It’s a tradition of shouting at the newbies who can’t shout back, passed down from generation to generation:
“You see, if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there aren’t usually many vacancies for nonshouting and nonpushing-people-about officers, so I think I’d better stick to what I know.”
–anonymous Vogon guard
Funny how a lot of people see it as a sign of growing up. I had a friend in college who was quite intelligent, and positively loathed the sophomores “because they thought they were so much better than us freshmen”. This went on all year, we break for summer, come back as sophomores, and now she loathes all freshmen because they’re all so pathetically immature. I pointed out that she was recently a freshman herself. Her response? “But that was like three months ago! I’m so beyond that now.” :rolleyes: Yep, that’s progress, all righty.
Hey, I was in a fraternity. There was no hazing. Hell, I think we had it even easier than Alpha Phi Omega (the service fraternity). There is still no hazing, and I’m pretty certain that it will remain that way for the forseeable future.
OTOH, I’ve heard stories about other fraternities that do some pretty horrible things. My school has around thirty fraternities, and has had several more at various times in the past, so between all of them, over the course of over a hundred thirty years of having fraternities, you can imagine that the entire gamut of hazing has been run there. Including one incident in the sixties where a pledge died. However, most of it seems to be along the lines of making them do stupid stuff, rather than trying to break them.
Maybe fraternities are just easier to leave than military academies.
Also, I don’t think it’s the Citadel, as they’re called Rats there.
It’s Texas A&M. It was in another thread.
In defense of Mr. Ghost, I’d like to say that he is in neither a frat nor a military academy (well, not wholly a military academy), but rather a well-respected organization that promotes honor, loyalty, fitness of mind and body, and respect. It does not promote, however, kissing the fat arses of any and all who complain that freshmen are too delicate and thin-skinned to handle being yelled at just because society has conditioned them to believe that such terms as “pecking order” and “respect” are passe. I know so because my father was a member, and owes a great deal to this so-called “frat,” and consequentially, so do I. I suppose next y’all will be saying that making a fish do push-ups is cruel and unusual punishment, in manner of Full Metal Jacket. Aside from what the media and prescription drug companies, for that matter, would like you to believe, human beings can actually handle discomfort now and then. We don’t need to be spoon-fed sunshine and smoke up our asses so we can feel better about ourselves. Self-esteem comes from personal accomplishments and character, not how much pain you’ve managed to avoid by being lazy. So for all of you who believe that taking verbal grief from an upperclassmen qualifies as hazing, get a damn grip.
Does it promote forcing its fish to give blowjobs to the officers?
Well, if that’s all the incentive you need, go ahead and join - you just might get lucky. Don’t think your company leader would appreciate you undoing his pants when he tells you to hit the floor and give him twenty good ones, though.
Pukka_Ag let me give you some reality. The real military does not allow swearing, corporal punishment, recrutes yelling at each other, or hazing. And this is even in basic training and these rules apply to the instructors as well.
Now it sounds like this “well-respected organization” is engaging in all of these activities. If you say hey where was the swearing, look at the term for the fish “Dumbass”. Then the term that “Forced physical punishment isn’t allowed yet, so our only real response is yelling”. This implies that physical punishment will be allowed at some point.
But the emotional torture this group is inflicting on another is actually hazing in itself.
So if this “well-respected organization” is trying to model themselves after the military in discipling their new recrutes they need to get up to speed on how to treat it’s member with respect.
And in regards to you other comments, this “well-respected organization” has forgotten that people respond better to respectful treatment. You are full of s***.
Since some of the responses here are starting to sound overly snobby, I’ll toss in a few of my thoughts. [Yes, I am biased. I am in the military.]
There is a certain logic to military training that often is not readily apparent. But when properly employed, it can get results like nothing else I have ever seen. It is also prone to abuse and maltraining, which is can be appear anywhere. It may be more prevelant at the formal academies and cadet corps, but as I have no direct experience with them, I cannot say for certain. I have heard stories though, and for what that’s worth, I don’t approve of any abuse in training.
