Might sound weird, but if I am being completely honest...

[DubaiSis]

I'm generally not a fan of the slipper slope defense, but in the case of 18-22 year olds, I think it has to be considered. Being made to recite the Greek Alphabet, no, that's not harmful to anyone, but everyone of us here can think of 15 ways to turn that utterly benign act into something terrible, dangerous and/or illegal. Maybe if the rules was, anything you want to do to a pledge has to happen in front of the president of the school, then it would be something. Then a lot of the playful stuff would probably be just fine. But I wouldn't even trust that responsibility to a chapters alumnae/i, because you know some 40 year old wanting to relive his youth would think it's perfectly fine to waterboard a freshman.

[KDCat]

Originally Posted by DubaiSis

I'm generally not a fan of the slipper slope defense, but in the case of 18-22 year olds, I think it has to be considered. Being made to recite the Greek Alphabet, no, that's not harmful to anyone, but everyone of us here can think of 15 ways to turn that utterly benign act into something terrible, dangerous and/or illegal. Maybe if the rules was, anything you want to do to a pledge has to happen in front of the president of the school, then it would be something. Then a lot of the playful stuff would probably be just fine. But I wouldn't even trust that responsibility to a chapters alumnae/i, because you know some 40 year old wanting to relive his youth would think it's perfectly fine to waterboard a freshman.

You can't give people that much control over other people without strong institutional controls. It brings out something dark in them.

I went to college in the late 80's and early 90's. There was quite a bit of hazing on both campuses I attended. (Mostly fraternity) Some of it was harmless and silly. A lot wasn't and I knew one guy that had to go the hospital. The problem was with three types of members: 1) guys who were drunk and didn't have good judgment about what they were doing to the pledges and were belligerent when called on it; 2) guys who were sober but didn't really think through what they were doing to other people (not malicious, just lacking in empathy); and 3) guys who enjoyed hurting the pledges and got off on the petty use of power. The third type was dangerous, more common that I would have thought, and perfectly happy to turn "Hell Week" into a recreation of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

I'm constantly surprised by things that are banned under the rubric of "hazing." I know that if its banned, though, it must have gone bad somewhere. It's like silly laws against ridiculous stuff. If there is a law against keeping a cow in an apartment in a city, it means that some idiot kept a cow in an apartment at some point in that city and the city council had to pass an ordinance to make them stop.