally got to the Four-Beta Sorority house, which meant they would have to put their uniforms in the wash and change into clean ones. The women stripped off their clothing in the laundry room, and Tracy suggested a few minutes in the pool. The pledges eagerly took her up on that unexpected break.
Tracy jumped in the water with her group, every bit as naked as the women under her control. She remained in charge, however, by instructing the pledges to follow her doing stretches and specific exercises instead of just lounging around. She ordered the pledges to swim several laps and then to get out, towel off, and head downstairs to shower.
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A week had gone by since Lisa and the others first submitted themselves to Tracy and Heather, which for Lisa was enough time to begin forming an opinion about both women. It was obvious that Tracy took her orders from Heather, since the Pledge Mistress was a position under the direction of the Sergeant-at-Arms. While Heather was in charge of discipline for the entire sorority, Tracy's only authority was over the pledges.
Lisa knew that her three companions hated Tracy and were totally afraid of her. Certainly Cherine felt justified in hating Tracy given what had happened to her the night before, while Kathleen was still traumatized over the strapping she had received for her behavior during the medical exam. Lisa had felt Tracy's strap and withstood her yelling as well, but she also had been privileged to see a very different side of her Pledge Mistress. It turned out Tracy was an intensely difficult but very caring woman, one who was willing to take personal risks if she felt it was necessary to help another person. She had placed trust in Pledge Lisa and momentarily treated her as an equal, which created a secret bond between the two women. Among the four pledges, Lisa was the only one who understood Tracy was playing a role, that the mean-spirited Pledge Mistress was an act she had to perform to make sure her group conformed to the needs of the sorority.
As for her treatment of Lisa, Tracy's attitude was "you and I have to perform our duties as Pledge Mistress and Pledge for the next three months. That's the way things have to be between us until you swear in. However, it's not how I really see you." Once the pledging period ended, Tracy would change back to normal and become much more approachable. Lisa was certain that once she was sworn in, she and Tracy were likely to become close friends.
Heather seemed totally different from Tracy. It appeared to Lisa that, of the two Four-Beta officers, Tracy was by far the more serious in her personality. Heather did not seem to take nearly as much personal interest in the pledges as did Tracy, and Lisa did not much care for her. If Tracy secretly sympathized with the pledges, Lisa suspected that Heather really didn't.
Because Lisa was not in close contact with Heather, she did not fully understand the Sergeant-at-Arm's responsibilities within the sorority and did not have an accurate reading of her personality. Heather's position required her to handle disciplinary matters throughout the entire sorority and make sure that a group of 70 young women co-existed with as little friction as possible. She arbitrated disputes among members, set up the duty roster, and prevented cliques from forming and trying to take over the sorority. She handled medical emergencies, members' academic problems, and disputes between the Four-Betas and its rival sororities. The long list of duties kept her very busy, but that wasn't a problem because she so much enjoyed being in control of others' lives.
Heather's duties also included handling an important part of the relationship between the Four-Beta Sorority and the Tri-Alpha Fraternity. The Four-Beta Sergeant-at-Arms not only oversaw discipline and conflict resolution within the sorority, but also was in charge of hazing and punishing the male pledges for the fraternity. The fraternity members generally felt uncomfortable inflicting corporal punishment on each other, so they found their solution in using a female disciplinarian. Heather fully enjoyed performing that additional role and having such absolute control over a group of freshmen males.
Heather's position placed her in contact with the Triple A's much more than any of the other Four-Beta officers apart from the sorority's social director. One benefit of that constant interaction with her male counterparts was her very active sexual life. She enjoyed having sex and had taken advantage of her frequent trips to the Tri-Alpha house to experiment with nearly all of the fraternity's upper classmen. She sought to avoid any close relationships, because at that point in her life she was not ready to commit to anyone.
For a while Tri-Alpha Vice-President Jacob had pursued her hoping for a more serious relationship, but Heather only saw him as a casual sexual partner, not a potential boyfriend. That was the reason, when she noticed Jacob's attraction to Cherine, she did everything possible to encourage them to flirt with each other. Cherine's presence in the pledge group had just resolved a potentially uncomfortable situation for Heather.
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Following a quick shower, Tracy ordered the pledges to pull out fresh uniforms and put them on.
"The Triple A pledges are upstairs in the sitting room. The juniors will be doing their medical exams...well, on four of them, at any rate. The other two are going to get examined by President Alexandra's attendants. You four will get to watch."
