He attended Hamilton College in New York with the intention of becoming a Writer. He found himself at a social disadvantage at Hamilton College because of his intellectual attitude. While attending, he joined Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. Hamilton was known for being a strong fraternity college. Skinner had thought that his fraternity brothers were respectful and did not haze or mistreat the newcomers, instead, they helped out the other boys with courses or other activities. Freshman were called “‘slimers’” who had to wear small green knit hats and greet everyone that they passed for punishment. The year before Skinner entered Hamilton, there was a hazing accident that caused the death of a student. The freshman was asleep in his bed when he was pushed onto the floor, where he smashed his head, and resulting in his death. Skinner had a similar incident where two freshmen captured him and tied him to a pole, where he should have stayed all night, but he had a razor blade in his shoe for emergency and managed to cut himself free. He wrote for the school paper, but, as an atheist, he was critical of the traditional mores of his college. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1926, he attended Harvard University, where he would later research, teach, and eventually become a prestigious board member. While he was at Harvard, a fellow student, Fred Keller, convinced Skinner that he could make an experimental science from the study of behavior. This led Skinner to invent his prototype for the Skinner Box and to join Keller in the creation of other tools for small experiments. After graduation, he unsuccessfully tried to write a great novel while he lived with his parents, a period that he later called the Dark Years. He became disillusioned with his literary skills despite encouragement from the renowned poet Robert Frost, concluding that he had little world experience and no strong personal perspective from which to write. His encounter with John B. Watson's Behaviorism led him into graduate study in psychology and to the development of his own version of behaviorism.