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Generalizations
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"Lock-ins" or retreats are NOT hazing. The entire chapter (sisters and pledges) participates in them as a bonding activity. Everyone knows about it far ahead of time and no one is ever forced to miss work or class to attend it.
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I'm sure that these statements are true at your chapter, which I'm glad to hear because what you're describing sounds like fun. But that doesn't mean that they are true in every case. In this case, they were not true.
I'd also like to point out that you don't necessarily need to "force" people to get them to do something they really don't want to do. When you're 17, and a group of older women you look up to, and who you desperately want to please and impress so that they will accept you, tell you to do something unpleasant, and you are with a group of fifty peers who are all doing it, chances are you're going to end up doing it too, even if no one holds a gun to your head. And if the alternative is to do it or get kicked out of the group, well, saying no in that context takes an incredible amount of strength and bravery that not every 17-year-old can muster.
Hopefully the original poster is going to a school with chapters like yours where she will be welcomed in a warm and sisterly way. I just think that she should know that there are chapters (and individual big sisters) out there who don't have the same ideas about how to build a sisterhood, and it might be worth thinking about how she's going to handle the situation if it comes up.
-- IvySpice
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