OK, read just the first few lines of the latest story about fraternity hazing allegations...and then tell me this is a positive college activity in which your son should participate...ORLANDO, Fla. -- School officials investigating an apparent hazing ritual at a fraternity house on the University of Central Florida campus in which pledges were found in diapers, fairy wings and women's panties told Local 6 News that there is evidence that several of them may have been sexually assaulted.
University police, acting on a tip, said they noticed loud, aggressive screaming and moaning coming from the SAE fraternity house.
"At first, students would not let police into the fraternity house because they said they were performing a ritual," Local 6's Louis Bolden said. "Apparently, that ritual included male students dressing up like women and drinking until they had to be hospitalized."
The report also said the officers found a man wearing a pink tank top, women's underwear and a blond wig who was lying on the floor and vomited several times. Another male was sobbing on the floor wearing a rainbow-colored wig and a diaper, the report said.
Officers said the common area had a strong smell of urine and vomit.
What are the lame rationalizations parents, seeking their former college coolness through their kids, use to justify encouraging their kids be "Greek"...?
1. "Greeks make better grades on average than independent students" -- over all that may be true but the average is "C" is it not? That's supposed to be impressive, that Greeks make high C's? I'm sorry but being made to consume life-threatening quantities of alcohol is not worth a guarantee of high C's...for straight A's, why sure. But not C's.
2. "Greeks make life-long social contacts which can help land coveted jobs." Oh, well I stand corrected. Who wouldn't want to work for a sadistic, latently-homosexual man who when we were in college together, made me wear women's panties and stuck hot-dogs in unmentionable places...yeah, that's worth it. If you're too stupid to get a job on your own merits, you deserve the life-long humiliation of the experiences of fraternity hazing.
3. "Greeks" raise more money for charities than any other collegiate organizations." So what? Charity fund raising is a requirement for chapter charter of the national Greek orgainzations as well as mandated by most school administrations as a requirement for official campus recognition. If your kid is that serious about charity fund-raising, there are plenty of student organizations that raise funds for charities but who don't require them to submit to sexual assault before passing the hat.
4. "C'mon, fraternity hazing is a harmless right-of-passage for a young man. It'll make a man out of him." No, military basic training will make a man out of him -- and it doesn't involve cured meat products in various orifices.
"But Ed", you smugly point out, "wasn't it you who dismissed the Abu Ghraib torture as harmless fraternity hazing? Gotcha!"
Right you are, but there is a difference. In college you have innocent kids away from home for the first time, wanting to belong to a group with which they identify, being humiliated, near death sometimes, at the hands of peers. At Abu Ghraib, those wild-eyed, crazed jihadists would slash the throats of every American they could get their hands on. And, they had done something bad to end up in prison in the first place. Besides, my point wasn't that the torture at Abu Ghraib was OK. I don't think it was OK. It was that it didn't warrant the level of outrage with which hand-wringing liberals reacted.
My point...some sororities might be fine for daughters, but even some of them have their own problems with organizational alcohol abuse and some of the stuff they are told they must do with the frat brothers. That being said, if you encourage, and pay for, your son to join a fraternity, you must be OK with him ending up on the floor as one of those boys in the article...crying, naked except for panties, puking drunk from alcohol poisoning, sexually violated and near death. Under any other circumstances, you would be justified in killing somebody who did that to your son.
That OK with you?
11 comments:
What fraternity did you belong to, the Baptist Student Union? At my school, every single fraternity got in trouble for hazing at one time or another. Every Fall, during hell-week, there were stories from all over the country about students doing degrading, stupid things in order to belong to the fraterity.
I will admit that there may be some fraternities who do not engage in hazing, but how do you know which ones they are?
All my best friends were Greek in college and they told stories of their personal hazing rituals. Unbelievably humiliating stuff. I'll tell you some of the stories some time but not here since this is not an X-rated blog.
As the father and stepfather of college-bound boys, it concerns me when I read stories like this. That's all I'm saying.
Reid, your air-travel analogy is not exactly analogous. (Air-crash disasters are wholly accidental, while fraternity hazing is intentional) Let's for argument's sake say that 1 in 50 (probably a low estimate) fraternities engages in humiliating, dehumanizing hazing rituals after every fall rush. The air travel analogy would have to say that on 1 in 50 flights there are gangs of people who abuse the passengers for the duration of the flight. Sending your kid to the airport under those circumstances, not knowing which airlines allow in-flight hazing would, to me as a parent, be risky. I would have to look into bus tickets...the collegiate equilavent of the Baptist Student Union or chess club.
I was going to suggest the ping-pong club but I've heard that those Chinese hazing rituals are pretty harsh.
OK Reid, based on your enthusiastic defense of fraternities, I am prepared to back off slightly from impuning the entire Greek social system. There may indeed be some benefits from brotherhood enjoyed by guys and gals, and certainly not all memberships are based on tolerating hazing. That being said, from the perspective of an independent as I was, there seems to be something unbalanced about the need-to-belong, which compels a person to tolerate mistreatment.
I don't think sports hazing is any more acceptable. It's stupid no matter what the organization.
I know what's going to happen. My son will go to Auburn in six years and ironically, will want to be in the same fraternity you were in and I'll have to ask you for a recommendation...you know karma and all that.
wow, Reid surprised that you are Sigma Chi.
I am a sophomore in a university in Southern California and I found out for initiation, pledges had to make oral contact with the male genitalia.
the more you know =]
wow I never notice it until I read your post, anyway incredible informative , you are a genius.
Westboro Baptist Church protests military funerals so all Baptists hate America?
You damn geeds stay mad forever, quit holding a grudge because you didn't get a bid guy.
ed maybe next time u have a thought on write a blog on nothing u now about just let that thought go and this is why first hazing is illegal second wen u become a pledge u lern the history of the natinol/ international fraternity as well as the brothers and how to be a good man affter college
^ what?
^^Oh god, backing up fraternities with your grammar? I would be better off having a conversation with an illiterate.
As a matter of fact, just drink unreasonable amount of bleach to ensure that you don't produce offspring.
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