<p>That memo, with the list of what hazing is, is proof that those things do happen. And it is not a frivolous list: It doesn’t say hazing is being forced to wear a color, or anything else that could be looked at as being overly-rigid.</p>
<p>Red point
I’m on my phone so it is too hard to do the research, but I have a hunch that if you research deaths of 18-24 year olds due to alcohol poisoning, the majority will not be fraternity men. We don’t hear much about the others.</p>
<p>True, alcohol death in a young person will make local news, not national news. BUT if the death were the result of some ritualized group activity, it would make national news.</p>
<p>“compared to the all fraternity average of 2.96 and the all university men average of 2.87”</p>
<p>I don’t have a dog in the race, and I agree that some chapters do a lot to support members academically. </p>
<p>That said, I’m always a little skeptical about the meaning of these reported GPAs, which many schools tout to prove that Greek membership contributes to academic achievement. I don’t doubt that the numbers are accurate, but the fraternities and sororities disproportionately select from the population of white, middle-class, straight-from-high-school, first-time freshmen – in other words, a population that is likely to have higher than average grades regardless of Greek membership. At other flagships less selective than Texas (like Oklahoma), high school academic performance is actually a big factor in rush, especially for girls. At a fraternity chapter with a 3.5 GPA, you can bet that academics are a rush criterion. So the published chapter GPAs prove that it’s possible to be in a Greek group and succeed academically, but given the selection biases, they do not prove that the groups have a neutral or positive impact on members’ GPA. It’s possible that the demographic peers of the Greek students are doing even better, and these students would have higher grades if they hadn’t joined.</p>
<p>(I’m aware that there are minority-oriented Greek groups at UT and elsewhere, but at non-HBCUs, those chapters choose to be much smaller than the historically white chapters, so their impact on the Greek GPA is tiny. Even if these groups add up to a third of the chapters on a given campus, they may only represent one twentieth of the student members.)</p>
<p>I am not skeptical about the meaning of the GPAs. The vast majority of college students do not go to grad school, so whether they graduate with a 2.97 or a 3.03 is relatively meaningless. The meaningful part is that the Greeks are earning grades that will earn them their diploma, and that is the goal for most students.</p>
<p>But, Bay, if your point is that there are bad things going on outside of fraternities, too, that does not help prove that bad things aren’t going on inside fraternities, which is what we are discussing. On the night after bid night at my D’s school, which is a night of great celebration, several sorority girls ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning and several others were arrested. Were there other, non-Greek kids drinking too much on campus that night, too? Most probably. But, my point is that many activities within the Greek community foster choices that can be dangerous and downright life threatening (regardless of whether you can find examples of those activities outside of the Greek community). Each student (and parent, if they are paying) has to make the decision for himself and herself whether the plusses of Greek life outweigh the minuses, which include these dangers. They will make those same decisions with regard to any of the activities they participate in, but we are discussing Greek life here.</p>
<p>Here are the ones that I can put a spin on:
-Any type of servitude that is of personal benefit to the individual members.
Pledges cleaning up before and after a party, pledges being required to make big sis gifts before pledgeship ends.
Requiring pledges to act as sober sisters/brothers to escort guests home.
-Wearing of embarrassing or uncomfortable clothing
That is wear being forced to wear anything can come into play. In the old days, guys wore beanies to signify they were pledging. Being told to suit up to a football game could fall in that category in the Texas sun.
-Demeaning names
“I hereby name you Pinto” Why? “Why not?”
