Hey, Minnesota, I wasn't gossiping....its a fact. I live in Texas, go to UT, and know plenty of people at OU. I am pretty well informed and have visited there plenty of times. KTSnake didn't even go there.....so it really doesn't matter.

.....explain to me how talking about a shi**y chapter at a particular school "flushes away my intelligence." I am plenty "educated", but thanks though. I don't make blanket statements about places that I have no idea about.

I haven't been down to the OU chapter in a couple of years. They were a good bunch of guys. The house has a hell of a lot of history behind it (1, maybe 2 Heisman winners), and a hell of a lot of wealthy alums. They were definitely top tier until they were brought down by (amazingly) an incident which would have been averted had the brothers at the time been practicing a little risk management.

No offense taken though, if you want to judge on numbers alone, they could be better. I will tell you though -- the guys I know from that chapter are solid guys, and because of the alum support, they are all very well connected.

If nothing else, they serve as a reminder as to how it's very difficult to get to the top, and very easy to crash to the bottom. As I said though, they really have been clawing their way back up the ladder.

No, I agree with you. SAE had it happen to them too at OU. If I am not mistaken they had a little incident a while back that hurt them severely for a long time. Took them a few years to get back up there.

My cousin was an SAE up there back in the early 90's. It was a pretty good house then as far as I knew. Today, SAE is one of the top chapters at OU as far as I know.

Well, I know they had a hazing incident from what my friend who is an SAE there told me. It was bad. One of the worst I have heard of. I am not really sure when exactly it was.......but I know he said it was the main reason why they don't haze anymore....at all. Housecleans, member interviews, and pledge meetings is all they do.

Oh. I'm new to this forum. I see the search at the top now. My bad.:o
Well....I guess a new hazing discussion is open now:)

I'm old skool, in fact my line did the whole above ground Scroller marching, bald heads, shades, hoodies and Scroller gear. In fact I still have one of my Scroller white t-shirts. It's in bad shape but I still have it. It says Scroller in red letters. Most of it was done underground though. I loved marching above ground b/c of the crowd of people it drew, and it was something I always wanted to do. We never got caught because with the following line everything was done underground.

We pledged for 16 weeks. I'm still very close to my 5 Sands, and we still talk and see each other when we can. I was fortunate to have a close line. I do think the hard pledging forced us to be close.

I don't really agree with the hard core hazing, though it happend to me. I agree with the man of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. I think it should be light weight. I don't think someone should skate in either though.

Last but not least, though I don't think the body should be abused, what the six of us went through has really made me love my frat dearly. I've been greek for 15 years now and I appreciate it and love it like I just made it over yesterday. I think that if I didn't work for it, I probably wouldn't appreciate it as much as I do today. Kappa Alpha Psi til the day I die.

Abusing the body is wrong. I endured what I did, because I don't believe in quitting any goals I start.

I think everyone made some very valid points.

For the most part I have no idea what the above person said...but I'm sure it made sense to some.

Regardless, I'll confirm on the Sigma Nu thing, they are very good at Auburn.

Oh. You must be outside of the Divine 9. I guess it wouldn't make sense to you. What organization are you a member of?

So much for my concept of the "Southern Gentleman."

By the way, our son's freshman year suitemate at OU is a Sigma Nu. He's a great kid, a National Merit Scholar with a dual major in Engineering and Music Performance and nephew of some really good friends of ours from Denver.

So, here's an example of my particular "pair." I don't think you know crap about Sigma Nu at OU except what you may have heard second hand. In any event it's only your opinion, so under the circumstances, cram it and show a little class and respect for your fellow posters.

Oh, and hazing of any kind is still illegal.

Well my first clue would be engineering and music performance.

Isn't the legality the real thing at hand?

Many States are writing Laws concerning this and taking it out of the hands of All GLOs.

The reason these Laws are being written were because of stupidity of said GLOs.

While all Nationals have Laws, sometimes they are not followed and this is where it leads.

I was fortunite enough to see a STG tag on a car in front of my store and caught the guy.

He was an Alum from My School and We had a great talk and found out He works with one of My Brothers and know his Dad from The PD.

I am sure We will talk again!

That is what being a Greek Organizarion is all about.:D

And that would show the depth of your understanding of the two. There are definite ways that music and math compliment each other, and math is certainly a huge part of engineering. The logic of the two are very much alike. Music is based on math in many ways.

Our son talked about, and was accepted into, a dual degree program offered at Northwestern in engineering and music.

The two work very well together.

By the way, what is your insinuation about someone who is interested in both?

The trouble is that laws have been written which are not at all practical and in many cases, I think, Unconstitutional.

They are emotionally overreactive statutes embraced by politicians who- in some cases- have a personal hatred for Greek organizations similar to a dislike of private schools or country clubs.

Any attempt to discuss this will be countered with bringing forth the mother of a deceased fraternity member who will make an emotional appeal that has nothing to do with underlying law. It is like trotting out Christopher Reeve every time there is a debate about stem cel research- it is an attempt to trump reasoned argument with emotion.

The trouble in fraternities is alcohol abuse- not hazing. If you look through the "Wrongs of Passage" Appendix A, you will find that many- if not most- of the incidents reported are not hazing incidents, but alcohol-related tragedies that happen to non-Greeks all the time.

Actual enforcement of hazing law is very much in line with what reasonable people think. Advocates fought to get hazing laws because they felt schools and local law enforcement officers were not applying existing laws regarding alcohol use, battery, etc. properly in claimed hazing incidents.

However, they have now seen that hazing laws intended to cover the same crimes but in a tougher way are not being enforced either.

And so it comes to light that the issue is not that laws were never in place to address criminal behavior- but that fraternities are just like any other group of people who associate for any reason, that such association is voluntary and that individuals within such groups may do things like drive drunk or fall off buildings that do not necessarily mean the entire organization should be disbanded or have their rights to exist and operate taken away.

What needs to happen is that a good test case needs to be used to challenge the Constitutionality of hazing laws.

Meantime, since the laws are not enforced I am sure things will continue as they have in the past.

Unfortunately, because of the current statutes- it is not possible for people to come into open forums like this and have substantive discussions about good Risk Management Policy because everything we say will be in furtherance of something now designated to be a crime (that is a crime if you happen to belong to a fraternity and not one of many other types of organizations with membership requirements and a trial period of association.)

So the debate remains behind closed doors and we all have to pay more for insurance as things just go on as before.

The answer is to do your homework before taking a bid, learn your personal boundaries and stick to them and have a little faith in the brotherhood. We stood up as a pledge class when we needed to and got respect for it. And we would not have pledged in the first place if we thought we were joining a group that would not respect that kind of initiative.

Your mileage may vary based on what you want in a fraternity.

Until I see evidence of a dramatic rise in serious hazing incidents, I am not going to believe there is a problem to address outside of the fact of life that everything a person does entails risk and that this is not a perfect world.

And I should note I mean a dramatic rise in true hazing incidents. Fraternity members driving drunk or falling off buildings are not "hazing incidents"- thought they are regularly treated as such in the press.

Alcohol problems are a reflection of a chapter- not Greek Life. Chapters that party hard will attract new members who want the same. It is not a reflection of fraternities being inherently bad- it is a reflection that chapters attract new members who want the sort of life the chapter offers.

I made no comments about whether engineering and music compliment each other. I'm simply saying such majors are not usually the kinds of people who end up in top tier fraternities.