Does hazing provide societal benefits?

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Part of college is to gain experiences outside of your comfort zone. What I’ve seen is that the people who are the most rigid in their definition of what they “will or wont do” have the worst time in college. They often don’t join groups, go home every other weekend and/or hang out with the same three guys for their entire 4 years. They can often be difficult roomates because they are high maintanance and overly sensitive. That’s fine if you want to be like that, but it seems like a waste.

The thing is, if you absolutely don’t want to be fucked with, harrassed, or chided into taking an action you wouldn’t normally take on your own volition, a fraternity might not be for you.
When I refer to “character”, I mean basically who a person is. Their sense of right and wrong. How they interact with others. That kind of stuff. Hazing and initiation activities test your character for the very same reasons mentioned above. Is this too excessive? Do I go along with this because I want to be part of the group? Am I right in refusing to do this or am I being stubborn and difficult? Why do I really want to be here? It tests your character because there is no hard and fast rules or absolutes. You have to make your own decisions.

I don’t know if it necessarily makes you a better person. But it certainly gives you a better sense of what kind of person you are and from there you can make your own decisions.

60 km in 14 hours through a desert at night seems reasonible (well…plausible) according to my calculations.
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How much of this “finding out who you are” comes from aging naturally? I mean, some people change a lot through college. Some people change a lot from the ages 18 to 20. Would being part of a social fraternity (because I think we probably should point out the differences between the two) have as big of an effect as you claim or an effect that’s going to happen no matter what?

Additionally, I’ve heard people say “well, it lets you know who you are” when talking about fraternities and the military. There are some big differences between the two. Also, it should be noted that there are some similarities.

The way I see it, there’s a difference between “training” and “hazing”. Making recruits have to do physical tests in the military is certainly unpleasant, but then again, the entire military system is designed to take your average joe, break them down mentally and physically, and make them into a lean, mean, killing machine. Presumably, this is for the betterment of the recruit, and in some cases, it can be argued that it does make you better (except Private Pyle). Fraternity hazing is trying to find a price to weed people out, if they’re popular enough. I think you’ll find that the amount of people that want in and the amount of current members will tell you how much hazing there is in that frat. In short, you’re not going to make it more difficult to get new members if you have a shortage to begin with, unless there’s a reason you’re limiting your membership (like Skull and Bones…then again, I don’t know a lot about them and their methods of hazing, initiation, and specific stats on their membership, so this is up for some debate).

For instance, didn’t the US military make it so basic training isn’t as harsh recently in order to get more recruits? It was either something that or they made it so ovreweight recruits can get dessert. I don’t remember the specifics, but they tried to dangle a (non-anal) carrot in front of potential recruits because membership is way down these days.

And if it’s going in your ass, be thankful it’s a carrot and not a squash.

62

[QUOTE=msmith537]
The “stories you heard” about hazing rituals are largely urban legend told to freshmen to scare the crap out of them during pledging.
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No, they weren’t. Nor was the playing with road kill (doing what, I don’t know). Nor were the stories about getting fat coeds drunk and attemtpting to have sex with them while the brothers watched and perhaps filmed through a window (one frat gave extra points if you got the girl to answer “You are!” to “Who’s the king?”). Nor were the stories about sprinting head-first into a door as many times as one could stand. Nor were the beatings, the force-fed shotgun or funneled beers, the public acts of humiliation involving nudity or homophobia, etc. My guess is these perhaps started as urban fables, and served as a source of inspiration for real activities. Look at what kids film themselves doing for fun in their backyards these days and broadcast over the web, emulating Jackass and the like. I shudder to think what contemporary Greek hazing might entale if unrestricted.

63

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
First, people are injured or die from hazing; that’s not an urban legend, it mentioned in the OP’s link. Second, there is no limit to the stupid things millions of people will do.
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Yes, “30 deaths over the past three decades”. There are 350,000 undergraduates who belong to a fraternity that is part of the North-American Interfraternity Conference. My fraternity has over 200,000 living members. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than dieing from a hazing related activity.

That’s what college guys do. They get girls

These sound like normal goofball things that college guys do. They mess around with some stupid thing that grabs their attention - roadkill, wearing a jack-o-lantern on their head, launching a small chicken at their neighbors house. They try to make it with ho-bags who are just their to fuck their letters (and if it’s consentual, what do you care if they yell “I’m the king” while wearing the fraternity flag as a cape?) They roughhouse and wrestle around. They drink excessively and call each other pussies. They moon people or walk around with a dildo hanging out of their pants or have wagers were the loser has to wear a dress and other shocking or offensive behavior.

I don’t see what the big deal is provided no one gets hurt.

64

[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
We’re up against two very different definitions of character here, I think:
a) Character defined by msmith as the willingness to put the group before yourself, because to do otherwise is selfish. True character is not to be found inside yourself, but as part of something greater than you are.
b) Character defined by Der as the unwillingness to give yourself up to the group, because to do otherwise is weak. True character is not to be found outside yourself, but as part of your own soul.
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I should think that the alternative to (a) is an attitude that requires the individual to balance the worthiness of the group against the action it is asking you to take. There are some actions that are so trivial, that it might be okay to engage in them to satisfy even a relatively unworthy group. There are some actions that are so grave or frivolous or humiliating or painful or cruel that even the worthiest group would not justify it. And, furthermore, any group that might demand such an action may by that fact not be worthy.