-Lineups for the purpose of interrogating, demeaning or intimidating
So lineups will hurt the military corps the most. Think of any movie showing any bootcamp where the drill sargeant call them sissies, girls, insults their mother, etc. That is hazing too. But asking the pledge class to recite the founders history, etc could fall under that as well. </p>
<p>So when you say things are not overly rigid, I will counter with examples of things that have been reported as hazing that I have personal knowledge of. In one case a young lady (not a pledge) because she was required to wear a matching shirt if she wanted to attend our sponsored event and the color was not flattering. the T-shirt became optional.</p>
<p>“The vast majority of college students do not go to grad school, whether they graduate with a 2.97 or a 3.03 is relatively meaningless.”</p>
<p>Well, that is true. I imagine that the kids of CC readers are not representative of the overall population, though.</p>
<p>Here is a relatively meaningless anecdote, but evidence nonetheless: My nephew was in a fraternity at Stanford and will be graduating from one of the top med schools this Spring.</p>
<p>I feel that I have to jump in here…
The bottom line is that those of us that have kids that are involved in the Greek system see the benefits from FIRST HAND knowledge and experience. Those that do not have FIRST HAND knowledge and experience are basing thier opinions on what they have read or heard in the media…or from second hand knowledge obtained from Gladys Cravitz down the street.<br>
I could go on and on about my daughter’s very positive sorority experience. She is a student at UT, which has a very small greek community compared to the student body…about 12%. If anything, she has had positive peer pressure from her sisters to maintain a high GPA. The GPA’s of each chapter are publicized in the sorority recruitment book which is handed out to each potential new member before recruitment. There is ALOT of competiton between the sororities to have the highest GPA. The calibre of student that goes to UT is high, so the PNM’s are looking for chapters that care about grades. I see this as very postive.
She has also had indirect peer pressure from her sisters to not be a “slug” this summer and try to get an intership. She is surrounded by girls that are driven and ambitious. I see this as postive. It pushes her out of her comfort zone and she wants to keep up.
She has met many alumna that have very good connections…this will be a postive for her when she enters the job market.
She has become a leader in her sorority and has already been given some very big responsibilites. She has become very good at muti-tasking…a good life skill to have. She has had to speak in front of very large groups. She has learned to compromise and make important decisions. She has learned to think of others and not just herself. She has learned to become a better friend.
I would go out on a limb and say that most fraternities would offer the same experiences to thier members…ie leadership, scholarship, friendship, etc…however, the media doesn’t talk about all of those things because it’s not sensational…not newsworthy…</p>
<p>After reading this entire thread, my point is proven…those that want to bash greeks do not have a dog in the fight and those that want to defend greeks have FIRST HAND knowledge…hmmmm</p>
<p>lenny,
I never made the claim that “bad things” don’t go on at fraternities. To the contrary, I specifically stated that things do go wrong, there is no denying that. But when a person is evaluating the dangers of participating in an activity versus not, it is pretty silly to ignore the potential likliehood of the same risks happening if he doesn’t join, or if he joins another organization instead (like band or pharmacy fraternity or a gospel choir).</p>
<p>OK, so you all want facts and specifics, yet when I take two lousy minutes to go to the actual college website where the OP will be attending and pull up a GPA report, this is brought into question? You can’t have it both ways. It is apparent from reading the minimum standards at this school, they have several reporting requirements for all aspects of Greek life. this particular college does not appear to report the GPAs of honors students, etc and since the Greek students would also be honor students, it would take a bit more data mining. We have spent days talking about coercion, negative peer-pressure and group think. It goes both ways. If you look a the list you will see that not all fraternities are academic superstars, but that Greek life at this institution also allows for academic excellence at least in some chapters. </p>
<p>I reported those numbers to give the OP facts about the choices his S will have. And I can tell you that 3-hour mandatory study tables do have a positive effect on most grades, especially for freshman that may forget that college is also about school when faced with all the fun things that are out there. It is not unlike a parental unit saying that one needs to do their homework before they can play.</p>
<p>I just couldn’t help myself with this one:</p>
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<p>[FAMU</a> band hazing: A long culture of violence](<a href=“http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/famu-band-hazing-a-long-culture-of-violence-2024826.html?printArticle=y]FAMU”>http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/famu-band-hazing-a-long-culture-of-violence-2024826.html?printArticle=y)</p>
<p>SWTCAT: I think lenny told us several problems with the sorority her daughter is involved with. It’s inappropriate to say that the rest of us don’t have any first hand experience with Greek organizations, and are just getting it from the media. </p>
