New Sister with a Chapter Problem
 

Hi ya'll. I have a problem and I'm a little lost about what to do about it. I was recently initiated into my GLO (NPC) and wanted to depledge. We were hazed and I hated it, but stuck it out because my Big and the other sisters I was close to said that once I got in, I could help to change it. Well, my new member class and I agreed that we would stick it out because we would be able to change it once we got in. Now that we're in, no one wants to listen to us and make changes. My new member class doesn't want to do to other girls what was done to us and I don't know what to do. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I would assume that you HQ has a no tolerance policy for hazing? Perhaps you should contact them.

We had talked about that... but we don't know who to contact at our HQ and while we were pledging, we were told that if we reported it, no one would talk to us and that HQ might not even believe us. Also, we don't want the chapter to be closed down since we just got initiated, but we really want it all to stop. I guess we just don't know what to do and were hoping someone had been in this situation before. :o

You should be able to contact anyone at your HQ about it, if hazing is going on in your chapter and all of your pledge sisters can vouch that it happened, HQ is going to believe you and make an investigation. I know you don't want to have your chapter close but this is serious and think of all of the other future new members that may have to go through this.

You can also contact the greek life advisor on your campus. Maybe your pledge class can go in together to talk to him/her. Part of their job is to know how to handle and take care of these situations.


We had a sorority that got caught for hazing and while they didnt close the chapter they offered alumnae status (if they didnt accept alumnae status then they were just kicked out of the sorority) to the sisters that hazed, which was essentially the whole chapter except for the last pledge class.

My guess, although I fortunately have no experience in this area, is that you could talk to the advisors of your chapter as well.

No one who seriously has the best interest of the sorority in mind is going to support hazing or insist you haze.

You could also PM the mod of your sorority's forum or another "confirmed" member of your sorority here on GC, and they could probably point you to the right person at HQ.

My first reaction is to tell you to find your national website and search for contact information and inform headquarters. Then to inform your Greek advisor.

However IF you can't do that because you're too afraid of your chapter closing...honestly, I can understand that. That's a very, very hard decision. Here's the thing. If your ENTIRE pledge class will vow to REFUSE to participate in hazing, you can change it. It has to be EVERYONE in participation. But if they're willing to do it and take the crap from the older girls...because they will give you crap, understand that...for the greater good then maybe you truly can change things. They cannot kick out an entire pledge class. I'd love to see them explain to their national that they dropped their whole pledge class because they refused to haze.

Try to find sympathetic older sisters, too. Chances are someone feels like you do. When this next pledge class comes in, treat them like you should've been treated. They'll be loyal to you and not the mean older girls. And those girls will be gone soon enough. Four years from now you'll run the chapter.

Most organizations require you to report hazing or suffer punishment along with the perpetrators. Find out what your organization's position on this is. Correct protocol is to report it. But if y'all can't, I would do the above. Though by all means if you choose not to report it and you can't force change, please, please report it. I know it would be so painful for your chapter to close, but hazing is NOT RIGHT.

Seems simple to me, when you take a little, don't haze her. And if the rest of your pledge class agrees to do the same, hazing will eventually die out and leave with each graduating class of seniors. Just don't take part in it as a group and you will definitely make a statement.

Though someone higher up should definitely be told. I understand your fear for telling your HQ since chapters have been closed for hazing in the past. The senior sisters need to understand this could happen to them and that if an entire pledge class went to HQ, they would be believed and they need to be afraid. If they care at all about their sorority they should start doing the right thing and stop hazing before they're shut down. If it takes threatening them with this, so be it. What they did was wrong and it certainly needs to stop. NPC orgs don't play, if a girl complains that she was hazed, it WILL be investigated. NPC as a whole as a zero tolerance policy on hazing and these sisters should be very afraid of the consequences of their actions.

In addition to all the other great advice you've been given, could you not just tell the new members that, if they feel like they're being hazed, just get out of the situation? Or go directly to one of the members of your pledge class?