Tracy led her group into the sitting room where three medical examination tables and three treadmills were set up. The sorority's 18 juniors were all business, dressed in white doctors' jackets and carrying clipboards. The six officers of the fraternity were present, along with the six officers of the sorority. Also present were Alexandra's two attendants, dressed, as usual, in shorts and t-shirts.
The pledge mistress ordered her group to kneel near the entrance, opposite the six Tri-Alpha pledges. The women's eyes immediately became glued to their male counterparts, because the six kneeling young men were naked, handcuffed, and had very nervous expressions on their faces. What struck Lisa was how different the male pledges looked from each other. In most fraternities, freshmen pledges all looked more or less the same: tall, athletic, loud, arrogant white males. The six naked Tri-Alpha aspirants were a very mixed group. There were two black guys, three white guys, and another guy who looked either Middle Eastern or Hispanic. The Tri-Alphas were not interested in selecting pledges based on their physical appearance. They were interested in getting members who were intelligent, shared a willingness to try new adventures in life, and above all, follow a philosophy about how to approach the world.
The Tri-Alpha pledges also were of varying heights and physiques, because physical fitness was not a prerequisite for beginning pledge training. Three of the men, including Ken, were in good shape, but the other three definitely needed to spend some quality time in the gym. The pledges did not have to be physically fit on the first day (although being fit certainly helped make their lives easier at the very beginning). Tri-Alpha pledges were expected to get in shape during the pledging period, because exercising was one way the fraternity weeded out unsuitable aspirants. The ones who could not handle the physical fitness training normally ended up among those quitting.
Like its sister sorority, the Tri-Alpha Fraternity's pledging process had specific goals, which included sexual education, physical fitness, academic performance, and willingness to explore new experiences. There was plenty of harsh military-style physical training, sexual education classes with hands-on practice, and classes for acquiring life skills such as understanding how bank accounts and credit cards worked. There also was plenty of physical discipline, sexual hazing, and corporal punishment which, if anything, was even harsher than the regimen of the sorority.
Above everything else, the fraternity wanted to use the pledging process to identify prospective members willing to put forth a real effort to earn full membership. To become a pledge for the Tri-Alpha Fraternity was not very difficult, but to get through the pledging program was difficult indeed. The attrition rate for a typical pledge group was nearly a third, somewhat higher than the attrition rate for the sorority. The fraternity took in large pledge groups, knowing that by the end of the pledging period each group would be reduced to a more manageable size. There were no repercussions against a pledge who decided to quit, but the fraternity did expect that anyone who left his pledge group to keep quiet about the internal workings of the Tri-Alphas. That expectation was not hard to enforce, because if any ex-pledge did choose to speak up, he could expect to have embarrassing pictures of himself circulating on the Internet within days.
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There was another factor that traditionally contributed to the Tri-Alpha attrition rate, their treatment at the hands of the Four-Beta Sergeant-at-Arms. Lisa and her companions watched in awe as Heather went into action. Because Pledge Mistress Tracy handled most of the routine hazing, training, and discipline matters for the sorority pledges, the young women had not seen the full effect of Heather as a disciplinarian. She had been somewhat restrained around the female pledges, with a couple of exceptions. Now it was Heather's turn to focus on hazing a group of freshmen. It turned out that she was much more vicious than Tracy, but she had saved herself for the guys. Lisa and her companions were about to learn that what Tracy had subjected to them so far had been far less severe than the hazing Heather was about to inflict on the males.
The Four-Beta officer began by pacing back and forth waving a riding crop in their faces. She gave each young man a cruel swat on the upper back and then ordered them to kneel with their legs spread, fully exposing their penises and testicles. She used the tip of the crop to play with the men's sexual organs and massage their penises, while one of the Four-Beta juniors took pictures. As she moved the crop around their genitals, she made very sarcastic and cruel comments. If a pledge got hard, she made fun of him. If he didn't get hard, she still made fun of him.
CRACK!!!
"Ow!"
Heather had struck the fattest member of the group quite hard on the inner thigh, very close to his testicles.
"You want to know why I did that pledge? Huh? You wanna know?"
"I...I yes...ma'am...why..."
"Because I felt like it, that's why! And if I feel like doing something, why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I do whatever the fuck I want?"
CRACK!!!
"Uh...uh...oh...fuck that hurts..."
CRACK!!!
"Don't you fucking swear around me, pledge! Where's your fucking manners?"
CRACK!!!
"Didn't your mom tell you never to fucking swear in front of a fucking lady?"
