Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy

June 2, 2014
As a teenager, author Lohse stayed between the lines, finished his homework, and was president of his high school model U.N. The reward: admission to Dartmouth College. In his sophomore year, he did the expected and pledged a fraternity, undergoing a grueling initiation process that eventually led to a drug habit. After being ratted out by a fraternity brother for using cocaine, Lohse was arrested and suspended from Dartmouth for a year. The hazing chapters are the most vivid as Lohse submits to binge drinking, competitive vomiting, and bathing in human waste. Elsewhere, his dry humor and contemplative moments keep the pages turning. However, deeper emotions and complexities don’t fully emerge. No one, not even his best friends and lovers, become recognizable, while the description of the book’s central drama, the drug bust, seems implausible (perhaps for legal reasons). While Lohse sheds a clear light on the tribal stupidity of young men, his own turmoil is left underdeveloped.

August 1, 2014
In this nonfiction debut, New Jerseyite and former frat brother Lohse blows the whistle on the distasteful hazing practices he witnessed during his tumultuous time at prestigious Ivy League institution Dartmouth College. The author comes off like your average middle-class, all-American lad, with good grades and a fair amount of potential in life after leading his high school's Model United Nations and graduating with honors. Even so, to live the Ivy League dream, he was reduced to getting his Dartmouth-educated grandfather to help him in his quest to be "reconsidered" by the admissions officers. Being insecure and desperate for acceptance, Lohse figured the easiest thing to do would be to join the most notorious fraternity on campus. Little did he know that his stint as a Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge would nearly ruin his life. The author soon found himself in a socially poisonous environment in which he was forced to guzzle vinegar, Mad Dog 20/20 and even cups of urine. Other mandatory activities in this phony ritualistic ascent to brotherhood included wading in a pool of human excrement, games of blackout-drunk beer pong and even the chance to snort cocaine while listening to Eric Clapton's song about cocaine. Eventually, his flirtation with the drug got him in trouble with the cops. Lohse's writing is passable but also peppered with annoying frat slang (he frequently employs the term "boot" as a verb meaning "to vomit") and awkward metaphors and similes ("Summer was long gone, though-it had faded out like washed out salmon pink shorts"). The author's story might be more sympathetic had he not eventually decided to haze pledges himself before ratting on his "bros" to Rolling Stone. A readable expose that feels like an article-length topic overstretched into a book.

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