SpaceGhostofArrakis, while you’re counting up your misspellings, let me add:
luscious
&
Gandhi. Would you consider fixing that in your sig?
I’m not in favor of hazing whether it be in a fraternity, a high school, or Burger King. On the other hand, there is good order and discipline, essential in a military setting. Others have already done an excellent job of explaining that, and trying to get a civilian to understand it is an exercise in futility.
Can’t believe I screwed that up. Thanks.
I’m Jerry Springer, and here’s my final thought.
I was driven to bring up the 3 month old argument because SpaceGhost’s OP reminded me of it. It was intended as an off the cuff reminder that maybe being a dick resulted in his chocolate being stolen.
He then proceeded to call them worthless freshmen and insist that he participates in no hazing activities. But he does force manual labor on kids for breaking a drinking law…
I doubt this was in the agreement when they signed up, please correct me if I’m wrong.
I don’t understand how the ‘breaking down and building up’ of cadets can go on, no matter how humiliating it is, but my fraternity/honorary nearly had their CHARTER REVOKED because we blindfolded pledges to lead them to a fucking PARTY IN THEIR HONOR.
In essence, I am of the opinion that cadets, students, pledges, plebes, steamed puddings, fish and privates would end up as better, more stable people if you ENCOURAGED them rather than BERATED them. I may be wrong.
jar
Hold up here. I never, ever made a post calling the freshmen “worthless.”
IIRC, I refered to myself as a “worthless freshman”, because, well, I was a pretty crappy fish. I am astonished that you Jarbabyj are offended by me using the term “worthless”, when you’ve used so many more colorful turns of phrases.
Manual labor implies we’re making them lift rocks/build shacks/bonfires/whathave you. Doing push-ups is not manual labor. Doing sit-ups is not manual labor.
I do not force the fish to do push-ups for breaking the law. The CO does. When the freshmen sign their papers agreeing to abide by the Corps rules, they agree to be punished through physical training. If it’s a situation where the Corps authority in these matters are vague, the CO can get a letter of permission from the Commandant.
We really do encourage the fish, we only berate them when they fuck up. Hell, we even encourage to go out and have fun on weekends. Get dates. Enjoy life. One of the requirements to earn the “Corps Brass” (a brass pin that signifies you’ve successfully achieved bais Cadet knowledge) in our outfit is that they take a class trip togather somewhere. Another is to be involved in a community service project. We had such a great time last year doing that, that us sophomores are doing it again, even though we are not asked to/required by anyone.
We want them to be happy. A happy fish, is a productive fish, and a productive fish means we can spend less time bothering them.
Many people are made of sterner stuff than they appear to be at first glance. All we’re doing is tempering the steel of tomorrow’s officers.
Here, in essence, is what I find wrong with your comparing college frat hazing to military service academies training. The service academies are looking for nice, stable, normal people that can also be trained to think properly and be on their toes (mentally) at all times. You seem to think that because an upper-classman may berate under-classmen with extra physical training or whatever that they are not trying to encourage them. The last thing that ** any** service academy would ever want to do, would be to berate a student, plebe, whatever, if they thought that doing so would not turn that person into a better leader. Hence, my point that you saying:
,
is wrong in the extreme. In order to provide a corps of officers that the troops will be confident in following into battle, the academies actually need to instill a massive amount of discipline into them. Being huggy-feely, I know you didn’t mean to do it so we know you won’t do it again, type of mindset during training will never teach our young leaders what they need to know!
You may think that extra physical training is non-productive and berating the person, but you would be wrong. As I said before, it is done to teach these young leaders teamwork, discipline and how to maintain themselves under combat conditions. And yes, that also goes for women in combat situations.
This is insanity. Space Ghost posts to lament the loss of his chocolate by a greedy roomie or somesuch and this has turned into a Jarbabyj vs. Hazers brawl. Hazing happens. It’s not a good thing, but I don’t think that what Space Ghost did is some ungodly horrible inhumane thing that warrants such a hullabaloo. I appreciate what Jarbabyj is trying to say, but for chrissakes, is this really such a big deal?
Yo dude. The only thing I ever took any offense at was this statement:
Seems to me that someone here is afraid to admit that they were totally mistaken and completely wrong. Hence, the statement:
by jarbabyj which implies that she either does not think she is wrong, or else she decided to not admit to being wrong.
Enough of this shit. I’m tired and my wife wants me to come to bed at a decent hour tonight so in the future, PLEASE pay attention to what you’re saying.
but then, when chocolate touches my hand I immediately insert it into my mouth. Often without the benefit of being de-containerized. The idea of having chocolate and not eating it immediately is completely foreign to me.
YMMV.
B.
By saying I was jerry springer, it meant I was trying to extricate myself. I learned from my Oprah thread that there’s no way of winning some battles.
We’ll have to agree to disagree that people are made better by living a hyper structured, military type lifestyle. I know that me, jarbabyj would be a trembling wreck of fear if I thought that getting caught drinking would result in pushups. Therefore I would not drink, because I would be AFRAID. I guess I can’t run with the bigdogs…but then again, nor do I want to. I’m just a writer 
I’m sorry to have hijacked SpaceGhost’s thread. That was wrong of me. I apologize.
jar
Tell that to Dian Fossey.
Well you know, drinking isn’t exactly good for you…