[Kansas City]

Originally Posted by msl2008

So what's the difference between this and a football coach yelling at you or a drill sargeant yelling at you. I think that for some, being hazed can be a great experience if done correctly. For others, not so much so. There's two ways to look at everything. Sometimes I wonder if hazing was legal, if there would be so many people against it. Or if no one died from it. Would we be having this discussion then?

The difference is the organizations and people involved in the activity. As I have stated earlier, sports teams and the military require a certain physical standard to participate and achieve the organizational goals while GLOs do not require the same physical standard. GLOs tend to support organizational goals that focus on things such as academic excellence, philanthropic good and personal improvement of its members. The military will reject a candidate with say, flat feet, due to the physical demands of the organization while a GLO could face legal trouble for rejecting a candidate based on a purely physical feature. I don't want to, nor mean to, get into what each chapter/organization looks for when recruiting as this is confidential information but you need to understand there is a huge difference between military or sports teams and a student life organization. Further when a coach or drill sergeant yells at a member it is a superior taking action against a subordinate, and not a brother taking action against another brother. If you want to create "brotherhood" you respect each other and live together as a united chapter (a democracy). If you want to run a business or invade a country, you may find it more useful to abide by a hierarchy of leadership (a dictatorship).