If Hazing is Wrong, what's a better alternative?

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by ASTalumna06

I can agree with the fact that males and females are different. I do, however, believe that they can be taught the same things without hazing.

I do too. I hope I made that clear. I'm simply saying that I think the successful alternatives, for males at least, don't ignore some of the reasons hazing occurs to begin with.

I know that there are "rites of passage" that men sometimes feel they need to overcome. But why can't it be done in a constructive way? And why can't pledges and brothers alike participate in these activities? . . . If you're going to build brotherhood, why are you excluding the BROTHERS from these activities? I don't see why the few weeks of pledging is the only time that people are challenged. If you're doing something constructive, have everyone participate.

At the risk of taking this too far off, I think that maybe this is a situation where, while recognizing that males and females are different, you're not recognizing how. Aside from what I said earlier about "proving themselves" (and let's face it -- for lots of males, rightly or wrongly, that means primarily proving themselves physically), this gets at a different conversation we've had numerous times here at GC. Most fraternities with which I'm familiar treat pledges (or whatever term they use) differently from brothers. It's not like the NPC, where new members are treated in many if not most respects like sisters. In my experience, fraternities typically do not consider a pledge to be a brother until, toward the end of the pledge period, the chapter votes to initiate him and then in fact does initiate him.

This doesn't mean that a good chapter isn't going to provide ample opportunity for pledges and brothers to do things together. But in most fraternities, they're not likely to act like a pledge is a brother either.

Kevin is right -- I think most fraternities have tried to create national programs that work to the same end in a manner consistant with the fraternity's ethos/culture.

And 33girl is right -- fraternities are from Mars, sororities are from Venus.