'Steady Hand Test': The More You Learn About How the Penn State Frat Conducted its Cocaine Operation, the More Impressed You Become
It's a trope that has become an essential part of every movie or TV show about a drug syndicate, in which the business side of the operation gets a tour of the production side. The distributors get a tour from the kingpin of his processing and packaging facility. Then they sit down to discuss how they're going to make a deal that makes them all as wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. You saw it in Blow (the film about my fellow Weymouth Wildcat George Jung. In Scarface. In various parts of Breaking Bad. You can't get a decent narcotics saga off the ground without it.
And so it is with the Penn State frat that Pat brought us last month:
Prosecutors have presented their evidence to a Grand Jury, and the details are better than anything even Brian DePalma could've fictionalized:
Source - Former Penn State fraternity brother Thomas Robinson turned the Delta Upsilon pledging process into something akin to a secret audition, according to court documents — testing whether pledges’ hands were steady enough for an undisclosed task before requiring those who passed to sign nondisclosure agreements.
The task? Cutting up blocks of cocaine, according to a new grand jury presentment document obtained by TribLive on Thursday. …
To maintain secrecy, the suspected operation depended on pledges and fraternity brothers to observe an unspoken code of silence.
According to court documents, Robinson, a former finance student, converted a basement boiler room of the Delta Upsilon fraternity house into a processing hub for a cocaine operation, where he enlisted fraternity pledges and fellow brothers to chop, weigh and package the drug. …
Robinson served as the “new member educator” for Delta Upsilon’s spring and fall pledge classes in 2024, according to the grand jury presentment, whose role is “to act as the mediator between the pledges and the pledge masters when there are disputes,” the presentment says.
“Based upon testimony, it was clear that Robinson used his position as pledge educator to recruit pledges to assist him in his drug operation,” the grand jury presentment says.
Each pledge class has “pledge masters,” who are fraternity brothers assigned to supervise the pledge class. …
If pledges don’t complete their assigned tasks correctly, a pledge master decides the punishment, according to Robinson’s grand jury testimony.
“Whether the task is done correctly is determined by the fraternity brother who requested the task,” the presentment says. …
According to C.W.’s grand jury testimony, he was contacted by Robinson during the pledge process and asked to “get two other pledges who were trustworthy.”
“Robinson directed all three pledges … to hold out their hands. If their hands were steady, they were allowed to continue to assist Robinson, although they did not know the task they were being asked to do,” the presentment says.
A pledge, L.H. didn’t pass and was “rejected from assisting Robinson,” the presentment says. Those who passed the “steady hand test” were directed to “go online and print three copies of a non-disclosure form.”
Robinson had the pledges sign the forms and then “tore them up and threw them away,” the presentment says.
“C.W. was instructed to retrieve a footlocker from the trunk of Robinson’s car … the footlocker contained goggles, masks, gloves, Pyrex dishes, a digital scale and half-gram zip-lock baggies,” the presentment says. “Robinson then placed a brick-like amount of cocaine on the folding table. One of the pledges shredded the cocaine while Robinson added creatine to the cocaine.
Crikey. That was one sophisticated operation. Allegedly. Accused. Innocent until proven guilty. And any other disclaimer I can throw in there.
This was (allegedly) just one of your slapdash, fly-by-night, amateurish cocaine operation. With the Devil's Dandruff all over the place. These guy's were Pro's Pros. With a hierarchy. Leaders answering to leaders. This was set up like the Roman Legions, giving it operational flexibility. And the Lieutenants held accountable.
But the piece de resistance is that Steady Hand Test. You don't want some nervous pledge who's never lived away from home and is scared of his own shadow going all palsy Jazz Hands on you so your profits all end up in the carpeting. In the Coke Biz, every granule counts. Line is money. And Robinson (reportedly) wanted nothing but the best handling the merchandise.
Do I think anyone should be trafficking in harmful narcotics? Of course not. The lessons of all those really groovy ABC Afterschool Specials when I was a kid was not lost on me. As the kid says in The Good Boys, "Drugs destroy lives and communities!" I can't find the clip. So here they are buying Molly at a frat house so they can trade with the girls and get their drone back:
Hot damn, is this movie criminally underappreciated.
But still, I have to admit, if all of these indicted co-conspirators ever get out of jail, they'd be exactly the kind of ex-college student I'd hire. Smart. Resourceful. Organized. Not the kind who just waste four years and hundreds of thousands of mom and dad's money getting some useless degree. But the kind of scholar who spends that time at school developing life skills that are actually practical in the real world.
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The kind of young leaders of tomorrow. With clever minds, and steady hands. Here's hoping they're just as steady when they get released as senior citizens.