<p>At this point I don’t even know what we are debating.</p>
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<p>I left a frat after one semester and I am one of the most critical people of frats on this thread. Mini is an academic whose field of study is alcoholism, so its hard to argue with his statistics on the association of alcoholism with Greek life.</p>
<p>My main problem with frats is the pledging system.</p>
<p>It creates an inferior/superior relationship between the pledges and brothers which is often abused and potentially dangerous. Choice is not black-and-white, and there are some cases where hazing is not voluntary in any way. One example of the latter that I saw was dragging someone through the house to be “showered.” Remember what happened in that Stanford study when ordinary people were put in charge of electric shock treatments and told to up the voltage to dangerous levels. </p>
<p>Secondly, I don’t like the “breaking you down to build you up” mentality I saw during pledging. It’s pointless. Yes, other activities such as in a sport or in bootcamp do have some of this mentality, but there is some skill you are supposed to be acquiring. I’ve heard frat brothers say very plainly that the point is to “F over the pledges” because that was what happened to them when they were pledges. I was in a pretty grueling sport where people were somewhat macho about how hard they were pushing themselves for the team. Sometimes people would throw up after hard workouts. But at least there is a point to doing this, to get better at an athletic sport, not just to do random stuff to quell some nebulous idea that “the pledges aren’t good enough yet” by some 20-year-old frat brothers.</p>
<p>The other “reason” behind the hazing is to bring the pledge class together through the introduction of stress. Yes, stressful situations do bring people together. People say that MIT undergrads have a bond because they have to pull all-nighters to solve long problem sets. You might develop a bond to teammates in a varsity sport when trying to turn around a long losing streak. The difference is that the stress of pledging is artificial.</p>
<p>Interestingly, I knew people who drank and did hard drugs all through high school, and these people also left their fraternity because of the psychological aspect. It’s not about being straight-laced or not.</p>
<p>Bay’s example of his nephew ending up in a top medical school after being in a Stanford fraternity brings up an interesting point. When I decided to leave my frat, brothers told me I wouldn’t get into medical school. The Dean of Harvard Medical Admissions confirmed to me that they liked to see fraternity membership as it fulfilled the social aspect of one’s resume’. Basically, it can take a student with a sterling academic resume’ and help put them over the top. Well, if it does help to get into graduate school, then universities have a responsibility to make sure fraternity pledge activities are safe and a decent use of the pledge’s time. Just like universities would have some responsibility if one of their classes assigned as homework to down 10 shots of vodka in an hour. You might say that there must be some value to fraternities if medical schools think they are of some value. Maybe, maybe not.</p>
<p>Incidentally, my university did have so-called “independent living groups” which were basically like frats in that they were student-run and hosted social events and participated in activities, but didn’t have any pledging. Certainly, I was not opposed to these. It sounds like the poster FraternityMan’s experiences were closer to what I heard happening in my university’s independent living groups.</p>
<p>Social skills and learning to work together are valuable skills for most, if not all, careers. But the typical brand of leadership which frats seem to espouse seems to be bonding through debauchery and mindless groupthink. No doubt this occurs on Wall Street, in Congress (look up “waitress sandwhich” and Dodd or Kennedy), and in some businesses, but I don’t think it is noble or necessary. This sort of bonding is only necessary if you are in a culture which values it. You were not likely to get very far career-wise if you didn’t go out for cocktails with the boss in the 60’s advertising agency depicted in Mad Men.</p>
<p>My other big complaint is that they frats generally don’t tell you what exactly is involved. Do you think they told that guy that he would eventually have to be covered in peanut butter “with a sheep involved” (!)? Probably not. They don’t tell you about the drinking rituals, although you might suspect this. There are trips planned for you they don’t tell you about until 5 minutes before. On the scale of hazing, my experiences were on the lighter side, but they definitely did monopolize my time and there was some psychological garbage they hoisted on us. What they do is they leverage your friendship with your other pledges, time pressure (very little time to process what is happening,) and embarassment of making a big deal about doing one more thing. The kid who died in a fraternity drinking ritual at my school had made a choice that he would probably get sick from what he was doing, but he didn’t think he was risking his life. (He died from choking on his own vomit after passing out.)</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I still think sororities are generally more benign than frats for the simple reason that teenage girls are not the same as boys. However, mini does have statistics saying the level of alcoholism is the same. I may be biased too because most sororities on my campus didn’t have houses so their influence was limited.</p>
<p>If the OP has made it through it this far, I have a few tips.
