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I'm another one of those who agrees that anti-hazing laws have gotten out of control, but I can see why it happened.
I think that as long as the "hazing" is something that legitimately applies to the group, it should be allowed. I think actives should be allowed to question pledges about organization's history, the Greek alphabet, and basic info about all the people in the house (I think this can be taken too far though -- requiring them to know name, hometown, age and major would be okay, but sometimes this can stretched to requiring the pledges to know everything about a member of the GLO, from their favorite color to the date they lost their virginity -- and if you've got over 100 members like so many groups do, this would be ridiculous). I think the actives should be allowed to require interviews with a certain number of actives so you can get to know certain members better (again, if there are a lot of people in your house, interviews with ALL the actives shouldn't be allowed). I think pledge projects (social and philanthropic) should be allowed. All of these things are relevant to the group and do have an effect on what kind of members these people will make and should be allowed to be tested.
Obviously I don't agree with physical hazing, forced drinking, that kind of thing. I also don't agree with personal servitude or the forcing of pledges to clean the house, which to me is a form of personal servitude.
I don't agree with "just for fun" hazing either because what someone might see as harmless fun, another girl might be humiliated by -- running topless down Greek row at night, having to serenade fraternity pledges with dirty songs, etc. I think that's why hazing has been eliminated entirely -- because different people react differently to different things and there's no way to guarantee what will cause emotional or physical distress. (Pushups, for example, could injure or even kill somebody with a heart condition, and even though that kind of thing is rare, it's still possible, and I don't think any fraternity wants to be associated with it.)
I think scavenger hunts were outlawed not so much because of their connotation with hazing (although that was a part of it) but because often it led to stealing things -- say, if an item one the list was "a fraternity's composite" or "something from the university chancellor's house." Not exactly something Greek HQs wanted associated with them. Also, the scavenger hunt can easily lead to hazing by requiring pledges to have body parts signed by fraternity members, or fraternity members requiring pledges to do favors for them in order to get, say, that composite that's an item on the list.
Basically, I'm saying that I do agree that most hazing laws are overdoing it, but I can also see that without the extreme laws the lines would get very blurry.
Question: in our anti-hazing bylaws, our nationals bans not only scavenger hunts, but hayrides. I think I've figured out the scavenger hunt ban, as reasoned above, but can anybody tell me why hayrides would be considered dangerous?
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