Is this really hazing??
 

A few of my brothers and I proposed making pledge handbooks mandatory. What I mean by this is that each pledge must interview 15 other pledges, 5 members, and 3 directors. If the pledge does not complete this book, they are automatically unable to join.

Also, I was told that scavenger hunts are hazing as well. How true is this?

Could anyone tell me where I might find out the answers to these questions. Thanks.


m. bates

According to most people it is, I think that kinda stuff is ridiculasly easy and that it is ludicris to consider them hazing

is there any proof of such actions being deemed hazing? or is it more heresay?

Scavenger hunts fall under hazing if only pledges are required to do them. Other than that, scavenger hunts often end up with people stealing items in order to win. Things have gotten out of hand.

For example, at my husband's fraternity, as a semi-joke one year, one item was "live nude girl." So one team went to a bar and paid a woman $50 to quickly strip at the house so they could get the 50 bonus points (most items were 5 or 10 points). I think that they discontinued the scavenger hunt after that, since they didn't want to end up in a, shall we say, compromising position.

As for pledge books, if it takes an hour to track down everyone for interviews and do the interviews, that's 23 hours worth of stuff that they have to do in addition to learning the fraternal history, STUDYING, eating, etc. Sometimes people are hard to get a hold of. My husband's fraternity used to do this (I don't think they do anymore), and it took a lot of time to track down some people. They had to get every member's interview.

Again, if it's something the entire fraternity does, that's one thing. But shouldn't your member be accepted because he's cool, passes the fraternal knowledge exam, has the grades, and wants to better himself, and not because he needs to take another 20 hours in six weeks to track people down to fill in their birthdays and majors?

Spend your 20 hours throwing some barbeques and game nights instead-- get to know each other because you want to. :)

Interviews
 

One of the biggest problems with interviews is NOT the actual interview itself. If you have even one member who has a slight hazing mindset, that member may try to make the new member "earn" the interview by doing something and THAT becomes hazing. It's a set up for the new member. Additionally, if one member doesn't have the most positive feelings for a particular new member, he/she could refuse to grant an interview or make themselves unavailable on purpose. Also, we always had one or two "invisible" members who we just never saw and couldn't reach if we wanted to.

I know the goal of interviews is usually innocent.. to get the new members to know the members better. Isn't this best accomplished by just hanging out together? Having icebreakers? Do you really get to know someone by asking them a list of set questions like "What's your major?" "What's your home town?", etc? Why not have a retreat where you play a game like "Find someone who was a Scout?" "Find someone who is from ____?". Or, have each member write down something "unique" about themselves and have a contest to see who can guess who belongs to which unique fact? Who knows, you might get to know your own brothers a little bit better too!

I try to analogize this to the first week on a new job. People generally welcome you, make a point to introduce themselves, invite you to lunch, show you the ropes, etc. They don't wait for you to come and introduce yourself around. We should be welcoming new members and help them get to know us, not making it a chore for them to get to know the members.

Dee

It's all well and good to say that interviews can be replaced by icebreakers and group events and such. The problem is that not everyone is comfortable in a huge group and if there are pledges or sisters who are on the shy side, it will be hard for them to get to know other people. Interviews provide you with a chance to get to know EVERY sister, regardless of whether she's campus queen or the quietest girl in the room - it impresses upon the pledge that EVERY MEMBER IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT.

If there are people being bitchy about giving interviews or during them, the pledge mom should be immediately notified and those people disciplined. Setting down ground rules (i.e. you have to schedule interviews, you can't make the pledge go to a weird location to get your interview, can't go more than 15 minutes) help keep the situation from getting uncomfortable.

I would like to take all the idiots who screwed up interviews for the rest of us and slam them against a wall. Sorry to be so vehement, but this is a subject I really feel strongly about, and I believe getting rid of something so productive for a small number of a-holes is one of if not THE WORST decisions the NPC groups have made.

I'm with 33girl on this one (we ASAs have to hang together). We had sisters use signatures to punish pledges that they didn't like, and, because we didn't allow hazing but the rules were not particularly stringent, sisters got away with it. It was "girly" and borderline - they didn't require the pledges to do pushups or drink alcohol - but they were evasive and rude. Our pledge trainer should have had the power to step in and say "in that case, you don't need their signature" She did that with a few off-campus sisters who were simply unavailable most of the time, but if someone were giving you a hard time verbally, too bad for you.

