"Hazing" Incidnet
 

A little background information: the University of Toldeo has a small close knit greek community. The greek village houses seven sororities and seven fraternities.

On Sunday November 16, 2003 the university police were called to the greek village on an alleged hazing incident. The incident occured after a member of one fraternity have lavileared or given his letters to his girlfriend. After meeting on Sunday he was captured by his brothers and saran wrapped to a tree while they threw various food items at him. Members from an opposing fraternity saw the incident occured and notifed the police calling the event "hazing."

This is not an uncommon occurance within our greek system it is a tradtion. All fraternities except the reporting one participate in this ritual. Usually village residents come out and watch. The complete tradition includes capturing of the brother, having him change into gym shorts and providing him with goggles before the saran wrapping occurs. The girlfriend is also present during the event and according to tradition she must kiss him before she can cut him away from the tree. These little ceremonies never last more than a half hour and only occur during warm weather.

The university judicial officer ruled the incident to not be hazing because the brother was an active memeber for his fraternity and voluntarily particiapted. A secondary factor included was the fraternity reporting the incident had lost a hotly contested intermural sports event earlier in the day to the fraternity the called the police on.

My question is if similar rituals occur at other schools?? Do you belive this to be hazing? Why or why not?

Just looking for a little prespective, thanks in adavnce for anyones input!

Hazing? Not technically , I guess.

Immature/asking for trouble? YES.

We never had such a thing, but it seems all in good fun. I would definitely consider the source...if this is so common, why didn't the reporting fraternity ever speak up before?

Not sure why the reporting fraternity has never spoken up before. And it has happened many times so there have been oppertunities... And by reporting this that fraternity has become even more disliked by the greek community than they already were. Most other greeks feel like the reporting group crossed a line and is intentionally trying start something between themselves and the other fraternity. The imaginary battle lines have been drawn and beyond a few loyal supporters to the reporting group everyone else is on the other side.

Re: "Hazing" Incidnet
 

Let me get this straight. So someone willingly gets tied to a tree and you throw food at him. Like apples?

-Rudey

This happens in a lot of chapters in many schools.

On the face of it, it would appear to be hazing, although I think many schools overlook it due to voluntary participation.

Rudey's right, apples could hurt, but I suspect they throw soft stuff like buns or whatever.

What is the point of this tradition?

If it's not hazing, then I want to know what the point of this is.

Is it fun and humorous? How is that a tradition? Why not go watch a movie that's fun and humorous?

-Rudey
--And I doubt it's just buns.

We have a similar tradition at my school. A friend's school throws the guy into the fountain in front of the library. The point is just to rag on your brother for putting his girlfriend before his fraternity, which is my understanding of the point of lavaliering. Maybe not before, but on the same level. Either way...

ETA: At my school it's usually liquid foods, like ketchup, honey, syrup, etc. I don't think I've ever seen solids thrown at anyone.

yeah, it's seen as not putting the fraternity first by giving your letters to her, which she didn't earn. It goes with the old saying "Bros before hoes".
If that becomes hazing then certain people need to start finding out where their balls went. It's not done with malicious intent or to even teach a lesson, it's actually seen by most who have gone through it as a rite of passage.

It's done at lots of schools in different variations. The fraternity that called the police is just trying to start trouble because they lost that intermural event.
I know this because it happened to my fraternity several times in school. (False charges being brought up against us to the greek advisor, who knew better, after we had beat that fraternity in a certain event.)

This is what I see when I read that:

-The fraternity allows the brother to put his girlfriend before them in the form of a tradition.

-The fraternity once it allows for this tradition feels it needs another tradition to punish the brother for following the first tradition.

-Rudey

Letters you "earn".

"Rite of Passage" not "hazing"

"don't at lots of schools"

All red flags but I'm not judging.

I think maybe you should reconsider giving your brother the option to put "hoes before bros" because who's there to throw food at y'all for allowing your letters to be given to others?

-Rudey

It's not hazing. You don't have to lavalier your girlfriend to become a member of the fraternity. If you know the "traditional" consequences of doing such, then don't drop your letters on her.

It sounds like this guy knew what would happen and he accepted it.

Now, this MIGHT be a good time to codify the tradition and standardize what may and may not be thrown at the participating Brother. It seems like reasonable management of the risks....goggles and saran wrap. It COULD get out of control in the future and someone COULD get hurt, but not if they proactively manage the event for the future.

Sounds like "Double Dare" to me. That wasn't hazing.

Rudey, I'm really agreeing with you on this. I think the fountain tradition is kind of cute (sort of like dumping Gatorade on a coach after winning a big game) but throwing food and Saran Wrapping? That's just tacky.

Eh, simply put you are correct. But lavaliering and pinning have been going on for years and years and years all across the country. Now the "tradition" that follows, not necessarily. But I don't think these are rare fraternities that are "allowing the brother to put his girlfriend before them..."

But maybe lavaliering and pinning have different meanings as far as degrees of seriousness across different campuses, and on mine it was toward the serious end of spectrum.

If the consequence of telling everyone fraternity secrets meant getting attacked and beaten and you did this knowing the consequence, what would that mean? I mean you COULD really get hurt.

-Rudey