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The hazing allegations against the Delta Ta Delta fraternity at Ohio University reminded me of all the times in the past when I’ve heard Greek supporters assure anyone who will listen that their particular chapter is different from all the others.
The first time I heard this was in the ’60s when my oldest brother was pledging a fratenity at another state school. At the dinner table, he assured our parents that it was different from “all the other frats,” and that they didn’t go in for excessive drinking or hazing. “We’re all about academics, philanthropy and community service,” he declared soberly.
I also remember the smirk my dad, a fraternity brother at the University of Missouri after World War II, wore at hearing that. No doubt he would have told his own father the same thing in 1946 if my dad hadn’t been a grizzled veteran at the time.
Fast forward to the ’80s and ’90s when my brother would regale family gatherings with tales of drunken sex-fueled bacchanals at the good ol’ SAE house .
Over the years, I’ve heard it over and over again — “my fraternity’s not like that,” or “the Greek system at OU is very responsible” or “we’re all about academics and philanthropy.”
To that, I say “baloney.”
While some of the Greek chapters, especially the sororities, might not be any worse than an ordinary dorm floor section at OU when it comes to drinking and partying, the Delta Tau Delta incident suggests that others aren’t quite as respectable. The hazing especially is troubling, and for me, perplexing.
I can’t understand how a self-respecting man (and yes, you’re an adult male if you’re 19 or 20) could let other young men treat him that way. If somebody hit me, I’d hit them right back. Hell, if somebody yelled at me or tried to force me to guzzle a box of Franzia, I’d send them to knuckle junction.
Peer group pressure can be a powerful thing, and I certainly let it influence my decision-making as a teenager. The only time I ever shoplifted something — a foot-long stick of bubble gum at a Woolworth’s in Akron — I did it completely because of pressure from friends (“What, you’re chicken?”). And later in the dorms and back home with friends, I joined in stupid drinking games for no better reason than “everybody else is doing it.”
But I was never physically assaulted, had someone order me to poison myself with alcohol, or told that if I didn’t do something, I could no longer hang out with my friends.
It shouldn’t even need to be asked, but here’s the basic question — if a club would encourage you to be beaten and intoxicated into a coma, why on earth would you want to belong? One disturbing answer to that question is so you can survive and force some other week-kneed, supplicating sap to do the same thing next year.
Whatever the case, I think it’s fairly obvious that being a man has nothing to do with belonging to a group that treats you worse than an animal. If a fraternity treated a dog the way the Delta Tau Delta members treated their rushes, it would probably be up on felony charges.
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Very well put, it is a well known but "unspoken" fact of most of the Greek world that hazing happens, and that includes at OU. Is it wrong or is it part of the Greek life initiation culture, I do not know. What I do know is that when people get legitimately hurt by someone else,no matter what the situation may be, those responsible should deal with the consequences. Thus we have Delta Tau Delta....