I am a fraternity alum from up north and want to offer my support for the women in XO - whether the allegations are true or not.
My now wife is a SHSU alum and she had many friends pledging XO whom I knew. My observations of the XO pledge friends (who were pledges when I first met them) is this, they were doing normal pledge type activities. For example, they dressed up one particular day, they hung out together and had dinner together and bitched about their sisters.
When I pledged, our National changed the name of "Hell Weekend" to "Pinnacle Weekend" to symbolize the end of the journey and reaching the pinnacle, ie ultimate experience. I was rudely awakened during my Pinnacle Weekend when we assembled in the house basement surrounded by brothers and alumni. We were hazed - no doubt about it. It certainly was not the "ultimate experience". Our pledge class decided to ban together and due away with the hazing. 2 years later, most of the brothers who hazed our pledge class had either dropped out, graduated or been kicked out of the fraternity. A pledge bro was President and almost all of us held key officer positions. We did away with the hazing and incorporated new rituals (on the local level) to coincide with pledge education and our Fraternities FOUNDING PRINCIPALS.
My experience with greek organizations is this, almost every chapter was a local chapter at some point. Each chapter has their own local and national history. With these 2 histories comes local rituals and the national ritual.
2 years after graduating (I was President my senior year) I received a horrific phone call. A pledge had been injured during an initiation ritual. It seems as if an old alum visited the chapter and retaught the older local rituals. Due to this incident, I feel like I failed to instill in the brotherhood I served the founding principals and what true brotherhood is. We (my pledge bros and the 3 classes after us) immediately visited the chapter and we closed it down surrendering the charter to the university under a different guise. I still make contact with the National office advising them not to recharter just yet... to allow more time to begin rebuilding with completely fresh minds and spirits.
So after all this long windedness, I personnally feel how the sisters of XO must feel in some degree and I know what lies ahead. But think of this, you will have an extra chapter or two to add to your chapter's history and the meaning of sisterhood will be further reinforced when/if the charter is regranted (I also believe the banning together during this crisis has created one of the strongest knit greek organizations on the SHSU campus too).
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"Causa Latet Vis Est Notissima"
[This message has been edited by Talisman (edited October 06, 2000).]
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