that episode was rediculous.

now, my mother thinks all frats are like that...and the new boy is a TKE!! great. i can only imagine the conversation when he comes over, "So ____(insert name to protect the innocent) did you get raped during pledging? How many of your pledge brothers got sent to the hospital? Did anyone get killed?" I should warn him, poor boy doesn't know whats going to happen when he meets my mom

and personally, as panhellenic tresurer, i RESENT the fact they called their council panhellenic.

the worst episode ever.

I enjoyed the episode.

Law & Order: SVU is a particularly graphic program, so I viewed this episode knowing that it would not portray members of the Greek system in the most positive light. But hey, it is a television show, after all. Anyone the SVU goes up against will be "the enemy."

I appreciated the fact that Medical Examiner Warner mentioned that her husband is an Alpha Phi Alpha. (A heary A Phi resounded through the house as soon as that was said.)

I was surprised to see the pledges on social probation and standing at attention in front of the house. If they had all been dressed alike, I might have found the scene reminiscent of the traditional BGLO pledge program of days gone by.

To the credit of the writers and/or producers, the program could have been the typical gang rape or date rape drug case that many of us expected this episode to be concerned with. But, it was focused on two people, the President and the Pledge Master. The president was absolutely morally corrupt, and the Pledge Master (the murder victim) was abusive, but not as sadistic as the President, by comparison.

The reason I bring up those two members of the Fraternity is because I think the writers were careful not to universally vilify the fraternity. True, they did not show the one fraternity member who snitched and brought the whole operation down, and yeah, you can assume that all the members were complicit in the activities that transpired.

However, I feel that in focusing on those two people, the writers showed that it could be more of a "bad apples" situation. The victims were not gang raped or otherwise victimized by the entire chapter at once. It was one person who took an already less than ideal situation and made it worse.

Anyway....no, it wasn't my favorite episode, and there were some inconsistencies in the language, as it pertained to Greek life. But on the whole, given the nature of the program, they could have done a whole lot worse.

Wow Tau Omega Fraternity eh? hmm i'm in Tau Omega chapter of TKE, can't say i was all that impressed with the letter choice, though i guess the producers would be hard pressed to find a set of greek letters that aren't used somewhere. The episode wasn't as bad as it could have been, and while alot of sterotypes were enforced, the truth is that shit like that does unfortunetly happen. While it may be a small percentage of the greek population that hazes, and an even smaller that hazes to that extreme, it does happen and i personally am happy that the perpatrator got convicted in the show. While the show shows the negative sterotypes, it also shows consequences to those stereotypes, which is never a bad thing.

Yeah, I thought the episode was ok. The rape victim and Gary Cole did a good job with their parts. I liked how he said, "It used to be about the brotherhood" at the end. But, the one thing that annoyed me was how they kept mispronouncing Tau. It's pronounced "taw", like "paw", people. Just a little pet peeve of mine.

That was the one redeeming moment in what was otherwise another story that played to the stereotypes. At least that last line gave some indication that it was good system taken down by a few "bad apples," as someone already said.

As a lawyer, I couldn't decide which bothered me more -- the pandering to stereotypes about Greeks or the dismal ethics exhibited by Gary Gole's character. An obvious (and severe) conflict of interest, yet he takes the case anyway -- and the judge lets him do it without any meaningful (and on the record) examination of the defendant to make sure he understands exactly what he's doing when he waives any objection to the conflict of interest. Then Cole, succombing to that conflict of interest, throws the case in court, intentionally opening the door to evidence that he knows will get his client convicted.

All I can say is that Brother Kong, or whatever his name was, needn't have shown all that worry on the stand about being convicted -- an appeals court would throw that conviction out in a heartbeat.

For some strange and disturbing reason a bunch of schools in Wisconsin pronounce it as a TOW like towel. One of my friends from high school is a Phi Kappa Tau and he was none too happy with my Tau-age.

Actually, while "taw" is used by most if not all GLOs, most dictionaries seem to give either pronunciation as correct. From what I can tell, "tow" (like "towel") rather than "taw" (like "paw")is the correct pronunciation in Classical and Koine Greek, and in modern Greek it is pronounced either 'tow" or "daf." (Go figure that last one.)

FWIW.

Yay I wasn't really wrong! He got even crankier when I told him about the Alpha PHEE/Gamma PHEYE Beta thing and I called them PHEE Kappa TOW. Both Sigma Tau Gamma and Tau Kappa Epsilon pronounced it TOW on our campus - I had never heard TAW until I met an Alpha Sigma Tau from Beloit.

I'm trying to imagine the AST's at my school doing their cheer - "Alpha Alpha, Sigma Sigma, daf daf daf!" No, it just doesn't have the same ring. :p

When I went to a ZBT convention a couple of years ago some of the guys were like, "I hate when people say TOW". I had already been saying TAW because that's how people at UGA pronounced it.

I wonder if "Tau Omega" was based on an "Alpha Tau Omega" incident. I often find that Law & Order gets their ideas from things that did happen in the news and then the writers take creative liberties with the incident for television purposes.

Cheri, the Tow vs. Taw issue is probably a regional thing. After all, I live in Canada, so to me, you would be a Member of
"Zed Bee Tee", not "Zee Bee Tee". ;)

Oy! Don't remind me! Sure, I live in Canada but I am not feeling the Zed thang...

Must be the American in me! :D

My cousins say Zed as in Zed Zed Top. :p

I wouldn't doubt it. NOT that I know what happened to ATO, nor am I saying ATO is an "evil" fraternity. I have watched many Law and Order episodes, and can remember the news story that correspondes with it (ie they did one about snippers, and i recall another with an infamous shooting in nyc).

I was kidding, my American cousins.
For "American words and organizations", I say Zee Zee Top, Dee Zee (DZ) and Zee Bee Tee (ZBT)
But when I say the alphabet, it ends with "x, y, zed", not zee.