Let's be real for a minute brother....
No one should be able to just WALK into our fraternity. No one should be able to just go on the internet download an application, pay some money and have a lifetime membership. Yes our founders did "develop" a physical process and yes this does go back to African roots and rites of passage, but this is still the year 2000. Maybe for a brief moment in in December 1906 Alpha Phi Alpha was a perfect fraternity, a perfect brotherhood; but even from it's inception (and before) there were constant struggles. In the year 2000 hazing is ILLEGAL. I do believe there is a fine line between pledging and hazing, but where does the line get drawn? The law of the land will never understand the difference between pledging and hazing (Alpha Phi Alpha is not "allowed" to see the difference between pledging and hazing, because you can only get but sooo many million dollar lawsuits before the organization is BANKRUPT); thus pledging had to be illiminated. Lines had to go underground. The pledging for 18 weeks in broad daylight had to stop. When do the horror stories stop? The whole reason pledging had to be stopped is because it was being taken to the extreme. Young minds were dying. No matter what you say our founders never wanted anyone to lose their life trying to become a part of Alpha Phi Alpha. Our founders never wanted young college men to become paralyzed from the neck down or to have to use the bathroom in a bag outside of their bodies (Lincoln College,PA 1998). I love our fraternity, but do I want to see it crumble because it's facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit because someone was "pledged"-No, I don't. Yes, pledging is a very good way to develop brotherhood, but it's illegal. But in some chapters there is NO brotherhood. I live in the D.C. area, so I meet a lot of bruhs that pledged Beta chapter. One night I'm driving on the campus of Howard U, I see a bruh with a jersey on, so I'm like "Wassup Frat!" dude just nodded his head: I'm on his campus with the SAME letters he has on and he can't even holler at me; he can't holler at a bruh. Most of the bruhs I've encountered while being up North are just plain shady. It's like they don't know how to look at you/me as a brother, because they weren't taught brotherhood. This has gotten very long but the whole point I'm trying to make is it's illegal and there is a reason for it being illegal. In my region (Alpha South) I know chapters where the District Director and Regional VP have threatened to make some chapters inactive just because they were tired of a certain chapter winning a certain event every year. Things are not the same as they were in 1906.
[This message has been edited by Spectrum3_1906 (edited July 11, 2000).]
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