When I was going to school, in the late 1990s, our university had a strict policy against hazing. But then again the school’s alcohol policy didn’t keep them from throwing huge keggers, so they didn’t appear to be overly concerned about following the rules.
Anyway I didn’t have any close friends who were in fraternities so I never really knew what sort of shenanigans pledges were expected to engage in. So does hazing still go on, and if so what form does it take? How does it compare to hazing that might have gone on in years past?
Note, I’m not out to bash fraternities or anything that. I don’t have any strong feelings about them one way or another. I’m just genuinely curious about whether or not hazing still takes place.
“Hazing” is a very subjective term. What some might consider a silly prank, e.g. being required to stand on a table in the cafeteria during lunch and sing the school fight song at full volume, some might consider “hazing”. (FWIW, I’ve seen this done. Never had to do it, but saw it done.)
What, exactly, did you have in mind? Any specific behaviors you were curious about?
Hazing is still very common.
Stuff like getting paddled or being forced to eat disgusting food or drink copious amounts of alcohol or anything else you might see pledges doing in a stereotypical college fraternity flick.
Also if they were expected to engage in any particularly cruel pranks, I’d consider that hazing.
Yes, this is still standard practice.
most pledges go along with it for fear that not doing so would get them rejected.
A fraternity at the University of Nebraska was suspended for four years for hazing
A friend of mine in college was in a frat and he wasn’t particularly overwhelmed by the hazing. Mostly it was stupid stuff like stealing x number of dry erase board markers from the dorms in twenty minutes. What he was disgusted by was a party thrown by a sorority house where the pledges were paraded out in bras and panties and the frat brothers present were encouraged to circle the problem areas on the young women’s bodies. What a way to build sisterhood…
It’s frowned upon by universities but it does still occur. I think if anything, the university’s strict policies on it has just made it more secretive between fraternity brothers.
We have a trial in session in my town over the death of a freshman during a fraternity power drinking event.
This is the problem with the fraternity mentality towards drinking. Drinking is an art. By which I mean, figuring exactly how many drinks will make you a “good” drunk, how many more might make you a “bad” drunk, and how many more after that will simply give you alcohol poisoning and a very costly ride in an ambulance, at best. A good drunk knows his limits and abides by them. Chugging drink after drink after drink in some kind of effort to prove what a big man you are, without giving any heed to your own tolerance for alcohol, is foolish - and if you wind up brain-dead and on a ventilator in a hospital with your parents debating whether or not to pull the plug, you deserve it!
A quick check of Google News for “fraternity hazing” brings up 289 cites. On the first page alone, there are stories about hazing from: California, New Jersey, Georgia, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, New York and Florida.
It’s still going on, though far less commonly as colleges crack down on it for fear of lawsuits. Everyone once in awhile, someone is seriously injured and may even die, at which point colleges get even more serious.
In my area in recent years:
One frat requires pledges to swim across a pond in a local park. One time a student goes under and doesn’t come up. They all take off. No 911 call. The body is found the next day. The frat closes ranks and no punishment.
A group of students are heavily alcohol intoxicated, one of them loses consciousness. They dump him in front of a nightclub entrance. Too late for medicial help. The frat closes ranks …
There is the usual paddling scene at a frat. One student gets beaten so badly he has to be hospitalized for weeks and drop out of school. Lawsuit against frat ensues.
Police stop a suspicious car cruising in the country late at night. Find the trunk packed with pledges bound and gagged. Frat has alums in local high places. No charges filed.
Anyone who claims that it is thing of the past isn’t reading the papers. If anything, the movies are unrealistically mild.
Remember, when consider joining a frat, these jerks aren’t you’re “brothers”. If you need medical attention due to something they did, they are not going to help you. It’s more important that you die than the frat getting punished.
It’s illegal here, and a few frats have been barred for doing it, but it still goes on. A couple of years ago a guy died from a hazing that involved exhausting all-night exercise combined with drinking way too much water. Every couple of years someone dies from alcohol poisoning as well, but that isn’t always hazing.
Dangerous hazing does seem to be much less common here now, though, after years and years of serious work.
It was happening quite a bit when I was in a fraternity 15 years ago. Not in my fraternity specifically, but one of the houses on campus had all their pledges walk out on them. This was a school where everyone was an engineering, architecture, or computer sci major, so we didn’t put up with a lot of bullshit. We had pretty much been nerds and outcasts and loners all our lives, so “belonging” wasn’t worth any kind of hazing.
One time we had the pledges line up for some reason or another. After some reflection we realized that it could be construed as hazing and we apologized to them for it and never did anything like that again. Our house didn’t even own any paddles for decoration.
My cousin was in a fraternity at Purdue around the same time. He got hazed but good.
Can’t talk about the US, but here in France, while there have been laws passed against that sort of thing, my sister still had to spend the night inside a dead cow in vet school (amoung other, just as savory things. No sex stuff that I’m aware off, though).
Of course in Europe, where they have Culture, things are Different. You’re becoming part of an elite guild. The dead-cow requirement may go back centuries.
At least she didn’t have to be sewn inside and buried.
Yep.
I assume this was something they put all the first year students through? This type of class hazing was once very common in the U.S. Around the turn of the last century there were commonly “class scraps” in which the entire first and second year classes would fight brutally; this seems to have been especially common in the state college campuses of the prairie states. Long ago I saw a 1910s-era yearbook from UC Berkeley, and there was something in there about how freshmen weren’t “allowed” to enter some building or other by the front door. There was a little verse somebody had written about what would happen to “each trembling plebe, Who dares the North Hall steps ascend…”.
Those wacky studends…In the 1930s and 40s, there was this custom among one of the classes (seniors, I think–just the males) of wearing the SAME pair of corduroy trousers through the year, and not washing them. Ever. One person recollected that the pants would just about stand up by themselves at the end of the year. It’s hard to believe that little more than twenty years later many of these same guys were condemning their own sons for growing out their hair…
Seriously? That’s vomitricious. I would just say no. To any of this. If they refuse to like me who cares–either way they’re only interested in me because of the almighty dollar.