Having pleges get signatures in pairs, or having two or three sisters meet with two or three pledges at once tends to make people who are prone to play games behave themselves.

But I agree that - as long as the pledge mom can step in if anyone gets demanding - it's an idea that is really important.

It forces people who may not have hit it off at rush to talk, which is key to the health of the sisterhood. If things don't get smoothed over early on, they are just going to emerge as power plays during chapter business meetings, etc. And being forced to approach the girls who were quieter or more aloof frequently found you friends and interests in common that you might never have expected.

Re: Is this really hazing??
 

The intention of the interviews is to get to know the other members (don't understand why you have them interview 3x as many pledges as members. most groups want the pledges to mainly met the active members). Our National Org has the concept of 'meeting the brothers' as one of our National Pledgeing Standard. The issue of hazing MIGHT come up depending on how you handle it. Many chapters in my fraternity give their pledges worksheets on gathering information and meeting the Brothers. In my chapter is was (note 'was') a process of meeting the Brother, who would ask a simple question to earn their signature. Our intent (which is how it was always handled) was to ask simple questions like 'who is our Founder', 'what is our jewel', etc. We had to stop this when one potential pledge complained to our National Office because he thought he'd be asked questions like 'what is the third word in the second paragraph on page 13 of your pledge manul' or the like.

So, do interviews or requiring them to met the members is not hazing. How you handle it might be.

As to scavenger hunts. My org and others DO view it has hazing. Our Membership Policy & Risk Management Policy lists it as a hazing activity, so its out. Check with YOUR organizations policies to see if its banned. As noted, a scavenger hunt can be hazing depending on how its done, hence its banning.

Hope this helps. I really recommend you check your own organizations policies, as they may have defined what is ok and not ok.

If your GLO is a member of FIPG, then scavenger hunts are definitely prohibited - because of the liability issues.

As for signatures, I concur with much of what has alread been posted - they are hazing waiting to happen. I do have another questions regarding signatures - if they are meant to help the NM's get to know the initiated brothers/sisters, how are the initiated brothers/sisters supposed to get to know the same facts about the NM's? (This is important for rush as well as general brotherhood/sisterhood.) When you look at it this way, it becomes hazing. If it is something that the NM's are required to do that the initiated brothers/sisters are not, by definition it is hazing.

Your last comment is good. I've heard its stated as "never ask a pledge/NM to do something you woundn't ask a brother/sister to do". What you expect of your members, either stated as your active requirements or implied, should be echoed in your pledge requirements.

However, there is the *implied* requirement that initiated brothers/sisters should meet and get to know the pledges/nm. The process of interviews/signatures is a way of achieving that and creating some structure to the process. As I stated, in my Fraternity, getting to know the active, associate, and advisory members is one of our National Pledging Standards and having a pledge requirement to do so is acceptable. So for us, its not a implied requirements, but a stated one. But we leave it to each chapter to define this, within the confines our our NPS, Membership Policy, and Risk Management Policy. So, meeting members is NOT hazing. What might happen in that process COULD be hazing.

Never heard of FIPG. Heard of NIC, NPC, NPHC, and PFA, but never FIPG.

Hope this helps.

Nfuhlmer,

We did institute a requirement that the sisters also had to interview the pledges.

Signatures are something totally different than interviews.

FIPG is the Fraternal Insurance Purchasing Group. It is the largest provider of insurance to national fraternities and sororities. It's sort of an insurance cooperative, and it sets risk management policies for all of its member groups. On many campuses, FIPG becomes de facto risk management policy for all GLO's.

I don't see why, if you really want to use interviews, you couldn't incorporate them into your new member education under a controlled situation. Instead of doing icebreakers (which IMO are more embarassing than interviews and should be considered hazing! LOL), you could set up a situation where, after each meeting, or on a new member retreat, or whatnot, five of your new members and five actives each pair up and then they interview each other -- then every ten minutes they switch. If you did five girls at a time after each new member meeting, you could meet all the girls in most chapters (and I think that chapters that are much over 50 or 60 actives should definitely NOT require interviews!). If it was optional ("but highly encouraged"), I don't see how this could be construed as hazing anymore than icebreakers are. In a situation like this it really IS just an icebreaker.

Although if your GLO's policy forbid that, don't take my word on it!

sugar and spice,

that sounds like a great idea. And I definitely feel you on the icebreakers.