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In reading this thread, does this new policy state that after each bid is given out, the chapter will have 48 hrs to initiate the new member?
A question I have is was this something done to try and appease the university boards of trustees and insurance companies?
Years ago this was brought up in many fraternities, back in the 1990s many schools were trying to abolish pledging as they feared the pledge process was the sole root of hazing....
It didn't work then as they had planned.
The thing about making anyone the chapter likes, and "automatic" brother so to speak is that eventually there will be those that find ways around this....
Fraternities are akin to FreeMasonry in that now it seems that they will just follow how that organization works. You get a committee to check your background, then you go through the three steps to becoming a "brother". Although there is no "pledge process" within masonry, many lodges take the three months to go through each "phase" of membership if you will....(I too am a mason, so I'm trying to put this in laymens terms for those not familiar with how it works).
If this sort of thing happens you will see more groups adopt processes similar to other orgs who dropped "pledging" for a more elaborate ritualized society. New members may be called whatever the college or university wants to call them other than "pledge" but many will not likely be privy to "ALL" the secrets of the society until after a period of time passes or other "levels" of membership occur.
From an historical standpoint the logic of it makes sense in that in the beginnings of most orgs, they would just find people on campus that the chapter liked or members trying to establish a new chapter liked and then just initiate them as soon as possible to have them start to build great chapters, some failed, and many successed, and some switched affiliations.....but that was back in the days when you'd be talking about only a couple of people to deal with within chapters, now some chapters have hundreds of members and dozens of potential new members. To me it seems like rushing in 100 new guys (or gals if this ever happens to a sorority) will break up many chapters and cause too many divides within the brotherhoods....there won't be any time to get to know how the new members will fit in...they are forced to being "fit in" under this plan.
In the end, I guess there are interesting points on both sides of this issue....it'll be interesting to watch what happens.
BG
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