Quote:
Originally posted by puruvian_skies
I am somewhat dumfounded by those members who are advocating 'innocent,' 'brotherhood/sisterhood building' hazing. I understand it happened to you and therefore you have entered into a virtuous cycle; however, stop for a moment and think.
As a potential hazer --- how does the fact that someone sticks around and allows you to haze them building unity? I do not would want someone who allwed their character and body to be humiliated or beaten in my organization. Think about it... it does not make any logical or ethical sense. Justice as fairness...
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I'm not so sure it's as simple as black and white/wrong and right. Keep in mind that most of our organizations didn't get serious about having or enforcing hazing policies until civil liability became an issue.
Many currently, and many before us used hazing as a means to bring a pledge class together.
My father's pledge class was hazed worse than I've ever heard anyone being hazed today -- there were broken bones and people getting pretty sick. They ended up kidnapping their pledge trainer, stripping him down to his tighty-whities, and leaving him out in the middle of BFE handcuffed to an oil rig. Despite all of that, he looks upon that period with a certain degree of fondness.
My experience was quite a bit different. I was a founding member of my chapter. One of the cornerstones on which our particular chapter was founded was that we wouldn't ever haze much for the same reasons that you have listed above. Although my experience was vastly different from my father's, both of us would tell you that we had a hell of a good time.
In the almost 40 years that passed between my colony experience and his pledging, a lot changed in the fraternal world. He marvels at how no one was actually killed while he was in school -- well that changed eventually.
The thing that confuses me about hazing is that there are all of these severe punishments for it while we almost turn a blind eye to alcohol abuse. What makes that even more amazing is that it seems that a great many of these hazing stories involve alcohol abuse. Accordingly, if there was one thing I could change about the fraternal landscape, it would be the way that we addressed alcohol.
What sets a generally positive hazing experience apart from a negative one seems to be the restraint shown by the members in making their pledges 'run the gauntlet.' There's a huge difference, for example between 'bows and toes' and that story today where the hazers stand accused of causing scarring with a rubber band while repeatedly punching the pledge in the hip until serious damage was done.
My take is that the current "no hazing ever" policies are a band-aid to the real problem. It seems likely to me that the current policies are forced on our organizaitons by our respective insurance companies. Since in the past, we've shown the lack of restraint needed to have effective pledging programs with hazing, we all need to gravitate to something where restraint isn't required. This is where we've seen the rise of national programming built to take the place of our more 'traditional' approaches to pledge training.