Dusk has descended and Queen's Park is silent except for the heartbeat, hiccup rumblings of the subway below.

As the sunlight inches west down Hoskin Ave. past the spires of Trinity College, a congregation of bobbing candles held by gowned and tuxedoed figures marches east.

They gather beneath a statue of King Edward VII on horseback. The nervous chatter of rouged women and pale young men disrupts the stillness. With a bellow of profanity, a blond, bow-tied emcee commands the crowd to sing a Trinity College song, which they do in lilting, hymnal Latin.

"Now," the emcee yells again. "The other, real school song!" And with that the group again exhales verse, this time in English.

The rowdy ballad glorifies their secret group and the debauchery of Trinity, with the cadence and lyrical nuance of a Frosh cheer. This is one of the three annual public gatherings of Episkopon, a contentious and pseudo-secret organization that dates back to 1858.

In a sense, it is a crass, northern version of Yale University's mysterious Skull and Bones society, which counts George W. Bush among its alumni, as well as countless politicians, captains of industry and judges.

Episkopon's luminaries include Bill Graham, a former Liberal politician and Trinity chancellor, and former governor general Adrienne Clarkson.

More than any other college at the university, Trinity is steeped in pride of tradition: academic gowns, thick wooden doors, tea and biscuits and formal dinners in a hall with regal portraits.

"Trin," as its students call it, strikes a decidedly Old World, Anglican cut in the centre of new world Canada. As the University of Toronto has evolved to echo the cosmopolitan city around it, many students embrace Trinity as one of the last vestiges of Oxbridge-like rituals.

But even as Trinity tries to evolve, many students concede the college remains a WASP-ish institution.

Within Trinity, nothing exemplifies this more than the continued existence of Episkopon, arguably the most out-of-touch, anachronistic organization in the city. From art to intolerance

In less than 20 minutes, the black-robed group has divided by gender and, with some still holding candles, filtered out of the park to private frat houses where they will conduct the semipublic "readings" that have made them controversial.

There, in an arcane ritual, a "scribe" supposedly channels the spirit of a "Father Episkopon," said to reside in one of Trinity's towers.

In reality, upper-year students launch venomous tirades against fellow students: publicly insulting them for being promiscuous or obese, outing young gays, sneering at students with debt and those they feel fail to uphold Trinity's elite reputation. The once venerated society has begun to engage in frat-house hazing.

Today's Episkopon bears little resemblance to the one Bill Graham remembers. The former minister of foreign affairs and national defence graduated from Trinity in 1961 and returned in 2007 as the college's chancellor.

Graham was once Episkopon's scribe, the top position in the group. Archibald Lampman, one of Canada's most revered English-language poets, was also a scribe.

"When I was scribe, the organization was deeply rooted in the traditions of the college," Graham recalls. "There were some wonderful things that were done at Episkopon, some very artistic things."

Critics and former members alike agree that the organization's history is impressive: ancient meeting minutes, beautifully illustrated tomes and original paintings, all stored by Episkopon's "archivist."

But the organization "ran into some serious problems in the 1980s, when it was being used in ways which were unfair to people, disparaged people," says Graham. "And that wasn't the original purpose ... It outlived its relevance and was abused and it came to an end as a college activity."

In 1992, after almost 135 years, both male and female societies were barred from the property.

"They would pick your worst feature and tell you you're ugly. They would pick young men that they thought were possibly gay and call them fags, which if you are 17 or 18 years old and you are still in the closet ... is really painful," says Trinity's former chaplain, Dana Fisher, now a rector in Ottawa. "Sometimes people are very clever, they are poetic. But every once in a while you get somebody who just seems to be breathing daggers."

Graham says that in his day Episkopon operated with constraints. "It was a very different time in those days."

Episkopon seems to have answered Toronto's multicultural evolution by becoming more regressive. It added racism and homophobia to a roster of insults that already included obesity and gender. It became more frat-like and alcohol-fuelled. But regardless of how much the college wanted to, it could not destroy Episkopon.

Trinity "cannot control the lives of its students ... beyond the college (any) more than we can tell them what to think or who to pray for," admits Graham.

The college's provost, Andy Orchard, a Briton schooled at Cambridge and Oxford, maintains Trinity is no longer the privileged, WASP enclave it has been for much of its history.

Episkopon seems to frustrate Orchard because it embodies everything about Trinity's reputation he disdains: the exclusivity, the pomposity and the at-times excruciating whiteness.

What makes it worse is that Episkopon is entwined so intensely with Trinity that it tars the college's increasing diversity merely by continuing to exist.

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The website of Episkopon's female branch, for example, shows three young, white women in Trinity College gowns, pulling them over their faces, with the caption: "Burka, Burka, Burka!"





CLOSING RANKS



Each winter, in a hazing ritual, Episkopon inductees are led around the city blindfolded and fantastically drunk. Blindfolds are removed at the top of a hill in Trinity Bellwoods Park and boozed recruits fling themselves down the steep slope.

But in January 2008, a student fell hard, smashed his head open, was taken to hospital and eventually dropped out of school.

The student, now back at school, says he suffers from learning disabilities. No charges were laid. The entire process unfolded within Trinity's walls. Culprits were taken before Trinity's administration, begged forgiveness before the student's parents, and were fined to pay for an anti-hazing lecture.

Stephen Job, a Trinity student when the incident occurred, was frustrated by college's reaction. He complained both to the college senate and to other students.

"They paint a historical continuity of how it's been acceptable over time, that it's an integral part of life at Trinity. But the reality is that it's hazing and it's harassment and it emotionally damages people," Job says. "When people are of an identifiable race or an alternate religion, they're an easy target. There's a lot of sexism and misogyny."

After he spoke out, college life changed. People he greeted in the halls ignored him; notes were slid under his door; his phone rang with harassing calls; conversations ended when he entered the room.

But that was mild treatment. In the early 1990s, a student who criticized the group was doused with a bucket of urine and excrement.

Job left Trinity and is now at the university's Knox College. "You can draw your own conclusions," he says.





TAKING ON TRADITION



"The question of banning it or killing it is a hard one," Orchard says of Episkopon, which is already barred from leading frosh week activities. "It seems to me that the way that it will die, as I trust it will, will be when the students decide that this is something they don't want to buy into."

Current members of Episkopon, whom the Star repeatedly phoned and emailed, refused to comment. Only ex-members would talk. All wanted anonymity.

"It's really contentious in Trinity, the practical application of tradition in this day in age," one former member explained. "A lot of these traditions shouldn't survive and aren't applicable. (They) don't translate well into modern society.

"The college has to adapt to the times. ... What happened last year may have catalyzed that trend."

Trinity is not a place where traditions die easily. That is why some students come here.

It is also why others leave.