I spent a year working as a leadership consultant for my fraternity after graduation, and I can tell you from personal experience that the Greek culture varies tremendously on different campuses and in different regions of the county. When I was working as a leadership consultant, Texas and the Northeast were considered problem areas for hazing, especially alcohol-related hazing (and I am referring to all fraternities, not just mine). In these regions, it was not uncommon for hazing to involve pledges drinking themselves sick. If we knew a university had this kind of hazing culture, we would visit the chapter multiple times throughout the year, often unannounced. If one of our chapters was making pledges drink themselves sick we wanted to know so that we could shut the chapter down. I’m not aware of any Greek organization whose national headquarters doesn’t take that kind of hazing seriously.
But at many universities, especially those on the West Coast, hazing was far more subdued, consisting of things like washing the active members’ cars and cleaning up the chapter house after parties. Most Greek organizations prohibit even this kind of hazing, but as a practical matter, a fraternity’s headquarters isn’t going to be too concerned about it as long as the cleaning duties don’t take away from the pledges’ ability to study and don’t involve active members standing around and yelling at the pledges like drill sergeants.
The one piece of advice I would give to any parent whose child has shown an interest in the Greek system is this: find out everything you can about the Greek culture at that specific university. Call the university’s Greek advisor and ask him/her about the Greek culture and which fraternities have been caught hazing. You’d be surprised how forthcoming most Greek advisors will be.
I had a positive experience with my fraternity, but I was fortunate to attend a university where the Greek culture included a lot of positive traditions, like new pledge classes visiting sorority meetings to serenade them. The Greek system was heavily involved in philanthropy, and not just the throw a party, charge $5 a person and donate the proceeds to charity kind - fraternities and sororities were expected to pick a local charity and work with it extensively. The Greek system at my university wasn’t for everyone, of course, but it had a lot to offer.
This wasn’t true at all of the schools I visited while working for my fraternity. At some schools (including Penn State), the hazing culture was downright scary, and we shut our Penn State chapter down for four years based on what I saw. There were some schools where hazing wasn’t really a big problem, but the Greek system was nothing more than an excuse to get plastered every Friday and Saturday night. There were also plenty of schools with healthy Greek cultures that reminded my of my Greek experience.