Thats kind of tough...I see your reasons for not wanting to report it to HQ...but honestly I think it needs to be done in order to ensure that hazing NEVER occurs in your chapter again. However, I think it really needs to be reported to someone.

When were you initiated? If it was last fall and you don't have a pledge class now, well, there's really nothing you can do about it right at this point. You can't stop something that isn't occurring.

Like SthrnZeta said...when you take a little, don't haze her, and don't allow her to be hazed by other sisters.

Actions speak louder than words. Passing a lot of bylaws and such isn't going to help - being a good sister will.

Don't go to nationals... that would destroy your entire chapter. Stand up for the pledges when its happening or refuse to be present at any such events- threatening a call to nationals if you receive punishment for your refusal to participate. Its hard to change tradition though, as you've discovered.

I think that your new member class should refuse to come to recruitment or all request inactive status (if that's a possibility in your organization) if your sorority doesn't change its practices. Having a ton of girls not pay dues or show up at recruitment will have a bigger impact than saying that you don't like hazing.

How big is your pledge class compared to the rest of the chapter? Can you create a voting bloc to get like-minded people elected to New Member Educator/Pledge Mom, etc.?
I can totally understand why you don't want to contact your HQ. I've experienced a chapter that asked HQ for help only to have them come down on us after an "investigation" (but ours wasn't for hazing).
If you, your pledge class, and other like-minded members can create a buffer between the new members and the people who want to haze, then it will be much harder for the hazers.

But then if they don't show up at rush, or all go inactive, word will get around campus that something's seriously wrong and that will most likely kill the chapter anyway. The OP wants to prevent her chapter from going down the tubes.

Can I ask what constituted the hazing, or do you feel like that specificity would give away your location?

The reason that I ask is because I am amazed what some people consider hazing. My home chapter no longer give tests over fraternity history during pledgeship because it might be considered hazing!! oh please. I also read another post on GC that said some consider not letting pledges wear letters is hazing.

I assume from your comments the incidents were much more significant than this. To that I would ask, did they endanger life or health (ie forced alcohol consumption), were they truly degrading or just silly?

If the answer if "life endangerment", I would say tell someone--tell everyone!!--in authority right now. As an alum and a mom, I don't care NEARLY as much about my GLO as I do my daughter's (or any NM's) safety!! Period.

If the experience was degrading, I would be more apt to work within the chapter as others have suggested. Obviously it needs to be dealt with (and I'm proud of you for wanting to be the change agent), but my response might be different.

I can honestly say nothing in my pledgeship came close to hazing. It saddens me that many of the fun and meaningful experiences I had as a pledge 20+ years ago have been banned in the campaign for "no hazing", but true hazing still exists. *sigh*

Back up here, there are initiated sisters who also don't agree with what's going on...? Seems to me you should have more than enough people to challenge this. How big was your pledge class in relation to the chapter size? And what sorts of hazing happened, if you don't mind sharing? (Co-sign the post above).

According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education not too long ago, several sororities and fraternities have set up a national hotline to report hazing:

http://chronicle.com/news/article/29...and-sororities

Excerpts:
Anti-Hazing Hotline Is Set Up by 21 Fraternities and Sororities
Twenty-one fraternity and sorority organizations have teamed up to create an anti-hazing hotline that anyone can use to report incidents of hazing anonymously. The toll-free number — (888) NOT-HAZE, or (888) 668-4293 — will connect callers with a voice-mail service at the office of Manley Burke, a law firm in Cincinnati that publishes Fraternal Law, a newsletter that chronicles legal issues involving fraternities, sororities, and higher education.
Posted on Wednesday August 29, 2007 . . . .

