How to stop hazing in my fraternity?
 

I pledged my fraternity last semester, I was hazed, not as bad as the oldheads in my frat got it when they pledged, but we did many pushups, were yelled at, nothing I can't handle, but It really sucked at the time. I'm personally not convinced hazing is bad, I thought it brought me and my pledge brothers closer together, and after we got in we laughed about those times, and have great stories from it, but there are some problems with hazing.

Last semester, our frat got the "hazing hotline" called on us, and again it happened this semester. Last semester, when I was pledging, our fraternity decided to end the pledging process and considered us brothers, but this semester when it happened we decided to drop our pledges. Obviously we need to change our pledging process or we're going to continue to have problems with campus.

Problem is, we don't have an exact answer with 1) how to change the pledging process 2) what we're going to do with the pledges we had this semester that were dropped.


I'm not in a position of power in my frat, but the majority of us agree that we need to drastically change pledging so we stop getting in trouble, even though the majority believes our old pledging process was effective. If anyone has had personal experience with this, or even better could post a detailed outline of a pledging process that doesn't include violent hazing, I would appreciate it

TLDR; my frat's getting in trouble for hazing, any suggestions on how to change, and what to do with dropped pledges?

If your organization has a "hazing hotline," I'm going to guess that this is a national. You should have national guidelines that outline how men are to be pledged. Use that instead of relying on the chapter's remix of the pledge program.

The hazing hotline is ran by campus, but you were right in guessing it's national, I didn't think of that, but i'll bring it up; thanks.

Have you talked to anyone in a position of power in your fraternity? It may simply be a case that nobody has the guts to speak up about hazing. They can start the change.

If you're not sure how to replace the pledge program with a productive one, seek help from (inter)nationals. It's to their best interest to rescue a chapter instead of shutting it down, if at all possible.

Stop pledging the type of people who would call the hazing hotlime

Quit hazing. Bring it up in the next meeting and adopt a strict no hazing pledge period with penalties for such activities. You may lose some brothers but you are better off without them.

Please note that there is always a degree of incrementalism with hazing that slips in and eventually someone will cross the line and a pledge gets hurt. You will be shut down and may open yourselves up to a huge lawsuit or in a worse case scenario jail time if you continue. Your National should reorganize your chapter at the very least.

I shake my "old" head in disbelief. :confused:

For the record, although these are collegiates in this instance, age doesn't imply immunity from hazing issues. Collegiate members across GLOs have always gotten their pledging and hazing ideas from the older members.

And (for GLOs that have alumnae/graduate/alumni chapters) there are much much much older members who haze at the graduate level.

Also, since people tend to respond to this topic with "how can you all do this" as though it's all common sense at this point, the difficulty with hazing has been discussed in GC threads. Some people have no issue with some of the physical aspects; and some people have no issue with the mental/emotional aspects. Even the OP said it's nothing he "can't handle." That doesn't make it any less illegal and against GLO and university policies, but it helps to explain why people don't come forward; and why some chapters risk their charters to continue it. A hazing hotline is a great thing but that would be largely underused at most schools and for most GLOs that have anti-hazing contact info that prospective members have access to.

In terms of getting the chapter to agree to stop hazing, it usually just takes one person to speak up to find that most of the chapter agrees with him. A lot of people feel that they're the only ones uncomfortable with hazing because one else speaks up about it, and it is usually not the case.

For a new pledge program look to what your national HQ says you should be doing - they give you those resources for a reason. Personally, I feel that the most successful pledge programs prepare the new members to be successful, contributing members of the chapter. This means reading officer/chapter operations manuals, learning about leadership styles (Myers-Briggs for example, but there are many similar assessments), managing conflict and change, etc. If a new member is fully capable of taking a committee chair or minor chapter office upon initiation you have a successful program that doesn't need to include hazing to make up for a lack of content.

Again, go to the resources your HQ provides.

In my experience, this is not the case.

OP, please speak to the president of your chapter and seek help from alumni advisors, and nationals if you need to. It's a lot of work to re-vamp a pledge program to disclude hazing, and if your experience is anything like mine, people will hate you for it. I'd also suggest finding some like-minded brothers prior to going to the president (strength in numbers, and at least you'll have someone to talk to when the rest of your chapter turns their back on you).

I would not suggest going to nationals directly without taking the chapter advisor route first.

Also, there's not much you can do about the pledges that dropped. Try to do better next time.

What agzg said--if you're going to do this observe the chain of command as much as possible. Start with the President/executive body. If you don't get the change you want there, go to the advisor. If the advisor does nothing, go to your HQ. Depending on your organization, there might even be an intermediate step between your advisor and your HQ.

If you go straight to your HQ, there's a very good chance that if they believe you, they'll come and shutter your chapter, hopefully to recolonize it in 3-4 years with all of the current members banned from involvement. That seems to be the standard approach to these sorts of things with many groups.

Yeah, but you forget that their roommates, parents, girlfriends, etc. can call without their knowledge. There is no shame in reporting people who are abusing you or others. I know of multiple instances when the hotline was called by people who were not in the organization in question.

If they have been reported twice in such a short period of time and the results affected their pledge classes, wouldn't their national organization be well aware that there are hazing issues in this chapter? Why aren't they already stepping in to help change the culture? I find it hard to believe that in this anti-hazing climate that a school that has gone so far as to set up a hotline would not have involved the national organization at this point.

I'm curious as to why you dropped your pledges. Wouldn't that just make the situation even worse? I can see these pledges getting royally pissed off they were put through crap and not getting initiated and now seeking retribution.

Whichever course of action your chapter chooses, it needs to be done fast. Seconding what Barbie said, if your chapter starts acting proactive ASAP rather before your national organization comes in and starts making heads roll, you will have a much better chance of surviving.

I wouldn't say that (that this is always the case, hence the bolding). There are times when collegians get hazing ideas from blabby members of other GLOs or stuff they did in HS, even if their GLO has been completely hazing-free up till that time. It's a misdirected attempt to fit in and meet what they think are social norms. This often happens when a large group pledges all at once and somewhat overwhelms the current members. That's why if this sort of thing happens to a chapter your HQ should be keeping a close eye on it - it can be a blessing to a struggling chapter but it can also be potentially hazardous.

My statement applies across GLOs (cultures). Even if XYZ got their ideas from ABC; and ABC got their ideas from DEF,** 99.9% of the time the general ideas originally came from somewhere and weren't just invented by the college students. People will say "'they' used to do this back when...I was told...." That also applies to alumnae/alumni and older members from other chapters who share ideas.

**Across GLOs (cultures), it is more common for XYZ to get ideas from other chapters of XYZ than for XYZ to get ideas from ABC.

I keep saying "across GLOs (cultures)" because grandiose and general statements are always made on GC that exclude what BGLO, LGLO, MCGLO, and AGLOs do. :) I'm making a grandiose and general statement that doesn't include every instance but often applies across councils and conferences in which there is a culture of sharing information from old to young members.