For my project, I’m planning to take a look at the tradition of Hell/WTF week over the course of the college’s history. I’m interested in the ways the tradition has changed over time, from the loss of the freshman play to the name changes associated with WTF Week. I’m also curious about how the college community has understood hazing over time. Did Bryn Mawr students consider the tradition an example of hazing? Did they consider it a positive example of hazing? What kinds of complaints or demands for change did students have? Did they identify it with sorority or fraternity culture?

I’m hoping to be able to work with a variety of sources, such as student’s papers in Bryn Mawr’s Special Collections, and outside sources on the college and hazing as a cultural phenomenon. I also hope to be able to interview alums and current students on their experiences with the tradition. People have incredibly varied feelings on Hell/WTF Week, and I would like to be able to collect some of those stories for future students. 

To start, I’ve been looking at a University of Pennsylvania anthropology dissertation by Virginia Wolf Briscoe, titled “Bryn Mawr College Traditions: Women’s Rituals as Expressive Behavior”. This paper features entire sections dedicated to Hell/WTF Week in the 1970s and the other associated traditions, as well as details the feelings and modes of participation of certain community members, such as African American students on campus. Here are some selections from the thesis that show an interesting and very different version of Hell/WTF Week from what we know now:

Descriptions of the event indicate a very different attitude towards consent in terms of tasks: “In response to freshmen questions, upperclassmen described their own experiences with Hell Week, sometimes lying to cover up the fact that freshmen, although ordered to do embarrassing things (see below) during the course of Hell Week, actually never did have to do them.” (Briscoe, 174)

Parts of the thesis describe how dorms designed tasks, indicating that the parent/rose phenomenon is relatively recent: “a small group within each dormitory, usually headed by the Hell Week chairman, was busily designing “tasks” for the freshmen and a variety of other Hell Week activities for everyone in the dormitory.” (Briscoe, 175)

The dissertation is available online here: https://search.proquest.com/docview/303193726/fulltextPDF

– Eliza Mlodzinski, 2021