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 The Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house at Dartmouth College. -
Tuesday, May 08, 2012 By Nathan Marden
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Hazing has been a part of many sororities, sports teams, clubs, military units, and gangs. Some hazing requirements are worse than others. Some put your body in danger while others make you embarrass yourself. Hazing is usually used to show a loyalty to a certain group. Usually hazing involves a ritual that forces a person who wants to be apart of a group to complete a task that each member of the group has already completed.
People should get in trouble for hazing acts but if they do they should only be very small punishments unless someone dies. If people are going to get in trouble then all the people in the group should get in trouble, not just three out of twenty-seven people like in some cases. It’s not like the people in the group forced them to do the task; they said if you want to be in this group you need to complete this.
The Dartmouth Hazing case, which surfaced in January, told of students forced to swim in a kiddie pool of rotten food, vomit and other bodily fluids, eat omelets made of vomit, and drink cups of vinegar. It’s not always the kids in the fraternity’s fault, but also the fault of the media for pressuring kids to fit in. That’s the main problem; people that force kids to feel the need to fit in should be getting in trouble, not the fraternity that clearly stated the standards and task that the kids need to complete to get in.
There were 27 students originally cited in the Dartmouth hazing case that were there to swear in the new pledges. Now only three of them are getting in trouble, when the other 24 could have easily stopped them. It doesn’t make sense to drop the charges on some but keep them on the others.
Hazing happens all the time. It is so common. In California there were two former students at Polytechnic State University that had a freshman drink himself to death trying to join a fraternity. He passed away trying to drink a large amount of alcohol in 90 minutes. All they received as punishment was 30 days in jail with 3 years probation and some community service. For something that extreme that’s all they get ,so why should the kids from Dartmouth get in any trouble at all when no one was hurt?
If people are dumb enough to put their life in danger just to fit in with other people and feel like they have power because they are head of a group, then thats the price they pay. People should know the limits of life and when they should just turn and walk away. I was always told to walk away from bad situations not stand by and wait for it to get worse.
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