Dave (imported) wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2014 10:02 pm The solution for any college or university is to put down a rule -- physical hazing like this won't be tolerated. If a frat sends a pledge to a hospital (or lets the underage drink) then the chapter is disbanded and banished from campus.

However, since graduates with any membership in some student organization give more than other alumni, universities and colleges listen pander to alumni donors and look the other way. Dorm rats do not give big bucks to alumni associations. Sometimes it happens because the chapter's behavior is so egregious and so outrageous that even the alumni can't object but that is not as often as frat houses get away with hazing.

The one sure way to stop physical hazing is for pledges to walk away.

The other is to expel the guys that do it,

Back in the early 70's when I was in college, I didn't move on campus until my Junior year. Dorm life was pathetic and I did pledge a fraternity. One night, the teenage and very local band showed up to play with ten groupies and demanded that their groupies be allowed into the mixer or the band would walk.

So the party manager (whatever they called him) let them in.

Past midnight, the lead singer's girlfriend slipped on the floor and fell backwards, knocked herself out. Obviously a concussion.

Our frat president demanded we (The frat) take her to the hospital because her band wouldn't. The doctors put her under observation for the night. called parents, etc. etc.

Of course the Dean of Men (he hated fraternities) and the Dean of women (She was a particularly vile old lady) showed up at the hospital and gave the frat hell. They carried on relentlessly until the father of the girl showed up at the University president's office and thanked him for the frat members who were responsible enough to take his underage daughter (who snuck out with the forbidden band to drink) to the hospital and make sure that she was safe and not simply sneak her back in her house unattended. His words were at least someone had the common sense to do the right thing. Other parents of the band shared similar stories.

So the dean of men and the dean of women were told to shut up and return to their offices. Eventually they were replaced with more reasonable people.

There is more to that story that deals with university politics. As some other members could attest to, Washington DC is not the center of political intrigue -- college and university administrations and professors and academic life is worse. Politics rules colleges and universities.

However, 15 or 20 years later, the same chapter served alcohol to freshmen twice and the university simply closed the chapter down and eliminated it. I agree with that. We (fraternities) fought with the university against underage drinking in the early 70's and years later some fools want to return -- asinine. I personally had that conversation with our frat president and the head of the Council of Frat presidents years before. Freshman mixers were dry for good reason… I don't know what was done years later to the president of the frat or the party manager who thought they could get away with that but I would hope that they had black marks on their records.

As for physical hazing. What a crock of idiots. There were twelve fraternities and six sororities at my university and all of them banned physical hazing from inside the fraternities. You don't build the membership by physically hazing the pledges. The frat system also banned certain alcoholic concoctions like purple passions and super screwdrivers.

I mean to say there were enough frat activities to do that, including running the house for business majors (think buying food, employing cooks, minor repairs, homecoming, carnival, etc…)

From everything I have herd about frats is that its a lot like being in the service assigned to a barracks. There is drinking but not to much, else the first shirt (Dean of Men) comes down on you and finds things for you to do that involve physical labor on your day off. And its a private place, if your not in that frat/barracks don't enter without an invitation, you might get thrown out the second story window. There is the payday poker game with the same winners and loser's each payday. We had a barracks chief, he got a room to his self with a door that locked of course it was next to the day room where everybody partied and played poker.

River