That being said - It’s the military, not recess. If you can’t take someone yelling at you, you will not be able to take a no-notice deployment to an austere location. You will not be able to man a foxhole in the freezing cold to defend someone else’s country a thousand miles away. And you definitely won’t be able to take it when people are relying on you to keep them alive. It may sound trite or cliche, but its reality.
The rigor of training environment teaches egomaniacs to work as a team. It teaches people who lack self confidence (like I did) to get a spine and show some guts. It can mold a bunch of strangers into a group of friends faster than you would believe. And the irony is, you really don’t even have to yell all that much. Being surrounded by a bunch of people acting stern is more stress than a lot of people I’ve known have had in their whole lives. Nothing worth anything ever came easy.
I think most of you would be surprised at the level of regulation imposed upon training in the military. Don’t believe everything you see in the movies. In the branch I came through, “mutual respect” is the keyword for all training.
And TexasSpur, do you have some backing for that last statement about blow jobs, or did you just throw it out there because you could?
[climbs of soapbox and goes to bed]
Hmmmm I’m probably referring to the actual lawsuits it has faced.
Still trying to find the actual instance. It’s kind of hard to get non-sex site results on sex related crimes.
Here are a few other instances of hazing in this well respected organization.
http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/052497/texasam.htm
http://www.reporternews.com/1999/texas/corps0719.html
http://www.caller.com/2001/february/08/today/texas_me/17105.html
And maybe more. I’d hate to speculate though.
My grandfather ws in the Navy, fought in WWII and saw some other pretty heavy stuff in an long and honorable career. He’s a man through and though. And whenever he sees all that yelling that recruits receive when they first join just because the ‘superior’ wants to yell, even though I’ve never heard them argue over anything other then petty rules, he comments on how stupid it is and how he didn’t have to go through crap like that.
Ok, first of all: I’m glad to see TexasSpur can recognize sarcasm when it bites him in the ass. Second: “forced physical punishment” implies pushing, running, etc., not putting ones hand in a fire or severing fingers. If that’s just too much to handle, then tough. Third: my good friend is a marine, and at basic training, his superiors used “ass” frequently. Fourth and final: the whole point I’m trying to make is that society’s definition of “emotional stress” is so completley out of whack that we’re trained to think that we should be popping prozac to get over those times back in seventh grade the bully called us wussies. That’s not to say that depression as a clinical disease is bullshit; I’m well aware of the chemical imbalance that is involved. But there’s no denying that loads of people are on medication and/or are paying assloads of money for therapists they don’t really need. What does this have to do with the issue at hand? Being called a dumbass freshmen year is hardly emotional torture. In a few years, he’ll probably laugh about it honestly, not to cover up some deep-rooted hole in his soul caused by such a traumatic experience. It just pisses me off when people underestimate human resiliency. If that means I’m full of shit, I can deal with it.
Jinxie, I was in the USAF, joined in 1986, served my full four years in active duty. You can tell your grandfather that all of that abusive yelling is only in the movies. In actual basic training, I can remember only being personally yelled at once and then I understand that my TI (training instructor) had a talk to this gentleman and told him to leave her recrutes alone. We were taught with respect, discipline mind you and there are rules and we did have to do alot of saluting and standing at attention, but it was not like the movies.
Maybe some other board members from other braches can chime in with their experiences.
Wow, where do I begin?
-No, I’m not female. No, I don’t know why the term “Old Lady” is used at Texas A&M, altough it’s been around since at least 1943, when the movie * Never Been Licked* was produced. (Yes, I found the title vaguely disturbing too)
-Fish= Freshmen
Pissheads(appropoiate title becuse of our duties)= Sophomores
SurgeButts=Juniors
Zips=Seniors
-Am I the second straight year of Assholes? Well, Pissheads have to be assholes to Freshmen, else we get in trouble. Next year, they will be assholes to the new Fish. This is a leadership orginization, and in order to be a leader, you must first learn how to be led. Plus, you’ll never be afraid of a boss again after going through the Corps.
-The Corps of Cadets here doesn’t even allow basic training events that would be more common at the Service Acadamies. The powers that be are pretty good about preventing hazing, too. Last year a company was disbanded because of a incident.
