<p>How bad is "Hell Week" for frat pledges? I know it probably varies among campuses, but I have heard disgusting stories along with some where it seems like you will be drinking constantly til you blackout. Can anyone give me a bit more information on this?</p>
<p>i’m an atheist. what is that?</p>
<p>I was just wondering how bad it really gets. I know that they are not supposed to haze, but they pretty much all do. Is it really bad though (Like downing shots every few seconds) or is it more like be my personal slave for the week?</p>
<p>Psssssh frat “Hell Week”…I’m not quite sure how drinking till you blackout is seen as torturous.</p>
<p>Well I guess dangerous- like binge drinking. From this or probably seems that I don’t like to have a good time and I shouldn’t be in a frat, but that’s not true. It’s always on the news that students almost died or died after frat hazing so I just wanted to know what most students have to go through.</p>
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<p>And people almost die after trying to cross the road. Just live a little and don’t be stupid.</p>
<p>Completely 100% depends on the frat. Each one (and each chapter at each school) does their own thing. And they aren’t going to tell you what they’re going to do until they do it.</p>
<p>However if you are against drinking, I might not recommend joining a frat…maybe like a professional one, but not like your typical social frat. You can of course join one and not drink, but the culture of the whole thing would probably not mesh with you that well.</p>
<p>For me it was mainly anticipation from being kept in the dark all the time (both figuratively and literally). Nothing bad at all…except for the goat. The goat sucks.</p>
<p>Ever wondered why there are no more pledges immediately after hell week? :D</p>
<p>username29,</p>
<p>not all frats haze. you should quit and report any house that does if you feel so inclined (while I fundamentally disagree with frat hazing, it certainly does happen in many places, and I acknowledge that everyone has different boundaries). When it comes to houses that haze getting caught, it is not a matter of if they will, but only a matter of when they will.</p>
<p>-Former frat president</p>
<p>Can’t speak from experience, but having had friends go through Hell week with different frats, it can vary. The common practices seem to be doing a lot of chores for the house as well as significant amounts of drinking.</p>
<p>Why do people do this? Is being in a fraternity really worth some of the more extreme hazing practices that are done by certain chapters? I realize the point of pledging and whatnot is to build bonds with your fellow pledge brothers and hey, that’s cool. But I hear of people drinking to the point of passing out, getting beat up, hell even performing sexual acts… is it really worth it?</p>
<p>I believe that most really bad frat hazing isn’t something that people would agree to if they were told they were going to have to do it before it actually happened, but I think there are a few psychological effects having to do with conformity (you’d be surprised how much people will conform to an “authority” under the right conditions) that come into play that allow it to go on. It’s not rational by any means, but it’s understandable in some ways. I think many people who decry hazing and say they would never go along with it would if they were in that scenario, regardless of what they say.</p>
<p>I was hazed very mildly when joining my sorority. It never bothered me, though when I tell the story to people I get a few raised eyebrows. It wasn’t anything hardcore though.</p>
<p>Rio,</p>
<p>there’s also the fact that the pledges (who are 18 year old kids) are intimidated into accepting it. They are threatened with even worse hazing if they fail to conform to the intended hazing, and at many schools, there is such a visible dominance (sometimes real, sometimes just perceived) of the social scene by the greeks that 18 year olds (who are only just growing out of the adolescent “oh my god, I need to be accepted by my peers” phase) fear they’ll be completely isolated if they don’t endure it.</p>
<p>The hazing then often changes you. Kids who have been hazed are more likely to haze and will haze worse. They adopt an attitude with the new guys of “I went through this, now it’s your turn” which makes it seem like the hazing might not be so bad. Unfortunately, even though I am so adamantly pro-greek on this forum, I must admit that there are some messed up kids in the system, and hazing often only makes them worse. The usual punishment for hazing to kick out everyone except the class that was hazed in an attempt to completely rid the house of any bad influence. Some organizations will even throw out the hazed class and wait until the entire group has graduated before reinstating them to try and rebuild the house with a foundation of guys who do not haze.</p>
<p>The only place where I can possibly see hazing as having merit is the military. Yes, hazing provides people with a shared trauma from which they can bond, and in the case of the military, it mentally and physically prepares soldiers for the brutal nature of combat. Being in a fraternity is not the same as going to war. In addition it alters the relationship between the superior and the subordinate. In the military, that relationship is very clear and is very strong and is very necessary. In a fraternity, there should not be such strong differences between seniors and sophomores. Hazing alienates the pledge class from the rest of the house.</p>
<p>I have been to my fraternity’s national convention and heard the stories from other houses, and similarly to those 18 year olds, I hid my disgust and usually only answered with the simple and short, “We don’t do things like that. That’s not what brotherhood is to us.” The point of a fraternity is to help you grow as a person; hazing does not accomplish this.</p>