I’ve e-mailed a few people about their comments on the post about hazing, and I notice that most people agree on this more than their posts indicate.  Or maybe it’s just that I agree with some of the pro-hazing segment of the discussion has to say.
I really don’t see it as being such a bad thing that frats make guys do some wack things to gain entry.  It’s the same way I don’t have a problem with freshmen basketball players being forced to carry bags and things like that.  Seniority based systems aren’t such a bad thing to me.  Of course, I ain’t so keen on doing any of that shit myself, but I don’t have a principled objection to them.
I do, however, have a principled objection to laying hands on someone simply because one can.  And don’t try for a minute to convince me that beating the shit out of someone as part of the intake process isn’t that. What is being taught in a beating?  Someone explain that to me briefly, please.  Where is the lesson?
I also happen to agree that there are few ways to create genuine bonds in ten weeks.  However, I’d also argue there is no way to artificially manufacture a genuine bond in such a short period of time.
But then again, that doesn’t matter.  The days of the ten-week process are gone.  These dudes essentially wind up on line forever, simply because it’s known how badly people want to be in frats.  I’ve watched dudes give up dollar after dollar trying to be down.  I’ve seen them put forth the money the frat “raised” for some charity.  I’ve seen dudes hop up in the middle of the night because someone told them in September to be on some corner with $15 and a dub-sack of weed…for a line that didn’t even truly begin until January…and didn’t cross until April.
My eyes tell me that intake in most frats and sororities is beyond repair.  The biggest problem is the frats themselves have demonstrated no real effort to curb hazing.  Non-greeks know way too much about the hazing that goes on for me to believe the organizations are really trying to fix the problem.  How could I know about somebody that’s been cut during pledging but the governing bodies not know?  Because nobody’s gonna tell!
See, that’s where the problems come up.  Monitoring this stuff requires a serious level of self-policing.  And who is going to do that in the current landscape?  Tell on your “brother” or “sister,” the whole chapter suffers–if not the whole organization–and the person doing the telling gets ostracized.  Tell on the people pledging you and you get ostracized.  And considering how much of this system is built around the desire its members and wannabe members to be accepted, then ostracism is as strong a penalty as there is to keep people quiet.
So, does anyone know a way for this system to remain in place without incidents like this taking place?  And who truly believes this one is isolated?
Here’s my take–even if you think that hazing has its place, you have to admit that doing so properly (whatever that is) in the current landscape is impossible.  To me, it’s like the death penalty–even if you think it’s morally defensible, the system in place now has proven incapable of meting out the sentence fairly and, therefore, should the penalty should be eliminated.
So given the attitudes of those who run these systems and those that willingly enter them, tell me how in the world hazing should be allowed if it’s used so poorly.
Once this is viewed pragmatically, I have no idea how anyone can defend any of this.
None.