Comments
The 21 Greek organizations responsible for this initiative include:

Fraternities
Alpha Epsilon Pi
Alpha Sigma Phi
Delta Chi
Delta Sigma Phi
Delta Tau Delta
Delta Upsilon
Kappa Alpha Order
Lambda Chi Alpha
Phi Gamma Delta
Phi Kappa Psi
Sigma Pi

Sororities
Alpha Chi Omega
Alpha Delta Pi
Alpha Epsilon Phi
Alpha Phi
Alpha Sigma Tau
Chi Omega
Gamma Phi Beta
Kappa Kappa Gamma
Sigma Sigma Sigma
Zeta Tau Alpha

As a volunteer that works with collegians in our hierarchy, I would say go to someone from your headquarters instead of your Greek Advisor. I think things like this should be handled internally. From reading things on GC, it seems like the university is very quick to close a chapter whereas an international/national org has some investment in wanting to keep chapters open if at all possible, but just changing the behaviors of those chapters (especially if there have been no injuries/deaths). They would be more likely to "clean house" and rid the chapter of those who refuse to follow a "no hazing" policy. And, usually, when something like this happens, it is a small (but powerful/intimidating/bossy) group who are leading it. Almost always, there are more women against it than for it, but they are afraid to say anything. Once a Greek Advisor has the info though, anything goes... university can pull recognition, it can end up in the campus newspaper, etc.

Don't go to the anti-hazing hotline.

Seriously, deal it yourself, ply power around. It's not hard to change the chapter unless it's more than 200 people.

Honestly, if you read GC, the stories of female hazing resulting in a chapter pull initiated by the university are very very few and far between. The university derecognizes the group after the national pulls the charter. The males, though - that's another story.

Once again, without knowing the kind of hazing the OP's talking about, it's very hard to make a judgement call. They beat them till they bled? Screw HQ, screw the GA, call the police. They asked them to interview a kind of gross fraternity guy? Unpleasant, yes, but is it really worth risking your charter for?

As recent initiates, they don't know what kind of history and relationship this chapter has with their HQ. If it's a small chapter, at a school with weak Greek life, without a lot of prominent alums - i.e. not a big moneymaker - rather than clean house and send volunteers to revitalize it, they're just as likely to pull the charter and be done with it.

Hi all - Thank you very much for all your advice! In regards to me, I was initiated last fall in our new member class of 12. Our chapter is between 50 and 60 women including the women who initiated last semester. We just had informal recruitment and now have 8 new women pledging.

My chapter is apparently not the typical chapter - we have no alumnae advisor and our only advisor on the local level is our Greek Advisor, who believe it or not is not very pro-Greek. I spoke with my Big and several other sisters who have spoken up against hazing in the past. It didn't go well for them and all that happened was that everyone got really angry and began to fight. We think that one of the reasons for that is that no one really proposed any concrete solutions for how to make all the changes while at the same time protecting chapter traditions. There is no life-threatening hazing going on (at least not unless something goes horribly wrong) - just things that are outside of our national new member program and that are not fun - actually that just plain suck for those forced to do them. (I'd rather not publicly elaborate, if that's okay.)

My new member class and I are going to bring this up at our next chapter meeting. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to present it so that it doesn't seem like we're trying to take over and so that the older sisters might be more receptive to our ideas? We want to take a stand, but also don't want to make threats that we can't/won't follow through with.

The 12 of you stand up in front of chapter and say, "Hey, there, sisters, listen: we went through the pledge process the way you wanted us to and frankly, we thought it sucked and didn't like it [or insert specific examples here] and don't want it to continue with this great new class of 8 girls or any classes in the future. We know it was done to you and you felt like you should do it to us, but we want you to know that it stops with our class. We are very proud of our letters and this chapter, but these are not traditions we're proud of or that we want to be associated with. So we will not be perpetuating these things on this new class nor will we support you in doing so. In fact, we hope to create lots of great new traditions for the pledge period and [are having a committee meeting/are planning to go to the next committee meeting] and look forward to helping these women have a phenomenal new pledge experience with our chapter. We hope as many sisters as possible will attend this meeting/will support building more sisterly pledge practices and truly live within the ideals of our founders [or insert something more touchy from your ritual or purpose here]. Thanks and hope to see you at the meeting on [day] at [time]!"

Then file back to your seats. Strength in numbers. Strength in purpose. Strength in character. Stand up to the bullies, it's what they hate the most. Treat the pledges the way you wish you'd been treated and let them know they shouldn't be made to feel "less than" by anyone that purports to call them "sister".

