SigEp - I can't remember where I saw the post (possibly under the hazing Forum), but, for both of your points, hazing and alcohol abuse - these two are clearly related to one another. I'm not a big advocate of forcing GLO's to go dry, but I do believe that any consumption of alcohol should be done in a responsible manner - that is what you see many fraternities professing these days, other than the national organization that have mandated a dry chapter (Sigma Nu and Phi Delts recently, and I believe FarmHouse has always been dry). To me, this is truly sad that a national organization dictates such a hard-line policy in order to fix a trend that the members themselves should be fixing first.
In order to fix one problem, you have to look at both. And my personal feeling is that the root cause of the problem is GLO's getting so far away from the founding purposes of the order. We, collectively have allowed our standards to erode to the point that the stereotypes about us are the perceived reality, which is the real sad part of greek life, and affects recruitment foremost.
If you get a chance to, look back at some older yearbooks of your campus, or any campus for that matter, when Greeks ruled the campus in the manner we should be trying to get to today - running the school, being the leaders, setting the trends (the positive trends, that is). We need to get "back to the roots" of our organizations goals. When new members/pledges/associate members see the true initiation ceremony - that is where the rubber meets the road - that is what we should be striving for.
I'm not saying we should forgoe the "social" aspect in any way, but, we need to reevaluate how social aspects interface with academics and our individual organization's ideals. Part of college is to learn responsible social behavior, and, for too many years, social behavior has been linked to alcohol almost at the exclusion of anything else.
Let's get back to the basics - ask those members who have only joined for the wrong reasons (joining only for the parties or to "hook up") to leave the organization - in the long run, I feel we have nothing to lose. It is the action of these few members, who do not live up to the ideals and/or oaths they have sworn to their organization that cause the problems for the majority.
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Don't be your brother's keeper; rather, be your brother's Brother.
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