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Originally Posted by Tom Earp
Isn't the legality the real thing at hand?
Many States are writing Laws concerning this and taking it out of the hands of All GLOs.
The reason these Laws are being written were because of stupidity of said GLOs.
While all Nationals have Laws, sometimes they are not followed and this is where it leads.
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The trouble is that laws have been written which are not at all practical and in many cases, I think, Unconstitutional.
They are emotionally overreactive statutes embraced by politicians who- in some cases- have a personal hatred for Greek organizations similar to a dislike of private schools or country clubs.
Any attempt to discuss this will be countered with bringing forth the mother of a deceased fraternity member who will make an emotional appeal that has nothing to do with underlying law. It is like trotting out Christopher Reeve every time there is a debate about stem cel research- it is an attempt to trump reasoned argument with emotion.
The trouble in fraternities is alcohol abuse- not hazing. If you look through the "Wrongs of Passage" Appendix A, you will find that many- if not most- of the incidents reported are not hazing incidents, but alcohol-related tragedies that happen to non-Greeks all the time.
Actual enforcement of hazing law is very much in line with what reasonable people think. Advocates fought to get hazing laws because they felt schools and local law enforcement officers were not applying existing laws regarding alcohol use, battery, etc. properly in claimed hazing incidents.
However, they have now seen that hazing laws intended to cover the same crimes but in a tougher way are not being enforced either.
And so it comes to light that the issue is not that laws were never in place to address criminal behavior- but that fraternities are just like any other group of people who associate for any reason, that such association is voluntary and that individuals within such groups may do things like drive drunk or fall off buildings that do not necessarily mean the entire organization should be disbanded or have their rights to exist and operate taken away.
What needs to happen is that a good test case needs to be used to challenge the Constitutionality of hazing laws.
Meantime, since the laws are not enforced I am sure things will continue as they have in the past.
Unfortunately, because of the current statutes- it is not possible for people to come into open forums like this and have substantive discussions about good Risk Management Policy because everything we say will be in furtherance of something now designated to be a crime (that is a crime if you happen to belong to a fraternity and not one of many other types of organizations with membership requirements and a trial period of association.)
So the debate remains behind closed doors and we all have to pay more for insurance as things just go on as before.
The answer is to do your homework before taking a bid, learn your personal boundaries and stick to them and have a little faith in the brotherhood. We stood up as a pledge class when we needed to and got respect for it. And we would not have pledged in the first place if we thought we were joining a group that would not respect that kind of initiative.
Your mileage may vary based on what you want in a fraternity.
Until I see evidence of a dramatic rise in serious hazing incidents, I am not going to believe there is a problem to address outside of the fact of life that everything a person does entails risk and that this is not a perfect world.
And I should note I mean a dramatic rise in true hazing incidents. Fraternity members driving drunk or falling off buildings are not "hazing incidents"- thought they are regularly treated as such in the press.
Alcohol problems are a reflection of a chapter- not Greek Life. Chapters that party hard will attract new members who want the same. It is not a reflection of fraternities being inherently bad- it is a reflection that chapters attract new members who want the sort of life the chapter offers.
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