I was in college in the northeast in the late 1960s, and in the sorority I was a member of there was a lot of spanking. I’m not sure if it’s because women in those days were not allowed to openly express their sexuality, or if it was just a way of getting girls to submit to the sorority, but spankings and other humiliating punishments like nudity were commonly meted out. Like your other contributors, I won’t mention the college or the sorority’s name.
During rush period, which is when girls pledge to join the sorority, spankings could be administered for any reason from a senior sister. They could also be used to gain points; for example, one exercise we had to do was a scavenger hunt and you had to have a number of points by the end of the day. If you didn’t have enough points, you could make them up with swats from a paddle. 1 point for a swat over your clothes, 2 points over just your panties, and 3 points for spanks on your bare bottom.
I was a legacy pledge; my mother and grandmother had both been members of the sorority, which most people think means we had it easier, but the opposite was true. While I, along with other legacies, were pretty much guaranteed admission to the sorority, the girls were extra hard on us during rush. Most, if not all, of us legacies came from wealthy or upper-middle class families and they wanted to take us down a notch or two.
The weekend at the end of rush, we went to a cabin in the woods that the sorority rented for special occasions a few times per year. On the first night, after most of the pledges were sent to bed, the other four legacy girls and I were taken out into the woods, made to strip to our underwear, and tied to trees and blindfolded. I remember my hands being tied above my head, and eventually a big sister used a pair of scissors to cut off my bra and panties. Then we were quizzed on the history of the sorority and any question we got wrong meant we were turned around and given a swat on our bare bottoms. On the second night of the weekend, we were again taken out into the woods and again tied naked to trees. I remember they told me to face the tree and wrap my arms around it like I was hugging the tree, and tied my wrists together, tied my feet together at the ankles, and rope was wrapped around the tree above and below our bottoms. As you can probably guess, in that position we were repeatedly spanked with the paddles.
I remember the older sisters saying, “Tell us why you are being spanked,” to which we would have to reply, “Because I’m a spoiled brat.” My bottom was seriously bruised for the next week!
Up until a few years ago, I was certain that there was no way anything of this sort would ever happen today, until I read an article in the New York Post in 2014 about two girls who went to the hospital and filed a police report when, during sorority hazing, they were spanked until they were badly bruised and tied naked to trees. You can Google the story if you don’t believe me! So, I guess these old traditions are still around.
I wish I could say that was the most humiliating experience during my rush period but it wasn’t.
There were never any men around. Guys were not even allowed inside the sorority house other than on special occasions, but it was still embarrassing to have to be spanked in the nude, even if it was just in front of other girls.
At the end of my initiation, which I won’t tell you about because I was sworn to secrecy, I was given my own paddle and a pillow by my big sister. A sorority big sister is a junior or a senior member who takes you under her wing for the rest of your freshman year, and big sisters were allowed to spank their little sis as much as they saw fit. The first time I was spanked by her was for breaking curfew in the sorority’s ‘punishment room’ in the basement. It was over her lap, panties down; then I had to stand in the corner.
Another time she spanked me in her bedroom on my bare bottom because I was dating a boy she didn’t approve of. She asked to see my report card at the end of each semester, during my freshman year, and spanked me for not getting all A’s because she thought I could do better. Let’s just say I was spanked so often that I lost count. I was spanked more during those 9 months from September 1965 to May 1966 than I had been the previous 17 years of my life! The pillow from my sister came in handy so that I could sit somewhat comfortably on my dorm room desk chair after getting my bottom blistered.
Even though my big sis and I became very close friends, there is still something very humiliating and humbling about laying down over someone’s lap, having them pull your panties down and spank you. While it’s difficult to explain to someone who is not in a sorority, I understood why the sorority required this form of submission. And, while I definitely did not enjoy getting spanked, in a way I did appreciate it. I remember how, during a spanking, my big sis would stop, gently lecture me on why she was spanking me, and stroke my hair, and then go back to spanking me. Perhaps it has something to do with being 17 to 18 years old and away from home for the first time. It’s hard for me to put into words.
While spankings from my big sis were carried out in private, official punishments from the sorority were done in a more public fashion. Like your other contributor, if you broke a rule such as not attending a mandatory event you were given the option of paying a fine or getting a spanking. My first such punishment was for missing an event. I was taken to the main room in the sorority house for a ‘tribunal’ in front of all the senior sorority girls where my misdeed would be stated and my punishment announced. Then I was told to strip naked, put my hands behind my back, and placed in a pair of pink handcuffs. I was then perp walked through the sorority house to the basement’s punishment room where I was bent over a table and paddled in front of all the senior girls. The second time I missed an event, I just paid the fine!
During my junior year, I committed a more serious offense against the sorority which meant that paying a fine wasn’t an option. It was, accept a paddling or be kicked out. So I was once again in front of our little tribunal and ordered to take the maximum sentence of 13 swats from the sorority paddle. Once again I was handcuffed naked and perp walked to the punishment room. This time, instead of bending over the table, I had to lay down flat on top of it and my wrists and ankles were tied to the table’s four corners, with a couple of pillows placed under my lower stomach so that my bottom was up in the air in a prime position to receive the paddle. By this point, I was used to being naked around my sorority sisters, but in this particular position I was completely exposed so, yeah, it was embarrassing. I think I yelped out after the 2nd and 3rd swats, but by the 7th or 8th swats I screamed after each one. I instinctively tried to wriggle and move my bottom out of the way, but I pretty much couldn’t move. The sisters took their time between each swat, passing the paddle around to each other so it was pretty excruciating. After the paddling was over, I was then left to lay tied down on the table for 30 minutes, with my bottom just throbbing and on fire, unable to rub it or try to sooth it in any way. When I was untied and taken back upstairs I got a round of applause from my sorority sisters who had heard my screams, and they all wanted to see my bruised bottom.
Unlike the pledge week spankings and being tied to trees naked, I have no evidence that this type of punishment is still administered, but I have heard rumors.
When I was a senior and assigned a little sister of my own, I was pretty easy on her. I only spanked her once for repeatedly missing curfew. I had her come to my room and lean over my lap. She was very shy so I just pulled up her skirt and spanked her with my paddle over her panties. She and I remained friends long after college and she told me how lucky she felt that I was her big sis because she had heard horror stories from other girls about how much they had been spanked by their big sisters their freshman year. I simply explained to her that she was a good girl, almost always obeyed the rules, and always put the sorority first. She was a model member of our sorority, whereas naughty girls like me needed a sore bottom from time to time to remind us to be a perfect sorority sister!
CB