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Originally Posted by dreamofpeace
My school only has locals, and I've gotta say, I'm kind of surprised with some of the things people are objecting to here. Wearing pledge pins and addressing actives and stuff...I thought that was pretty standard.
For us, there's no physical hazing, or drinking yourself into a stupor or anything like that. In fact, our pledging is dry, even if you're of age. It's an automatic DP if you're caught drinking (or high or whatever), and we're very serious about enforcing it. But there are definately mind games going on--I found pledging to be pretty emotionally traumatic. The thing is, I can honestly say that everything we did during pledging served some purpose, and I feel like changing our new member education program to make it "nicer" would also make it worse.
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Anything that new members are required to do that actives are not required to do is hazing. We encourage them to wear their badges, but since initiated members aren't required, they aren't either. I'm not totally sure what addressing is, but assumed it's showing some sort of "respect" to initiated members. We view new members as members too, and therefore it wouldn't occur to us to have them address us differently.
In fact, requiring the new member period to be dry would also be hazing, since we do not require our initiated members to abstain from alcohol while they are members.
I wouldn't have joined an organization that hazed me in stupid ways. I personally don't see an issue with things that serve a purpose, but on the other hand, I do see why it's hard to draw a line and enforce it...it's safer to just put a blanket definition out there fore hazing and then ban it, and if that prevents harm to new members, fine. That and I choose to always abide by my organization's rules anyway, out of respect.
I DON'T understand requiring automatic submission to initiated members. I'm sorry, but seniority does NOT always mean the person is in fact the most mature, wise, or kind. I do understand required bonding events, provided they involve no harm to anyone involved.