-Also, the “Fish Drill Team” has been permantly disbanded because of two asshole Juniors who managed to gracefully reinforce the uninformed view that hazing is coming place in structured enviroments. I believe ** TexasSpur** has a relevant cite to that.
-Is The Corps anti-female? No. One of the links ** TexasSpur** provided sprouted off crap about how female cadets are singled out for pranks. If they are, it hasn’t happened in my Major Unit. Mostly we steal Bulletin boards/flags/cadets that belong to one of our sister units, and vice versa.
That is all. Didn’t expect I’d have to defend/explain the practices of a organization that’s quite a bit more laid back than the Service Academies, VMI, and the Citedal. I’m sure I’ll be called upon to defend it tomorrow, probaly after I come stumbling back from our 3 mi run at about 600 am or so. 'Course running for 3 mi probaly counts as hazing for some of you. God knows what you’ll consider the 5 mi runs when they start in October…
In re: evidenciary support of speculated hazing - I will not in any way defend the offendors described in these articles. However, one must keep in mind that in the “well-respected organization” y’all take so much glee in patronizing, which includes over 3,000 members every year, there’s bound to be a few bad seeds who do not represent the values said organization embodies. Every institution has its skeletons, even and especially the U.S. Armed Forces. That doesn’t mean one should base his entire opinion of the institution on these few incidents. Forming such an uninformed stance would be quite stupid.
Don’t really want to get banned for calling you names so I won’t. You obviously don’t know shit about this situation. One of these asshole juniors was a friend of mine. I’ve seen the photographs after this hazing incident. Your 5’2’’ ass would probably have died from the beating he got. Here is another story on this.
Ah yes, forgot to explain the use of the word “ass”.
Because Juniors are refered to as “Butts”, it is not a lower classmen’s privilage to know the word “Butt”. Hence, “ass”.
When a Fish does something good, usually the phrase “That’s Redass, fish [insert name here]”
I’m not disrespecting the Air Force in any way, deb2world, But I’m in a army company (which is part of the 2nd Brigade, the Army “Major Unit”), so maybe we do things differently for that reason. I doubt an Airman such as yourself was ever expected to be on the recieving end of enemy fire. Thus I can conclude, that stress managment was not part of your basic.
My experience with the AFROTC Units is, that on the whole, they are much easier to go through. i.e. a few Squadrons don’t have requirements for the fish to earn their “Corps Brass”, which is a peace of metal you wear on your uniform. The Corps wide requirement for the Brass is that your class has to go out and do a Community service project, but I doubt they(the AFROTC’s) do that, as I see the AFROTC fish walking around wearing the Brass during the first week.
We aren’t allowed to swear either. The most is “ass”. Making someone get down and do pushups (and the maximum we can dole out is 42, the Army PFT limit.) is really the limit we can do, punishment wise. As this is the 2nd week of Cadet life, yelling is still pretty common. But by the end of September the Pissheads won’t be yelling anymore, as it gets pretty old pretty quick.
Unless the Freshmen do something monumentaly stupid, we’re the only class year that acts like assholes to them. And in that case, “Suck your ass”, because the upperclassmen have the power to do way more then us. Altough rarely used. [Only once last year, and that was because one of the Freshmen came back drunk on a saturday(strike one), puked in the hallway (strike two) and punched one of our sophomores (strike three)].
No one’s pointing a gun at the freshmen and saying ‘you can’t quit’, unless you’re on a ROTC Scholarship the Corps is completely voluntary. It isn’t Basic.
The “Asshole Juniors” I was refering to were the Upperclassmen advisors who were turning a blind eye to the hazing. If your friend was a Junior when he got hazed, we’re talking about two differnt things.
I wasn’t griping ** because** someone had the stones to come forward, I was griping because of the S.O.B.'s who allowed it to happen.
Sorry If you misinterpeted my statement.
[nitpick] The Number’s closer to 2,000. Otherwise I agree with your statement[/nitpick]
However in the “real world” you arn’t shit you short fucking pussy ass laughing stock of man pussy! HeHe. Wipe your mamas milk out of the corner of your mouth and go home.