As the school year is still just beginning and fraternities and sororities across the nation are selecting their newest members, the spotlight turns to a longly-controversial topic: hazing. While some rituals can be low-key and potentially less alarming, others can develop to be life threatening. Between the years 1970 and 2012 alone, there were a total of 104 lives lost to unnecessary and excessive hazing rituals.
Earlier this week, I came across a New York Times article detailing the events at Cornell in February 2011. Somewhat different than others, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity's annual hazing consists of having the freshmen kidnap then upper classmen and running things the other way around. After a night of excessive drinking and bizarre foods, sophomore George Desdunes was left tied up and unconscious in the campus' library until he was found there the next morning, dead. Although this fraternity's ritual allows for a pledge to pull out at any time, I still wonder how much choice George had.
According to the article, "though hazing has been illegal at the university since 1980 and in New York State since 1983, 60 percent of the universities fraternities and sororities were found responsible for hazing actives over the last decade." If this has been going on for so long , what have we been doing to stop it aside from just making it illegal? And what could we or should we have done years ago to make the limits more well known? Being a junior in high school and beginning to think about college and the teams/clubs/sororities that I might join, I feel that hazing is a topic that needs to more attention. However, this is not to say that pledging to a fraternity, sorority, or other club is always a bad thing, especially when you're going into college and looking for a large group of friends or even just a sense of community. As long as alcohol, the root of an estimated 80% of hazing deaths, remains absent or minimal, hazing can be curbed. It's just a matter of knowing how much is too much.
I found it astonishing to read that that many people have died due to these hazing traditions. It makes me so sad to think about these people giving into peer pressure just to gain acceptance from the members of a fraternity or sorority. It raises the topic about the lengths we are willing to go just to "fit in." I think we should be trying to make the hazing process safer rather than try to eliminate the tradition as a whole, which seems a bit drastic to me.
ReplyDeleteIt shocks me that 104 people were killed during hazing rituals during from 1970-2012. You'd think we'd have the issue fixed at this point. I think fraternities and sororities somehow need to find a way to connect with their new members in a safer, yet enjoyable way. The freshmen definitely should get to know their "brothers" or "sisters", but they should find a way do so without the extreme hazing traditions.
ReplyDelete