Greek life activities cancelled at Tufts amid hazing reports

[clemsongirl]

Originally Posted by sorority_woman

Once I started advising, the thing I noticed about hazing is it seems to be part of the culture of the northeast. It's shameful.

I could not agree more with this observation. The only campuses I can think of where hazing is so pervasive it's expected of both fraternities and sororities, the campuses where orgs won't colonize because they know their chapters will end up being involved, are schools in the north. I don't know why this is, especially since interest in Greek life in general is lower up north, but I have some guesses.

[carnation]

You know how some chapters have actually been disbanded by their nationals due to the actions of just a few people? (Like one strong group very near here.) That's why I would fight to keep a girl with a QR out.

ETA: I have seen horrible hazing by locals in Georgia (3 schools) and Hawaii.

[sorority_woman]

Originally Posted by carnation

You know how some chapters have actually been disbanded by their nationals due to the actions of just a few people? (Like one strong group very near here.) That's why I would fight to keep a girl with a QR out.

ETA: I have seen horrible hazing by locals in Georgia (3 schools) and Hawaii.

I don't disagree with you that it could be horrific for the chapter and that a girl like that could do a whole lot of damage.

I can't speak to any group other than mine, but my group had a process if a member warranted it. I also can't speak to the years I wasn't on campus, but I did not see one girl triple-cut (since there were 3 sororities during my time) for QR while I was there. Part of it probably was because we didn't have Facebook.

Originally Posted by clemsongirl

I could not agree more with this observation. The only campuses I can think of where hazing is so pervasive it's expected of both fraternities and sororities, the campuses where orgs won't colonize because they know their chapters will end up being involved, are schools in the north. I don't know why this is, especially since interest in Greek life in general is lower up north, but I have some guesses.

It's horrible, especially at schools with such brilliant students.

If you would care to share your thoughts via PM, I'm all ears.

[carnation]

Originally Posted by sorority_woman

I I did not see one girl triple-cut (since there were 3 sororities during my time) for QR while I was there.

There was a freshman who was septuple-cut after first parties at MS State one year! She had had, um, a memorable summer beforehand when she came to visit friends. Her dad called up Panhellenic and wanted to know why she was cut and I don't remember what we told him.

[lauralaylin]

Originally Posted by sorority_woman

I don't disagree with you that it could be horrific for the chapter and that a girl like that could do a whole lot of damage.

I can't speak to any group other than mine, but my group had a process if a member warranted it. I also can't speak to the years I wasn't on campus, but I did not see one girl triple-cut (since there were 3 sororities during my time) for QR while I was there. Part of it probably was because we didn't have Facebook.



It's horrible, especially at schools with such brilliant students.

If you would care to share your thoughts via PM, I'm all ears.

I advised there for a time over 10 years ago, and I saw a couple PNMs triple cut. They would attend parties at their top two sororities.

[AOIILisa]

Originally Posted by clemsongirl

I could not agree more with this observation. The only campuses I can think of where hazing is so pervasive it's expected of both fraternities and sororities, the campuses where orgs won't colonize because they know their chapters will end up being involved, are schools in the north. I don't know why this is, especially since interest in Greek life in general is lower up north, but I have some guesses.

This is true and has been for a while - in the eighties, a few years after I graduated, one of our sororities at UMaine was kicked off campus for branding their pledges. There were rumors about others on campus, too. As an AOII, I wasn't hazed as you would have defined it back then, but it would definitely be considered hazing now. I'm not sure why it's such a Northeast thing but I'd love to know.

[irishpipes]

Originally Posted by sorority_woman

If you would care to share your thoughts via PM, I'm all ears.

Or share them here so GC is interesting again!

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by clemsongirl

I could not agree more with this observation. The only campuses I can think of where hazing is so pervasive it's expected of both fraternities and sororities, the campuses where orgs won't colonize because they know their chapters will end up being involved, are schools in the north. I don't know why this is, especially since interest in Greek life in general is lower up north, but I have some guesses.

Smaller chapters? Unofficial housing? Less emphasis on and attention paid to those chapters by the higher-ups of the (inter)national orgs?