Obviously I don’t recommend frats, but if you decide to do it:
1.) Avoid any frats with bad reputations. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be bad stuff
in a frat without a reputation, but it’s like seeing a cockroach. If you see one, there is tons under the woodwork.
2.) Make it clear that you won’t engage in any drinking games or rituals while a pledge. Do this before you accept the bid. This is important for your safety and it avoids awkward conversations about how much alcohol is too much for you.
3.) Avoid any frat where the pledge period is more than 3 weeks and if it has a history of dragging on for an indeterminate amount of time. In general, choose the one which is the least serious about pledging.
4.) After you get a bid but before you accept it, try to get them to tell you about time commitments such as trips, etc. and when they are. These sound fun, but are annoying when they are the weekend before a test and you had no notice.</p>
<p>It’s too bad that a few people on this thread see this issue as so black and white–i.e., we’re either “Greek bashing” or “Greek supporting.” I think most of us can see that the Greek organizations have many positive aspects and are simply lamenting the aspects of the system that seem to be broken and potentially harmful to its members (such as hazing and excessive alcohol use). I can see that my D is getting some very positive things out of her sorority membership–she has attended some very good educational programs at her house (which is non-residential, by the way), she has met some really great girls who are smart and ambitious and will encourage her to be the same, she is volunteering to take a leadership role in various sorority events, and she is now part of a huge network of “sisters” who may be supportive of her later in life. I just wish that the system also would foster (rather than pay lip service to) responsible drinking habits. If underage girls can end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoining while celebrating together as “sisters,” there’s a problem. Can’t we agree that shouldn’t happen?</p>
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<p>Yes, but I have to say that I am familiar with 2 instances where students ended up in the hospital. I know it is hard to believe, but both of these instances had NOTHING to do with Greek life. One involved drinking while taking a RX drug during a band activity. The other involved a guy who drank whenever and wherever possible while in college (picture a guy who fills a sports bottle with alcohol to attend class). At one point he ended up in an ER.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t see how it helps to point out that these things also happen outside the context of Greek life. If the fraternities and sororities encourage activities that end up this way, then there is a problem with those organizations that could be fixed. There may also be problems elsewhere in a university setting, but here we’re talking about the pros and cons of Greek life.</p>
<p>As the OP, I cannot thank people enough for their input. We have indeed researched the GPA/service requirements for this particular university. The one he is interested in is the consistent leader in this regard and has that reputation. My real concern was whether we were justified in still having our old founded stereotypes/fears. It certainly appears that we are not off base in having concerns and will now take a more involved role in the investigation of the process. It may be a moot point, as my son may not think it’s a fit and the frats may not think he is a fit. Alternatively, it may turn out to be one of the best things he ends up doing. Regardless, we will now begin the process with our eyes a little more open than they would have been before.</p>
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<p>I see this as exactly right.</p>
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<p>My point with this is that there a students who have addictions that have nothing to do with Greek life. That is my only point. In my experience, Greek life has been positive for my son. I also understand that not everyone is finding a similar experience to ours.</p>