re: Authorities investigating death at LSU Phi delt house

I hope you never have the opportunity to do that. I have and it is very painful.

quote:

---

How can Greeks get universtity (public) support and still exclude people? Their land is leased for like 100 years for $10 per year.

That is support. But yet they can discriminate. Seems fishy.

---

Not sure about at LSU but at Alabama my fraternity had the same land lease deal. Except for the fact that we built a $8,000,000 house on that land. In our case the University owns the land so they can dictate what you can and cannot do on their property...

Pledgeship should just be eliminated it would solve a lot of issues.

For me i went through well after it was really bad and while it was chill - running errands, helping out the house staff, cleaning peoples apartments, study hall, some mental shite like being locked in a dark room with everyone and a weird song on repeat, the scavenger hunts, have nasty stuff thrown at you, eating some horrible bullshite, passing a bottle down the line (not a big deal between 30+ people), exercise / bow and toes, a couple knees or kicks and a few nights where you had to get kneed in the leg a bunch or whatever.

That said, there are alway some people that take themselves / greek life/ the fraternity way too seriously and take it too far. Obviously its like any group of people where you like some, are friendly with some and simply don't like others.

I hated some of the people that took it too seriously and were assholes. I've never understood the joy of kicking a defenseless person or some of the other bullshite people do - especially when its at a personal house with just a few people. A very very small level of that at the beginning lets them be scared and all but it really isn't necessary.

I had to kick out some people from my personal house a couple times when my roommate and some other of our "friends" brought pledges home late at night. i didn't like it at first and then they started taking it too far and i told them to go get in my bedroom and got rid of the extra people.

Point being that even in a fairly chill system / group you can't control everyone and the whole pledge system is just not controlled enough to continue IMO as in a large group of roughly 20 year olds some will definitely start power tripping and not realize that the whole thing is really just a bunch of bullshite surrounding a group of people wanting to have fun.

quote:

---

Problem most of these guys are raising their own kids by this stage in life.

---

True, but after you get through whatever passes for "Hell week" in most places, that supervision can drop to consultation, drop in, and a team of alumni can rotate through.

I mean - if they want to keep the Greek system even remotely what it was in the past - if the alumni themselves don't care enough, maybe it should die.

I never pledged myself, but we had the same thing with the adventure company in ROTC - hazing, a hell "weekend" if you will. Things borderline got out of hand even in that context with military discipline, so I can definitely see the potential in a frat house.

Ya i mean, i did it for a year and a half and then stopped - my friend group out of the whole thing enjoyed the bar / private house party scene a lot more - plus we hung out with everyone's friend from high school who wen to bama who were in 5 / 6 different fraternities or not in one at all so it was easier more fun to get together at someones personal house. This is just my take based on a semester as a pledge and then a year or so on the other side.

If it can be enforced the servant rules would work. No people at an actives house after dinner should be a hard enforced rule, cleaning and bullshite like that during the day, only sanctioned group events at night with a person in control to pull the plug if it gets out of hand. All of that really shouldn't be necessary but i guess with a group of young people some will be on a power trip and get off taking it too far for some reason like that.

quote:

---

So why do things like binge drinking deaths never happen to sororities?

---

Female brains mature earlier than males. It really is that simple.

quote:

---

sitting here looking at a picture on my desk of my 8 month old son, and I can't imagine ever having to read his autopsy report

---

Yeah. If one of my twins died at the hands of some douchebag 20 year olds, I don't know what I would do.

quote:

---

No people at an actives house after dinner should be a hard enforced rule

---

Some chapters do. We ejected actives the year I ran the pledge program for getting drunk and calling several pledges over at midnight to frick with them. My pledges, my responsibility. It was your arse if you thought you could frick with them on your own. I sure as hell didn't want to go to jail because I didn't properly monitor what we were doing. My fear was never the chapter as a whole going overboard because, for 18-22 year old fraternity members, when we had any interactions as a group with the pledges we were very good at calling each other out when "fun time" started crossing out of the good-natured realm. My fear was always one or two members running amok on their own without that group regulation and doing something stupid. That was the whole reason we voted on and instituted the "you don't mess with pledges on your own" bylaw.