So much this. Initiation shouldn't be a participation trophy. Nor should it require degradation, illegal activities and humiliation. I don't think the space between those two ideas is a small space.

AMEN!!

Every single activity in the pledge program I completed had a reason behind it, whether it was getting to know the sisters, learning to work as a team, or familiarizing ourselves with the Greek community. And we had a blast doing it! For many chapters, when the activities you so joyfully engaged in are labeled as "hazing" and you on the same level as groups who cause their pledges real physical and mental harm, it's in for a buck, in for a quarter.

It becomes a small space when people turn something that's seemingly innocent into something illegal.

I participated in a scavenger hunt when I was pledging. We simply had to follow clues and find sisters around campus to answer questions about our sorority's history. It was fun. Then there was another chapter who packed way too many people into a car and drove around town stealing street signs and lawn ornaments.

Unfortunately, sometimes when you give someone an inch they take a mile. However, I do believe there could have been less drastic measures taken to ensure that illegal actions be avoided. A more gradual approach may have landed us on a happy medium.

The rationale of "we need to get rid of x everywhere because one chapter used it to haze" is the same aas the media who say that because a fraction of chapters have hazed, the Greek system needs to be scuttled entirely. Our national HQs have a fit about that, but they're doing the same thing.

Getting kinda nostalgic here, but thinking back, there was not one thing I recall doing as a pledge that was NOT hazing. Even memorization of the creed, the founders names and the Greek alphabet were in some way turned into hazing activity. And pledge books? Don't get me started on what we did to them - hint, at the end of pledging all books were gathered up by the pledge trainer and burned. Our (and I would guess most fraternity) scavenger hunts were far from innocent affairs.

Certainly agree that there is a blurred line between innocent fun and people dying, but I would never trust a 20 year-old's judgment on this.

Edit: What I mean is I would not trust a 20 year-old's judgment to decide on what is innocent fun and what is hazing.

A good arbiter is "would you do this in front of your grandma? If not, it's hazing."

This however goes into Guys and Girls Are Different and I'd never presume to tell males of any age how to run their organizations.

I like this comment and, under ideal conditions, it would be a pretty good standard for mature students to follow. But in my experience, 90 percent of the type of pledge hazing I mention in my prior post occurred out in the open. We hazed (and were hazed) everywhere -- on campus, in restaurants, on the streets and highways, in the dorms, in meal halls, and in front of professors -- we were never shy about it, rarely discrete and, except during scavenger hunt, were not concerned about any potential sanction from the state university I attended, which was a long time ago. (We did have explicit, detailed and strict chapter rules about when someone could be hazed and when they were off limits.) I would dare say that, at that time, we would not have been shy about a lot of the hazing even in front of grandma either - but the raunchier aspects of it would have been toned down a bit. We were careless because, at that time, no one at the university seemed to care about hazing - though it was likely still illegal. Times have certainly changed.

Edited To add: I believe that this type of experience is why many fraternity alumni have difficulty separating hazing from the modern pledging (or new member) concepts. They cannot conceptualize their fraternity (and fraternity experience) without the rites of passage (hazing) they experienced.