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astalumna, how exactly am i pointing out the larger member to his peers? just b/c i give him a lower number doesn't mean anything. it's not like i'm going to tell him "oh you're fat so you only have to do 30". i'm just going to say, "drop and give me 30." and also, you forget on when this is. if it's at the beginning of the night and he's fresh, then i'll have him do more and by the end do less (same goes for everyone else). even a fit person who could do 100 at the beginning will be tired at the end and wont be able to do 30. the whole point is to push yourself and look back on it later and be like,"wow, i accomplished this." and how do i know this? b/c i was the fat guy during pledging. i was pushed to my limit. i've been fat since i was 7. during pledging my confidence soared a ton as the brothers kept on pushing me to my limits. the first day i had trouble doing 20 pushups and by the end i could do about 50 at a time. a few months after pledging i took what i learned and lossed 50 lbs with my newfound "anything is possible" attitude. my grades were better after pledging then beforehand. my time management and work ethic improved too. now i might be one example but i'm sure lots of people can learn something from physical pledging if done properly (as i believe most of my program was b/c it was based on a military format). does it work for everyone? no of course not.
also, i believe i am able to compare hazing vs non hazing also b/c i joined an 2 honor fraternities also. the requirements for one of them was to do 10 hours of philanthropy, have 1 on 1 talks with 10 professors, attend 10 social functions, and maintain a 3.0 gpa. i thought that was a joke compared to my fraternity hazing.
now i've been thinking over all the comments and my own thoughts and here is my conclusion: i believe hazing is good b/c it weeds out people so the remaining members can feel like they accomplished something. now that may or may not be a stupid argument but for me i'm proud of joining my fraternity b/c lots of people who start do not finish and become brothers. to me, that makes me feel good that i accomplished something that others couldn't. it's like getting admitted to harvard, passing the cfa/cpa exam, getting promoted, or something like that. now if hazing were eliminated, i think the only way i would still be "proud" of being in my fraternity is if 30-40% of pledges never become brothers and so we maintain our "high standards." however, the thing i noticed with fraternities is that i would say 90%+ of pledges who begin become brothers and to me that just dilutes the program. maybe that's where i'm going with this....
just a thought
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