I agree with what nittanyalum said. In addition, get the support of your Big and the other sisters who have spoken up against it before. The more of you, the better. Also, you can see if there is a way to preserve some of the tradition without the hazing. An example from years ago: One sorority did a ceremony where they each dropped a rose petal into a river. All of the members had done this. The problem? They did it in the middle of the night, rain or snow, and transported the new members while they were blindfolded. The solution? Do the ceremony, but tell the new members where they are going and do it during the daytime during good weather and don't blindfold them. They were able to turn a hazing tradition into a pretty ceremony that everybody treasured.

This is the key thing with hazing, members think it really is "just harmless fun" until something goes wrong and then your chapter gets into REAL trouble.

You have to be firm with this and ALL of you who feel that way need to stand up against it. Any animosity you feel from the older girls is nothing compared to what will happen if something does go wrong with one o the hazing events, or your HQ discovers that there's hazing going on.

Good luck to you.

Well-said and very good advice. Best of luck to the OP and I look forward to hearing how it goes...

Great advice above.

I would add that you do have some strength in numbers already. With the 12 in your class, plus the 8 new members this semester, by next fall there will be 20 of you. With 50-60 currently in the house, once you factor in graduating seniors, the 20 of you should easily be half of the actives by next semester.

So, definitely take the above advice, but most of all do not get discouraged if some of the current seniors put up resistance. They won't be around much longer, and the complete change that you want to see may take more than one semester. But stick together... it can happen, and by the fall pledge calss things will be even easier numbers-wise.

plus the op said that her big sister and some others were also against the hazing. nittanylion's advice and agdee's was really good and i hope that you will give that a try. in addition, your new members can show they have backbones by not allowing themselves to be hazed.as nancy reagan says,"just say no!" if all else fails, talk to someone at your headquarters. this needs to stop-good for you and your friends for realizing this!

You and those sisters who agree with you need to stand up for what you believe in. You may be outnumbered but from what you said, you aren't alone. You may even be surprised by how many older members feel the same way yet were too intimidated to stand up against the wrongdoers. It sounds like you have tried to reason with people and that hasn't worked.

Now is the time for you to make some tough decisions. What is more important to you? Standing up for what you believe in or not rocking the boat and being unpopular with the older sisters? I hope you decide to stand strong, but that choice is up to you. I hope you will show your entire Chapter that you are a leader who will stand firm and not back down.

Maybe it's time to scare folks with some reality. I suggest you do your research first. Go to your Chapter business meeting armed with a copy of your I/natl's policy against hazing. We all have one. Check out your University policies as well. Tell your sisters what they have been doing is wrong and against policy. It threatens your standing as members of your GLO and as a whole Chapter with both your org and your University.

Something else many people don't think about even with so-called "minor" hazing. Hazing of any sort leaves all of you vulnerable to potential legal liability if someone decides to sue. All it takes is one person to file a complaint a lawyer. Since this is in direct violation of your I/natl policies, NPC and the University, no one will come to your defense. You could lose face large $$$ judgements against you as individuals. Anyone think moms and dads would be willing or even able to pay a multi-million dollar settlement due to their daughters' actions? Think they'd appreciate that?

If you can't get them to change then you have one of three choices.

1) Resign your membership. The thing is that won't change anything. The hazing will continue and you will be heartbroken. The hazers will have won and will continue with business as usual.

2) Normally I would suggest you contact your alum advisor first, but you said you don't have one. IMHO that probably explains this has gone on for so long. Anyways, you need to be willing to contact your I/natl. I know this is scary but believe me no I/natl wants one of their Chapters to haze. They will launch an investigation and what happens next will be determined by their findings. Every GLO and every situation are different so it's impossible to predict the outcome. The best case scenario would be that individuals would be held accountable for their actions, not the Chapter as a whole.

3) Last, you could do nothing or worse go along with the hazing. I hope you are strong enough not to choose this option.

I wish you strength in your convictions so that you will be able to persuade your sisters to do what's right.

