I get The Atlantic and am so glad for their reporting, even knowing I won’t be able to read it. I am still so angry…at Beta, and at PSU admins who totally lowballed a chance to step out in higher ed and unequivocally say No More. Encouraged by what we hear locally about the new policing of the parties, but still wish they would all close.
Another Penn State fraternity suspended after student hospitalized…
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/10/06/another-penn-state-fraternity-suspended-after-student-hospitalized/23235960/
You can read PSU’s statement on the issue at the end of the article.
Still shaking my head as to why fraternities even exist anymore? What good do they do?
I joined a Fraternity as a Sophomore in the early 1980’s. It was a great experience for me as I was at a huge school in CA (SDSU) and it compartmentalized it somewhat. I made many friends through that experience that I still have today. There was hazing at my Fraternity when I was there but it was nothing like what I am reading about. We had to memorize stuff. We had to get signatures in our black books. We had to clean the house. I was never forced to drink anything and I was never physically abused. I am SURE that was going on at other houses and my chapter was suspended in 2013 for alleged hazing. National pulled the charter and SDSU kicked them off campus. I was sad but supported the action.
I now have one son who is a Freshman and another son that is a HS senior. As I read these stories, I am just as shocked and saddened as you all are. I too don’t understand how it can still be happening! I am sad and very wary of Fraternities these days. S17 is all about the Marching Band and is not likely to join. S18 is a possibility but I will try to help him make a good choice. There ARE good choices out there. There ARE fraternities that do not haze and when you find one you do find a great organization where young men make lifelong friends, give back to their school and community and actually espouse the values that the fraternities have. The challenge will be to find them.
Wait was that a student saying “we figured they’d handle it, we just went on our way” after seeing an unconscious classmate on the sidewalk??? Or am I misreading this?
Nope…you read that correctly…I just can’t understand it.
Well, in fairness actually, the quote said this: " There was a big crowd of people, we figured they’d handle it"
It wasn’t like they were the first on the scene, noticed, and callously kept walking. Do you really need more looky loos and gawkers? If anything, more people just get in the way.
Interfraternity CEO: ‘Am I just fighting for a bunch of idiots?’…
http://www.businessinsider.com/interfraternity-ceo-doesnt-know-scope-of-hazing-2017-10
@doschicos, I wasn’t sure of the meaning.
College students keep dying because of fraternity hazing. Why is it so hard to stop?..
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/2017/10/college_students_keep_dying_because_of_fraternity_hazing_why_is_it_so_hard_to
While I will admit that hazing is definitely a problem in fraternity life, I do wish we wouldn’t focus solely on fraternities to the detriment of other organizations. I have friends who were hazed through their soccer and rugby teams (the rugby hazing was one of the worst I’ve ever heard about and honestly was worse than the PSU incident in this thread). Friends at a small LAC without Greek life had underground secret societies that hazed. My BIL attended a small CTCL and went through “dorm hazing” his freshman year. We were hazed in marching band. It’s everywhere, but people seem to think it only happens in fraternities.
I don’t think justice is served by making an example of people, and I also don’t wish to see people being overcharged. On the other hand, I think the take-away message that fraternity members are likely to draw from this case is that they can walk away from problems they have caused, even if that leads to death. Certainly momofthreeboys has expected the charges to be dismissed, all along. I think that expectation on the part of fraternity members explains in part why this type of thing keeps happening.
As long as the fraternity members don’t actually pour the alcohol down someone’s throat, they can maintain that the person drank voluntarily. I think this idea should be re-examined. I have heard of cases where the pledge class as a group “has” to consume a certain amount of alcohol. It seems unlikely to me that anyone in the pledge group who actually wanted to be in the fraternity would decline to drink.
Another aspect that I wonder about: civil liability. I have thought that if one serves alcohol to an inebriated person when one is hosting a party at home, and the person subsequently gets into an accident, the host has civil liability for that. Is that true only in some states? Do the fraternity members have civil liability in the Piazza case? Could one get around the liability by putting open bottles on the table, but not actually pouring from them–letting the guest do that? I would think not, but I don’t know.
And yes to tutumom2001’s comment–there is hazing outside of fraternities. There was a marching-band hazing death not that long ago, and I think the young man who died had already been in the band for several years.
Ten arrest warrants were issued today in the case of the LSU pledge who died. All charged with hazing, one with negligent homicide.
His BAC was .495.
Let’s see if things turn out the way they did in center county.
Did anyone watch the episode of Bull last night? It was about a hazing death.
@tutumom2001 and Quantmech, I agree with you both. Here is an article from this week about the military:
What I applaud about this article is that leadership is stepping up and weeding out the bad apples. They exist everywhere from sports teams, bands, fraternities, military etc. The difference between this approach and what is happening at PSU, for example, is that the PSU sanctions penalize the entire system. The Marines are not penalizing the entire platoon for bad behavior. They are getting rid of those causing problems. If Greek organizations are to be cleaned up, a better approach would be to get rid of the members and chapters that are causing problems. Penalizing any sorority and the other 39 fraternities for what happened at Beta is overreaching. Better to figure out where the problems lie and pick them off one by one. With 40+ fraternities on campus, maybe after 10 are gone, those remaining will be the ones that are following the rules or, if not before, will recognize that to survive they must stop dangerous behavior.
As a Freshman at UCLA in the late '80’s I attended a few frat parties one night at the start of the school year. All of frat row was holding interest parties before pledging. After that night, I had zero interest in frats and never attended a function again. I didn’t see any hazing – that probably came later in the process. But the level of drinking, drugs and attitude toward women was revolting. At one frat they had everyone in a big circle around the “live entertainment” which involved what were presumably hired strippers (or possibly prostitutes). The guys were taking turns going into the circle and leaning on the ground with their heads facing upward with folded $10 or $20 bills in their mouths that the “entertainers” would relieve them of by grabbing the money using a body part between their thighs not intended for that purpose. Then the next frat gave small group tours to a few people at a time and showed us the big room in the attic that was just a bunch of mattresses and they said this is where you bring the girls to party when they are drunk. Those were the two most memorable examples but as far as I could tell every party along the row had the same vibe. This is how they marketed themselves to actual students – not what their literature or chapter presidents said as sound bites about all the benefits of networking and charity work and friendship, which they all claimed as well. But this is what they basically were showing guys was the “real” benefit of joining. I read all the time about frats that do all these positive things, but remain skeptical that those things aren’t the side show and the main event is still about wild parties.
A fraternity pledge died of alcohol poisoning. Now 10 are charged with hazing…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/10/11/a-fraternity-pledge-died-of-alcohol-poisoning-now-10-are-charged-with-hazing/?utm_term=.b8ff467e135e
It seems to me that PSU DID penalize this fraternity - it was supposed to be dry, a punishment for previous bad acts. The problem appears to be enforcement. The article that made me so sick explains in detail how “enforcement” worked - a couple of student “monitors” stopped into the party, saw everyone drinking against the rules, and left.
The whole thing smacks of wink wink nod nod let’s appease the anti-Greek people and do whatever we want to do anyway.
From the Atlantic article
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/a-death-at-penn-state/540657/
That is PSU sticking its head in the sand and going LALALALA.
And that seems to have led to the current situation where frat brothers (and yes, sports team members too) are more afraid of reporting injuries than of someone dying of them.
@bester – separate thread if you care to post there.