Greek life often has many negative stereotypes surrounding it. Many of them stem from Hollywood’s depiction of sororities and fraternities. They often display a bunch of self-absorbed college students who only care about where the next party is. Greek organizations have been called cult-like, shallow, and dumb. I believe that this could not be further from the truth. Sure, there are those who like to party, and that’s fine. However, to have this be the face of sorority and fraternity life is inaccurate.
Even so, there is one thing that always seems to reappear in the culture of Greek life…hazing. “Hazing” is defined by Oxford dictionary as “the imposition of strenuous, often humiliating, tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training and initiation”. In Greek life, this is often represented with some sort of alcohol consumption or physical requirement, but can take various other forms. While not all sororities or fraternities haze, there are those that do. Those are the ones that end up giving a bad name to all Greek organizations.
Most schools have some sort of anti-hazing policy, which gives their definition of hazing and examples of behavior that constitute hazing. These policies also usually include a punishment for being convicted of hazing. Despite this, many organizations still continue to haze their new members, such as what occurred this past semester with Sigma Phi Epsilon here at Muhlenberg.
Sig Ep, despite already being on probation from an incident last year, was accused of hazing their new members. While this incident of hazing did not result in any physical injuries, there remains the fact that these incidents can have a psychological impact. There was not any physical injury in this instance, but that does not mean anything. Every year, there are deaths due to hazing, and while justice is usually served for the victim, there should not be a need for that in the first place. These activities can make members feel unsafe and can give other Greek organizations a bad name.
However, it should also be noted that hazing is not limited to Greek life. There is a long list of past hazing incidents by both high school and college sports teams from 1980 to 2000, with many more recent cases being a Google search away. While the anti-hazing conversation is very important, implying that it is limited only to Greek life is incorrect and dangerous. Only focusing on the negative aspects of Greek Life diminishes the positive things that can come from it.
Read Muhlenberg’s anti-hazing policy here.