Completely not true. It can be difficult to change ingrained practices no matter the chapter size. But, it is not impossible.


IMHO, the bolded is going to be very difficult. Finding a middle ground that incorporates negative traditions will be extremely hard. The pro-hazing sisters may see any change as watering down "their" pledge program and your national office will see any shades of hazing on top of the new member program as unnacceptable.

Co-sign. My best wishes on this. This is not an easy road you're on, but it is so worth it.

I don't really have any first-hand experience or knowledge to share in this area but I can understand your reasoning in being reluctant to report it to your national board. You, however are limited in your options if you really want to get this situation resolved. I would suggest either taking matters into your own hands and handling the situation amongst your chapter sisters or report to your national board.

Thank you to all who provided encouragement and advice! We are going to be working very hard in the coming weeks to get all of this straightened out and make some major changes to our New Member programs. I love the idea of using our chapter traditions to create sisterhood activities - achieving the same outcomes, but in a way that is not hazing and I hope that we can be create to make some of those work for us. Thanks again for all the help and advice I've gotten! :)

Hi everyone, I am new, Some friends of mine and myself have started a Service Sorority ( Nu Alpha Sigma Service Sorority Inc. Alpha Chapter)
:D

When does your chapter do elections? Have you, anyone in your pledge class, or a like-minded older sister thought about running for New Member Educator (NME, or whatever your chapter calls it)? If you have someone who is anti-hazing in that position, things can change pretty quickly and easily.

The NME is in charge of planning the content of the meetings and any other activities geared-towards new members, so if there isn't someone planning hazing activities, hazing will be reduced to the individual level. The NME can also give accurate information about hazing, such as what to do if they think they are being hazed (i.e. don't participate in the activity, question the authority of the person who is making them do whatever, tell the NME, call an anti-hazing hotline if one exists at your school, etc.)

The older sisters, by telling your NM class that your HQ wouldn't believe you if you claimed you were being hazed, were manipulating you. Your HQ would most certainly believe a new member who said she was being hazed! With that said, I think you should try to work out the issue internally before calling in your HQ.

1. I like the idea of talking about it at chapter meeting.
2. Definitely treat your spring class how you think all new members should be treated. Tell them you were hazed, how it made you feel. This will likely gain support for your anti-hazing movement in the chapter. If there are hazing activities planned, don't take part in them. Encourage other sisters to do the same.
3. Try to elect an NME who wants to get rid of hazing.
4. Call the NME of other chapters of your sorority (such as one that won an award for their NM program) for suggestions on how to improve your chapter's NM program. They should be able to offer suggestions constructive activities to allow new members to bond with each other and with other sisters in the chapter. You wouldn't necessarily have to tell them (and therefore your HQ) that your chapter used to haze, you can just say that your NM program needs work.
5. If the majority of your chapter is still very resistant to getting rid of hazing, tell them that you're going to call your HQ about it. I don't think that your NM class would get in trouble for "letting" them haze you because they manipulated you into thinking that there was no choice (ie. that HQ wouldn't believe you).

There is a major liability issue at hand here if this does not get reported. As the OP said, there has been nothing life threatening UNLESS SOMETHING GOES TERRIBLY WRONG. Don't wait for something to go wrong. The fact that there is hazing going on puts not only the chapter at risk of liability, but also the members. There are situations where the hazers ended up doing jail time. Is that worth ignoring the situation? No one plans for something to go terribly wrong, but these things do and have happened. The hazing needs to stop NOW. National MUST be made aware of the situation. If it is taken care of internally, it is possible for national to keep the chapter open while taking care of the situation. If they are not made aware of the situation and something does go wrong, not only will your school shut you down, National will back them up and you can be sure that there will be something in the media which will hurt the entire organization. The hazing may only involve one chapter of less than 100 people, but it can hurt an entire organization with thousands of thousands of proud members.

DAFFYKD

This could be your chapter . . .
 

http://greekchat.com/gcforums/showthread.php?t=92965


Don't let this happen to you!

:confused:

Preciousjeni: I-G-N-O-R-E.