[clemsongirl]

I'm in the middle of writing a history paper for finals (about sororities, of course) so I'll expand more tomorrow, but I definitely agree that smaller chapters play a part. It's much easier to haze a pledge class of 20 than a pledge class of 150.

-hypercompetitiveness at elite schools, as in "if it's hard to get in to this school, it should be just as hard to get in to this fraternity/sorority".

-a tradition of groups coming from locals/reverting to locals/operating off campus with no official recognition. All of these seem to be more common up north, especially in the SUNY system where all organizations were local for the better part of 30 years. Or schools along the line of Harvard/Brandeis/Princeton where the administration would prefer to stick their heads in the sand rather than have oversight of the organizations.

-administrators with less knowledge of Greek life in general. I'm thinking of one specific school that shall stay unnamed that doesn't recognize Greek life even though a good portion of their campus is Greek, and they have one employee with Greek experience that they've designated as the go-between for administration and the groups because he's the only one who has any first-hand Greek knowledge.

-less emphasis on being Southern women (with all that entails-feminine, religious, proper)-the kind of direct, aggressive hazing just doesn't seem in line with the culture of the women at those campuses.

-at some schools, a lack of other things to do. If your state school is in the middle of nowhere and you need rides to and from off-campus parties and there's no public transportation, you're going to make the pledges drive you. I'll never forget my friend from high school who was in a sorority at one of those schools telling me not to bring my car to campus my sophomore year because the sororities were going to make me drive as a pledge, and my utter confusion until I explained to her that our sororities didn't do that at Clemson. Did the fraternities make their pledges drive for a while? Yes, they did, but now only initiated members drive and that actually seems to have worked well.

Obviously, not all of these apply to all schools everywhere, but they're some generalizations I've seen borne out in being from the north and moving to the south for my undergraduate experience.

[33girl]

This tangent is the definition of "self fulfilling prophecy." If you keep saying the northeast is hazing central, people who are afraid of that culture won't pledge and people who are in favor of it will.

The rigid social mores and structures in the South seem like hazing to me, to be honest - and that's not for 7 weeks, that's for your whole college career (and beyond). No I am not saying it's the same as physical hazing, but the emotional and psychological pressure is something worse IMO. I mean hell - why would you feel a need to "test" someone when she's gotten through an extremely high pressure rush with 2000 other girls? That's, like, test enough.

Also I can only assume it's sororities we're talking about because there are tons of hazing incidents reported from southern fraternity chapters.

[chi-o_cat]

And more news from Tufts...

Former sorority sisters urge eradication of Greek life at Tufts

Geez. I mean, most of it sounds like members who joined as freshmen, thinking that's what they wanted, and then a few years later, realized it wasn't really their thing.

But if that part about the chapter advisor making them take down a Pride flag is true, that's not cool at all.

[AZTheta]

I take issue with this quote from the article:

“Greek life at Tufts is responsible for pain,” they wrote. “Greek life nationally is, too, and our dues support the perpetuation and further embedment of this pain.”

Talk about logical fallacies? Hyperbole, much? This is coming from college educated women? Yikes. Tufts is an odd duck IMO and it wouldn't break my heart to see NPC sororities (my own included) leave. That's my opinion only, I do not speak with any authority whatsoever. Just my opinion.

Whatever.

[33girl]

She didn't make them take the flag down, she just said she was glad it wasn't hanging. While this sounds bad, we have no idea of the context. As for a rapist being at the formal, they need to take that up with the individual sister who asked him to be her date.

I completely agree that NPC and IFC need to pull up stakes here and run like the wind. Then when the new local "non exclusionary" system that springs up has all these same problems and a few others, they can laugh hard.

[Cheerio]

Originally Posted by sorority_woman

AGD was not able to garner enough interest when they tried unsuccessfully to colonize in Fall 2015, which is why they postponed their colonization to Fall 2016.

I do not definitively know what their ultimate reasoning was for choosing not to colonize, but I imagine that they would not have put forth an application let alone a full colonization push in Fall 2015 if they had a problem with how the system at Tufts works.

Perhaps as AGD introduced their on-campus colonization team to Greek and non-Greek Tufts women they smelled some of the over-ripe apples (students) a mile away.