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Ok We need to seperate the legal definition of hazing, from the administrative definition, and the visceral or emotional reaction.
Legally a great many of the activities fall under a broad based legal definition of hazing. I am sure someone could cut and paste a statute.
The law is not completely blind though and there are issues of harm, risk and a test based on what a reasonable person might do under reasonable circumstances.
So if you have a benign scavenger hunt no one gets hurt and there is no built in risk to people participating nothing is likely to come up of it. Legally. And by built in Risk I am talking about Scavenger hunts that involve stealing or maybe getting autographs from hookers or somehing else that incurrs a risk.
Administratively (National GLO), just from being on this site and some personal experiences, I would say that the larger National sororities are stricter in terms of hazing definitions and more likely to come down hard on a chapter very quickly. Even for things that a National Fraternity might not blink an eye out. So beware.
Administratively (College) will also have another set of rules, but are primarily reactive, and won't be as likely to do something unless someone really complains. Then the reaction will usually be based on the climate of the Greek system, the severity of the incident, and the just who the Greek advisor is.
another Caveat is that sometimes laws and rules are passed and then used to make it easier to build a case. So lets say you do a buch of activities that don't "seem" like hazing emotionally, but fit the legal list, and then someone gets hurt during something like a scavenger hunt.
Now the police or whoever can go back and review all your past activities to build a case against you, you required memorization, the scavenger hunt, they wore your pin, new member t-shirts etc. And at this point even if these things were hypothetically voluntary, because someone was hurt they are going to be considered hazing activities due to implied peer pressure to ensure compliance.
Interestingly, you would have to have a certain percentage of the pledge class always opt out of something without consequences in order to lessen your liability.
Sorry to go on endlesly, but it seems a lot of people disagreeing but are coming from different legitimate viewpoints.
Some of the trust activities can be considered hazing but do build positive bonds . . I like rope courses myself.
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