[33girl]

Originally posted by SpartyGirl
All of those are hazing, and include varying degrees of risk (physical and mental).

Is this your personal opinion, or what your national says? (That question goes to everyone responding to this thread, incidentally)

The idea is to involve NMs in the SAME WAY as actives, bringing them into the circle of sisterhood right from the start and NOT isolating them or highlighting them by treating them differently. They should NEVER be treated any differently from actives.

So in other words, they shouldn't get gifts from their bigs? They shouldn't be recognized on websites or in the school paper as new members? If you are going to say that any differentiated treatment is "hazing" that should apply to everything, not just the things that take effort from the pledges.

NMs should be allowed to attend regularly scheduled chapter meetings with the actives (assuming some ritual takes place before a meeting, have the NMs stay in a place away from the meeting until ritual is over, then bring them into the chapter meeting so they can become interested and involved in chapter operations.

I completely disagree. I can't imagine being thrust into a meeting with the whole chapter two days after getting your bid - I would have been overwhelmed sitting with all those people I've just met and being asked to contribute on matters I knew nothing about. And this was with 35 sisters. 200 sisters - that would completely freak me out. The point of a pledge meeting is to educate the pledges about how to run a meeting and let them do it in a smaller group. They will probably feel more able to speak up and voice opinions - whereas if they were thrust into a situation with experienced sisters, it might be very hard for some women to ever get that chance. They should attend a couple sister meetings before they initiate, but their main focus should be the pledge meeting.

PLUS, those events tend to build strong relationships AMONG the pledge class. This is not necessarily a good thing. Pledge class solidarity tends to cause "cliques" and other organizational weaknesses. Chapters should strive to blend those NMs into the chapter and avoid "pledge class" identity.

Everyone has fits about too much pledge class unity - well, at large schools, the fact of the matter is, most of the pledge class will be the same age and those are the women you will go the whole way through school with. It's just natural that seniors, juniors etc - especially in a very large chapter - will be closer, and I think this natural function gets blamed on things that happen in pledging. I was closest to the seniors in my chapter, and only one of them pledged with me. I don't think rushing someone to form bonds with the entire chapter (and freaking if their pledge class bonds happen to be the strongest) helps the chapter at all.