The Time My Entire Pledge Class Almost Faced Eco-Terrorism Charges

PortlandPledgeHazers6 years ago

“The best piece of advice I can give you is to get to know one another and trust one another; it only gets harder from here.”

Hearing that from our pledge educator scared our entire class shitless. We had already been told we were the worst pledge class in the house’s history dozens of times, and we knew we needed to change that. As our meeting with the pledge educators ended and we migrated back to the dorms, one of my pledge brothers had a genius idea.

“We need to really bond before hell week starts. Why don’t we take the whole class up into the mountains and camp out for a night?”

With little to no convincing, our entire class was entirely on board with this idea, and that night ended up being my favorite memory from pledgeship (that wasn’t a mandatory pledge event). We all had such a good time that we turned it into an annual tradition. Every fall, we’d camp at the same spot.

Before we knew it, it was already September of the following year. We had been initiated, but knew that our class’ tradition must be carried on. All 32 of us packed up and headed for the sacred grounds which we had bonded on exactly one year ago to the day. Only this year’s festivities did not go according to plan.

The night started off great. We pounded beers, had a big-ass fire, took some trees down with hatchets, and reminisced over how far we’d come since signing our bids. As 4 a.m. rolled around, the last of the brothers were calling it a night; those who could still walk retired to their tents, while others called it quits and slept in the dirt or in their chairs.

Morning came, and we all got up despite still being blacked from the previous night’s activities. Only it wasn’t the sunlight or birds chirping that woke us up; instead, it was a voice calling out, “Police! Exit the tents!”

Assuming it was one of the guys just fucking with us, I rolled over and shouted out “Fuck you! I’m so hungover, let me sleep!” which turned out to be a big mistake seeing as it actually was county police who were speaking. We all stumbled to our feet, went outside, and stood around the still smoldering fire. The only thing dividing our 32-man battalion from the police was a pile of about 400 empty Coors cans, a puddle of vomit, and a mountain of cigarette butts.

After checking our IDs and running our info, they gave us the breakdown of possible charges we could face. Turns out we were unknowingly camping in state-protected land which was also a watershed, had an illegal fire, and had illegally cut down trees — not to mention we were all underaged with a literal mountain of beer cans nearby. They explained that, if persecuted, we could expect fines of around $75,000 per person, we each would lose all financial aid and scholarships we’d accrued, and we would all be placed on an FBI list of environmental criminals.

Fuck.

I admittedly pissed myself a little bit upon hearing this, but then something changed. My pledge brother, who was still exceptionally drunk from last night, came out from the back during a period of silence and asked if the cops had watched our school’s football game two nights prior.

“What the fuck are you doing?” was muttered by the rest of the group. But somehow this ended up saving our collective ass.

Suddenly, the conversation shifted from the fact that we were all in offense of about a dozen federal crimes to discussing our team’s abysmal season as well as the two cops’ fantasy football teams. The conversation carried on for what felt like an eternity as we awaited our fate.

Finally, one of the cops stopped us. We thought he was about to get back to how fucked we were, but instead said, “Y’all seem like some solid guys. Just pick up your shit and follow us back to our cars in the lot.”

As we finally approached the two cruisers, they stopped us once again.

“Alright, we’re gonna let you guys go home, but just listen to three pieces of advice. Stay in school, don’t become cops like us, and do not ever fucking camp here again. You guys have a good rest of your day.”.