@bay You do know that any coerced activity borders on an offense that can be considered criminal…
Kind of depends on what you mean by “voluntarily,” though. A pledge could drink voluntarily, and be blindfolded voluntarily, but then not have agreed voluntarily to be placed in the dangerous situation that resulted in their death.
Did Armando Villa agree to be placed blindfolded without a cell phone or water in the Angeles National Forest, where he had to make an 18 mile hike to get out? He died of heatstroke July 1, 2014.
I think a fraternity has a moral duty to not accidentally kill their pledges (or any members) by engaging in behavior that is against official group rules and carries a known risk. Don’t they also have a legal responsibility? When does manslaughter come into play?
ETA: In the Armando Villa case, were there any criminal charges?
boolaHI,
In this day and age (let alone back in my day), any fraternity pledge who doesn’t know he does not have to participate in any hazing activity has been extremely sheltered in life.
There are many folks in ERs,in wheel chairs, in crutches, who would say differently. The power and pull of a group against a single young person, is not an equitable plane…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hazing_deaths_in_the_United_States
I am aware of deaths at my college in the 70s not on this list.
Bay, and companies are sued. They are fined.
And so are fraternities. I don’t know where this line of discussion is going.
I can’t find any mention of criminal charges. But everyone acknowledges that the pledges were placed, blindfolded, on a trail, with not enough water and wearing cheap, ill-fitting shoes that were not their own, and expected to hike 18 miles in the desert in July. The first articles I read said they didn’t have cellphones, but later articles say they did-- what they would have been lacking was cellphone service. Heatstroke is a foreseeable result of having to hike 18 miles in the desert, in mountains, in July, with inadequate water.
I have been looking, too. Why wouldn’t there be criminal charges? Reckless behavior contributed to their death.
I’m not a lawyer. I understand there wasn’t intent. I’m pretty sure there is negligence but that is just a civil case, right?
Negligence could result in a criminal case. But the facts of this particular case might make a criminal case difficult to prosecute.
Bay, it is fine to talk about the responsibilities of individual members of organizations, but organizationes are not necessarily absolved because a member is personally responsible.
Fraternities have responsibilities and how their members behave has consequences for fraternities.
Fraternities don’t get an out because members are responsible for their own actions.
2/3 of teens/young adults who die in car crashes are male.
Male teens/young adults are twice as likely to be in an accident that involves alcohol.
Teen boys are less likely to wear seat belts than girls.
Young adult men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime (homicide, assault, robbery) than young women (other than sexual violence).
Teen boys more likely to complete a suicide attempt than teen girls, although teen girls attempt suicide at higher rates.
There is a lot of risky, violent behavior associated with young adult or teenage males. And this has nothing to do with fraternities. In fact, the most common insurance claim with respect to fraternities is assault and battery not related to hazing. And a large part–perhaps all–of these incidents involve alcohol abuse.
I’m reluctant to post this, because it may seem as though I’m providing an excuse for these types of behaviors, or trying to portray these fraternities as victims. I’m not. My overall point is that we have to wonder how we are socializing boys.
I know they don’t. I didn’t say they did.
Bay, ok. I might have misread your posts. I thought you were moving towards absolving these frats…
Thanks for the clarification.
I"m not absolving them, because under the law they are liable. But their responsibility and liability is a legal fiction.
If I challenge three adult friends to a truth or dare, and they take a dare, and they allow me to take their shoes and cell phones and water and drop them in the desert, whose fault is it if someone dies? Not mine.
But if fraternity members do this, the fraternity must pay.
It’s more along the lines of “If I challenge people under my care to a dare, they take the dare, allow me to take their shoes, cell phone, water and drop them off in the desert, whose fault is it if someone dies?”
I do not believe the fraternity is faultless in the death.
From someone who affects to believe in personal responsibility, that’s a surprising statement. If you induce someone to do something they wouldn’t have done without your persuasion, something you know to hold a significant risk of death or serious injury (like hiking in the desert in the summer with inadequate water), and then they do die, you are at fault. You persuaded someone to their death.
In Villa’s case, as it turns out he had the choice to die on the hike, or not to join the fraternity, since the hike was a condition of his being accepted. No fraternity should be offering that choice to their pledges, and they are gravely at fault if they do so.
BTW, as of February the paper was still saying the DA was deciding whether to bring charges in the Armando Villa case. http://patch.com/california/northhollywood/another-csun-fraternity-suspended-pending-investigation-hazing-and-sexual-misconduct
For everyone on this thread who is opposed to the Greek system, are your kids part of it? If not, then problem solved. Tell your kids not to go inside of a fraternity house, do not go out with any fraternity brother, don’t get pictures taken with them. Tell them to only go to parties at student apartments because there would be less chance of binge drinking, people using drugs, no chance of getting sexually assaulted, and no issue of fire hazard or over crowding (I think there was a case where a balcony collapsed because there were too many people).
Bold is mine.
I agree.
I was not in a sorority in college, but from what I knew through friends, the extent of hazing in sororities were things like making them run through campus wearing footie pajamas and things of that nature. Both my Ds have said there is NO hazing in their experience. D2 says that they cannot even require the pledges to wear t-shirts with their letters on it as that qualifies as hazing.
So it seems that the sororities never were into the dangerous and humiliating hazing activities and have pretty much eliminated the few harmless exercises they ever did have. I don’t understand why the frats cling so stubbornly to these barbaric practices. WHY won’t they give it up?!?!?!