[EE-BO]

Tough call here.

Going to college and being independent was the most awesome feeling in my life. That is until I pledged my fraternity. I still care deeply for it, but back then it was perhaps the most important thing to me as a pledge and new active.

With age, even during college, it took its proper place in my life- but I expect for most of us, the pledge period and a bit beyond was a time when fraternity had a value and importance that will rarely happen again in a person's lifetime.

So I do not see it as a matter of why this young man did not resist peer pressure or receive better parenting. If he was drinking in a bar with friends and died- sure, I could buy that.

But this was something different. The purpose of a pledge period and any hazing- and by hazing I do not mean the legal definition which includes criminal activity but also the more common acts which are not strictly illegal but still beyond voluntary- is the same as it in in any ritual in life.

When you start a new job, you get hazed. When I started in public accounting, I got "hazed" a bit. And I passed it on good too. I had an intern call a senior manager at home at 11 PM to get a box of tickmarks Fed-Exed over the next day (a tickmark, for you non-accountants, is just a symbol written next to a number to indicate it was traced to another document, verified etc. There is no such thing as a box of tickmarks.)

The hazing process in all walks of life is, I think, a simple human reaction. It is having a bit of fun, but at the same time encouraging the trust of a newcomer. You have some fun with them, and in the process that person becomes part of the group. It is a basic element of human interaction.

However, the great responsibility lies with the group to ensure that the newcomer is not killed or seriously injured. This is supposed to be fun and games with a real goal.

Assuming the news reports are accurate, this was well beyond what I would consider acceptable.

And while that young man may have been an "adult", it is kind of hard to expect him to act like an adult when he was surrounded by a LOT of other people of similar age who were not acting in any way like adults.

I absolutely deplore hazing incidents involving forced alcohol intake. There is no excuse for it- ever. And in all my experience and observation with hazing incidents, alleged rapes at parties, deaths and other serious accidents- alcohol is the overwhelming common thread in many cases.

Young men and women drinking to excess voluntarily is a fact of life 50 years ago, now and forever- both in and out of fraternities.

But forced drinking is another thing entirely. And while this lawsuit may seem a bit extreme and illogical to some, how logical is it for a young man to be isolated and pushed/forced to drink (we will never know the answer to that) and then left to die when he was obviously in trouble?

While the men charged probably did not fully think out their actions in advance- "not thinking" has never been a valid defense in court for anything to my knowledge.