Quote:
Originally Posted by 33girl
A good arbiter is "would you do this in front of your grandma? If not, it's hazing."
This however goes into Guys and Girls Are Different and I'd never presume to tell males of any age how to run their organizations.
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I like this comment and, under ideal conditions, it would be a pretty good standard for mature students to follow. But in my experience, 90 percent of the type of pledge hazing I mention in my prior post occurred out in the open. We hazed (and were hazed) everywhere -- on campus, in restaurants, on the streets and highways, in the dorms, in meal halls, and in front of professors -- we were never shy about it, rarely discrete and, except during scavenger hunt, were not concerned about any potential sanction from the state university I attended, which was a long time ago. (We did have explicit, detailed and strict chapter rules about when someone could be hazed and when they were off limits.) I would dare say that, at that time, we would not have been shy about a lot of the hazing even in front of grandma either - but the raunchier aspects of it would have been toned down a bit. We were careless because, at that time, no one at the university seemed to care about hazing - though it was likely still illegal. Times have certainly changed.
Edited To add: I believe that this type of experience is why many fraternity alumni have difficulty separating hazing from the modern pledging (or new member) concepts. They cannot conceptualize their fraternity (and fraternity experience) without the rites of passage (hazing) they experienced.
