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Fraternities' rite of passage can brand members for life

Web posted May 24, 1998

By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Imagine a carefully fashioned coat hanger, slow-roasted over the blue-green flame of a Magic Chef range, heading for the fleshy expanse of your upper arm, your chest or the side of your behind.

For a fraction of a second, you feel the heat before it touches your skin. Your heart races and instinctively you want to draw back. But you don't. Because you want your brand to be sweet. Or if you think you'll move, you brace yourself, holding onto a sink or table; or perhaps you get somebody else to hold you down.

Then comes the "hit," a quick "Pssssssst." Or maybe it's a "crackle" or "pop," not unlike the sound of Rice Krispies soaking in a bowl of milk. They say it doesn't really hurt. But the smell of burning flesh can be weird. Especially when it's yours.

Imagine being branded.

Many people watching this year's NCAA Final Four tournament caught sight of the big horseshoe-shaped scar on the left arm of University of North Carolina point guard Shammond Williams. Michael Jordan's brand, hidden on his chest, is more discreet. Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith sported a brand on his left arm for a 1993 cover of Sports Illustrated. Other folks have Greek letters melted into their calves or seared into their forearms.

Although doctors warn of possible complications -- infection, excessive scarring, designs gone wrong -- lots of people get branded. For some black Greek fraternity members (and fewer white ones) it's a long-standing tradition, but experts say it's also become something of a fad.

Gang members brand themselves, while for others, brands are an extension of green Mohawks and multiple nose rings. Branding can forge a connection. But while brands might be spiritual, sexual or ceremonial, they're always hot.

Rite of passage

As Myyucca Sherman strolls across the Howard University campus in Washington, his baby dreadlocks standing at attention, he stops occasionally to slap hands with a buddy or trade barks with another "Que dog" who spots his bright purple sweat shirt emblazoned with gold Greek letters.

Mr. Sherman, 19, has been a "Que," a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, since spring of last year, and he has three brands -- double, interlocking Omegas on his chest, and a large Omega with a small Greek A inside, for Alpha chapter, in the middle of his left arm. Of his initiation class of nine men, all chose to get branded.

It was the second time an organization had made a permanent impression on him.

Mr. Sherman is reluctant to show the 3-inch, five-point star that rides high on his left hip. He got that one at 13 to mark his membership in the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, a gang in his Akron, Ohio, hometown. "The way our sect ran, you could get prayed in or beat in. I got beat in. Then there's celebrating with drink, and I was branded the day after with thick paper clips."

Mr. Sherman says the pre-college program Upward Bound and rites of passage activities in high school turned him from the gang life. He entered the University of Akron at 16 and transferred to Howard a year later.

After joining the fraternity at Howard, he says, "Initially, I wasn't going to get a brand, but I thought about it and equated the whole fraternity life as another rite of passage. This was more ritualistic and traditional than the juvenile self-mutilation. This brand wouldn't be like it was in a gang. It had deeper meaning, more history."

In the past 10 years, branding has become a typical form of gang "tagging," says Michael Borrero, a professor and director of the Institute for Violence Reduction at the University of Connecticut who has worked in gang outreach for more than 30 years. "It's a ritual to say we are brothers, we are sisters, you are officially part of us," Dr. Borrero says.

"When the skin is branded, the skin is actually burned. The degree of the burn depends on how hot the brand is," says Rebat Halder, a professor and chairman of Howard University's Department of Dermatology. "If the burn is deep enough, then the normal skin comes off, and it is replaced by scar tissue. If it's a first- or second-degree burn, skin doesn't come off, but you can have a blister develop in the area of a brand."

The complications

Of course there can be nasty complications. They include, Dr. Halder says, infection, pain, hyper- or hypo-pigmentation, where the skin actually changes color, and itchy or hypersensitive keloids, raised scar tissue that spreads beyond the actual boundaries of the original injury.

Dr. Halder, who has been at Howard since 1982, says he has treated more than 300 people with brands, mostly men who got fraternity brands in college, but at least 50 to 75 women, including former gang members.

He says a number of his patients inquire about brand removal, which can be done surgically. "I remember one who had it done for a frat. He had an Omega brand, and as he got older and entered the job market he decided he needed to have it removed."

Michael Lyles, 35, a Washington child welfare attorney who also heads his own Maryland law practice, has studied the historical origins of fraternity branding and its relation to African scarification practices and says burning carries a symbolism that crosses many cultures.

"Historically, branding probably came in vogue in the 1950s and 1960s," says Mr. Lyles, an Omega since he was 17 who has brands on his right biceps and over his heart. "It took on a kind of widespread usage -- mainly among the Omegas first, then the Kappas (Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity) and Alphas (Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity) began to do it also. One of the things that I guess solidified branding as something to do is the things that our fraternity is based on -- manhood, scholarship, etc. It seemed to signify the 'till the day I die-ness' of it all, because supposedly you can't remove it."

The hit man

Typically, according to Mr. Lyles, each chapter has somebody to turn to for branding. At Howard, most folks call him "Nut" for his willingness to go to extremes. But the brothers of Omega Psi Phi also know the 6-foot-3 graduating senior majoring in sculpture and psychology by another name. Mr. Sherman and others went looking for him when they wanted a lasting way to punctuate their allegiance to the frat.

Because everybody knows Nut is a "hit man."

Nut, who asks that his name not be used so that his branding and his art career remain separate, has perfected his craft; he'll fashion a wire coat hanger into a plain Omega, make it asymmetrical for the "stepping Que" effect, or customize it with a dramatic thunderbolt.

Although there's a certain artistry in the design, the skill is in the hit. After his 1995 initiation, Nut learned by carefully watching another hit man. And by being branded. Repeatedly. One time for each of his fellow Omega initiates.

Seven brands for seven brothers.

Of his seven brands, three are on his back and four run diagonally across the left side of his behind: big, interlocking Ques that seem to want to dance their way to his spine.

He usually makes his brands on the spot, but he happens to have a few on hand in his kitchen cabinet. Big ones. "If you really want to show you're a Que, I'm not going to use some little circle," he says. "If your arm isn't big enough, I'm going to have to use your chest, but something is going to be big enough."

Although fraternity members with brands talk about their brotherhood as sacrosanct, branding has also become a pop culture expression of machismo, according to Walter Kimbrough, a director of student activities and leadership at Old Dominion University in Virginia who wrote his dissertation on black Greek letter organizations.

Dr. Kimbrough stresses that while some black Greek letter organizations have been censured for excessive hazing practices -- most recently Kappa pledges at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore -- branding is not involved. It is not sanctioned by the governing bodies of any of the national Greek letter organizations and is "offered" only after initiation. It can make for a special kind of party -- featuring bravado, testosterone and perhaps a couple of brews. After all, hot irons can sometimes melt the steeliest resolve.