a few years ago at a leadership confrence, i was told by our national president that hayrides were not allowed (even for alum groups) because it is a liability issue. i don't know why it would be put with hazing, but the way she explained it is that people can fall off, etc. and since it is a "sorority" event, the national group can be sued.

Never got paddled, but I agree with SirHornyToad, if pledging was easy and nobody forced you to do anything you didn't want, then you'd have a house of unmotivated members.

College is demanding, why don't people start going to the administrators complaining that exams are hazing. Mentally embarassing to you when you don't get an A. Yea it's a stretch, but so are a lot of things. Everyone keeps thinking just because you decided to pledge you deserve to be a member. You volunteered to to join, which means you can always volunteer to quit if the process is too difficult.

You paddle people?

Seriously? Does that turn you on? Pretty homoerotic if you asked me...

The thought of 20-something year old boys paddling eachother kind of makes my blood curdle.

We weed kids out also. We don't need hazing to do it. You can tell if a Candidate is going to be a man of good character without slapping his ass with a piece of wood. There are ways of showing dedication without creating excessive physical discomfort, psychological shock, excessive fatigue, etc.

Paddling and such is ILLEGAL. Your group gets caught, one pledge gets pissed and goes to the cops and your officers and any other participating members will be charged with a crime. A felony in some states. It's assault at the very least.

Or maybe just Sado-masochistic. In any event, it ain't good.

leave the guys alone
 

the guys aren't hazing that badly! many frats do much much worse, plus i think its part of the initiation process, if they want to be in the frat badly enough i think they can turn on a vacuum, i mean come on.
the sigma chi omega boys kick ass, especially tim

Sorry about that...

But it's crap like that which really reflects poorly on us all.

Regardless of your views on it the fact is that it's something that is illegal in several areas. It has also ended up causing people permenant injuries (ruptured kidneys, etc).

But hey.. if you enjoy it.. so be it.

Striking someone with a blunt object is assault.

if its consentual?

First, to clean up some legal things.
This would be a battery, NOT necessarily an assault.

An assault is the threat or use of force on another that causes that person to have a reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact

Battery is the application of force to another, resulting in harmful or offensive contact.

Both of those definitions are courtesy of my wonderful Black's Law Dictionary.

So this particular circumstance would be considered battery. Much hazing could be found to be assault..... any sort of threats.

There's a pretty fine legal line here.....even if you think consent is given, they could easily say that they did not consent. Also, forced consent isn't going to count as real consent either.

Basically, if they got a good enough attorney, consent means crap.

Anything like this, you seriously REALLY need to watch yourself. Assault/battery could easily carry a nice amount of jail time. Not to mention fines, probation, and that it could effectively ruin the rest of your life.

Much stupider things have happened and have been found by juries to be battery. If there's any sort of contact/unwanted touching, you could potentially be in a boatload of trouble.

Believe it or not, we spent almost an entire class last semester in criminal law talking about the legalities of the movie "Fight Club"....

Last semester.... back when law school was fun (it blows at the moment).

*takes off the lawyer hat and goes back to normal GCer hat*

Oh, and even if you weren't the one doing the beating, if you were present and did nothing to stop it, if you encouraged it, if you helped plan it, depending on your state's laws, you could also be prosecuted under accomplice liability, among other things.

Thansk kddani for the clarification.

::sighs::
 

There's nothing more moronic, IN MY OPINION, than physical negative reinforcement. When I rushed, I thought about all I'd heard about hazing and paddling and such and such and I made up my mind that the moment someone my age told me i'd been bad and tried to hurt me physically was the moment I'd leave. There are SO many more ways to get the job done than hitting someone with a piece of wood. I love my sisters to death and I wouldn't be able to stomach watching, or even KNOWING ABOUT one of them being struck because they had forgotten to pay a $5 dollar study hour fine. There are so many other ways to get a point across. I screwed up last semester with my grades and I was told I wasn't allowed to wear my badge because I wasn't in good standing. You know how horrid I feel when I can't wear my Golden Anchor in public or at chapter meetings? Everytime I look around and I see my sisters wearing their badges, I'm punished. If I was told to bend over and allow myself to be paddled because I didn't make grades, I'd not feel guilty, I'd be ticked off. How ANYONE can stomach punishing, embarassing, degrading, or hurting someone that they claim to love, and call a brother or a sister is beyond my grasp. I suppose it's something that you're taught, but who says you have to be taught that in the first place. As far as earning respect through hazing, I told the fraternity guys I (and all my sisters) know and hang out with that if I ever heard of them mistreating any of their new members, I (and my chapter, who agrees with me) would never speak with them again. Beating someone with less "power" than you is the fastest way to lose respect, imo.
Greek Love and Mine,
Mandie

I think the Sigma Chi Omegas were suspeneded at Buffalo. Go figure...if you do that kind of stuff on tv you might get caught. In this case, by the president/dean of the university.

This is gonna shock you all but what i did through pledgeship for the most part was fun, even the last bit, CI-Week. ASK any of my pledge brothers they will say it was fun and maybe if we had of been hazed just once it would have been cool. What they do on Fraternity Life is NOT hazing. Hazing is forcing your pledges to jump off your third story roof with mattress tied to themselves (we used to do that at my chapter 10 years ago before we got in trouble for it).

Putting someone in danger of life and limb certainly is hazing, as you state with your story about jumping off a 3rd story with a mattress. I think that's even a pretty extreme example.

But bragging about being hazed really isn't the best idea here. Chances are that there's someone from Pike HQ on GC and i'm sure they would not be thrilled with what you're saying. There are forms of hazing that aren't quite jumping off a building with a mattress

I'm not sure when you graduated, but if it's 10 years ago, a lot has changed since then.

Bottom line, regardless of what YOU consider hazing, Sigma Chi Omega violated the University's rules on hazing and have pretty much embarassed greeks everywhere who care about the reputation of greek life as a whole.

Would you not consider the hazing incident in Ill. to be hazing then? Just a question.