65

[QUOTE=acsenray]
I should think that the alternative to (a) is an attitude that requires the individual to balance the worthiness of the group against the action it is asking you to take. There are some actions that are so trivial, that it might be okay to engage in them to satisfy even a relatively unworthy group. There are some actions that are so grave or frivolous or humiliating or painful or cruel that even the worthiest group would not justify it. And, furthermore, any group that might demand such an action may by that fact not be worthy.
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I agree fully – although I’m not sure all this invalidates definition b).

66

[QUOTE=acsenray]
I should think that the alternative to (a) is an attitude that requires the individual to balance the worthiness of the group against the action it is asking you to take. There are some actions that are so trivial, that it might be okay to engage in them to satisfy even a relatively unworthy group. There are some actions that are so grave or frivolous or humiliating or painful or cruel that even the worthiest group would not justify it. And, furthermore, any group that might demand such an action may by that fact not be worthy.
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I agree and would expand on that to say that if you choose to belong to a group, you have a responsibility to influence the groups actions and speak out when they might be wrong. A fraternity or any other group is comprised of the sum of it’s members and all have a part in defining what that group represents.

67

But if it’s obvious that you’re going to get your ass paddled black and blue (whether or not you believe it should be), isn’t all that pretty much academic?

68

[QUOTE=msmith537]
That’s what college guys do. They get girls
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But when you get girls by getting them drunk enough to have sex with someone they otherwise wouldn’t, that’s rape, which is never acceptable under any circumstances. There are probably some legal issues involved with filming a girl during sex without her consent, too.

69

Firstly, IMO, not all manufactured ritual adversity is hazing. Impromptu pushups in boot camp? It probably makes for better soldiers. I had a professor in grad school who was fond of individual oral pop quizzes: he’d walk up to one of us before class, ask for a math formula and record whether we knew the answer. I would never do such a thing in the classes I teach, but I can’t say it didn’t motivate me to study a little more.

I was never in scouting, but the harmless pranks I’ve heard about don’t sound too bad, and probably help with bonding. I don’t consider this a problem.

What I consider problem hazing is where sadistic bullies, with no interest in helping anyone, rationalize their behavior by saying, “It’s good for 'em”. We won’t all agree where the line between hazing and bullying is, but I’d hope we agree it exists.

Someone upthread said that you bond with someone you’ve been through hardship with. They gave an example of two people weathering a severe storm. I can understand this. But I would say that if they’d endured a similar man-made hardship, they wouldn’t be too crazy about the person who caused it.

When considering the overall value of manufactured hardship, you have to ask if the effort the hazees expend in complying outweighs the benefits induced by the practice. As I noted, sometimes it does. But not always. The best illustration I can think of is from the novel “Bang the Drum Slowly”. Bruce Pearson (the character played by Robert DeNiro in the movie) is a dim-witted bumpkin who is always getting picked on by the other players. When the team finds out he’s dying, they let up on him. And his playing improves. I know it’s fiction, but it isn’t hard to believe that sometimes, temperments and abilities are aligned like this.

Not all hardship makes you better: I’ve always loved the twist on Nietzsche: “That which does not destroy me makes me stranger”.

70

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
None, IMHO. The reflexive “rah-rah-fraternity-go” ! stuff we see in this very thread is an example of the destructive nature of group loyalty. Personally, I’d be happy to see all fraternities banned/dismantled;
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Well, in this thread you describe yourself as:

Someone like yourself would not get along well in a fraternity (or any group from the sounds of it). So the system works.

71

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Someone like yourself would not get along well in a fraternity (or any group from the sounds of it). So the system works.
[/QUOTE]
And of course my lack of membership in a fraternity will magically protect me and everybody else from any and all consequences of their existence and behavior. Because I’m so important that my personal preferences will rewrite reality by the mere aura of my presence on Earth. How could I have failed to realize that ?

72

I’m surprised that no one has spoken about trying to define what hazing is. The closest I’ve seen in this thread has been the discussion started by Lissa about tribal rituals.

I think that there are three categories of behaviors we could lump under the term hazing. Of those three I only view one as being actually harmful.

[ul]
[li]Official ordeals for specific goals, such as boot camp training. Monitored and never done for personal reasons. Especially not for personal pleasure of the persons actually organizing the ordeals. (I read somewhere that you don’t want sadists for boot camp instructors, for example: they’ll get bored, and there goes the quality of the ordeal for the recruits.)[/li][li]Unofficial ordeals which can range from things like ‘tacking on’ a promotion, or normal fraterity ordeals, or ‘Crossing the Line’ ceremonies. They can be great fun. Even if painful at the time. (Though still fun) And the line between this category and my next category can be blurred easily. [/li][li]Unofficial ordeals that go beyond simply being an ordeal to being persecutions. This is not only what it seems to me usually happens once an unofficial ordeal is performed in the presence of booze, but what can happen if a sadist or bully co-opts the ordeal for his or her own goals and desires. And this can happen with things as simple as repeating ‘trick’ orders to someone who cannot or does not get why they’re impossible. [/li][/ul]

The only kind of hazing I object to, then, is the third type.

If the unofficial ordeal is enjoyed by all involved, even if it is gross, or potentially humiliating, what’s the harm? And if it provides a morale boost, or a sense of solidarity, it does have a benefit.

I could offer details about a Crossing the Line ceremony that I would judge to be humiliating if they weren’t part of voluntary ordeal. As it was, I had a blast, and am now a proper Shellback. It was a vacation afternoon in a long cruise. Not an inconsiderable benefit, if you ask me.