I want to begin this story with a "don't try this at home" disclaimer for current students.  The practice of taking persons to a remote location and dropping them off without money or ID to find their way back as best they can was risky enough in the fifties and sixties.  Today, besides being unthinkably dangerous, it is also against college regulations.  Please don't do it.

The "going for a ride" tradition had two parts.  As a wrap up to Hell Week fraternity pledges were taken out (in pairs) by their actives, and dropped off at some remote location.  When they made it back to the fraternity house they became active members.  (To the best of my knowledge, the sororities did not do this.)  The second part of the tradition was that the pledges were supposed to try to capture the president and pledgemaster and take them for a ride.  This was more difficult;  the president and pledgemaster were, of course, on alert and it was hard to capture both.  There was an unwritten rule that no-one was ever to be dropped off alone;  to my knowledge this rule was never violated.

The best ride story I know was the case of a president and pledgemaster whom the pledges managed to capture and then take to Richmond, Indiana.  At a shopping center there they were dropped off.  As the pledges left the president and pledgemaster were saying to themselves how dumb the pledges were because the pledges had not taken their money or ID from them.  They simply went to a nearby phone booth, called up the active chapter, and arranged for someone to come and pick them up.

However, the pledges weren't so dumb after all.  They waited some distance away until the phone call had been completed.  then they recaptured the president and pledgemaster, took them to Toledo, and dropped them off again, this time without money or ID.

By Monday night's meeting all were back, and the pledges were doing many push-ups.  However, the actives had to admit to themselves that their pledges had done a good weekend's work.