Hazing

11 Pages 2743 Words

, difficult or humiliating acts. 2. To initiate, as into a college Fraternity, by exacting humiliating performances from or playing rough practical jokes.
One problem I see with the definitions above is they are very subjective. One could obviously place events such as physical assault or public humiliation such as nudity into hazing, however one could also interpret hazing as asking a “pledge” to answer the phone because it is may produce discomfort.
State legislations over the past twenty years have begun to outlaw hazing in their respective states, however many of the statues again directly address Greek hazing a fallacy I will address directly later. 42 of the 50 states currently have laws against hazing. The eight states without such laws are:
Alaska Montana New Mexico Wyoming
Hawaii Michigan South Dakota
Below is the State of Kansas Statute.
21-3434. Promoting or permitting hazing. (a) No social or fraternal organization shall promote or permit hazing.
(b) Hazing is intentionally, coercing, demanding or encouraging another person to perform as a condition of membership in a social or fraternal organization, any act which could reasonably be expected to result in great bodily harm, disfigurement or death or which is done in a manner whereby great bodily harm, disfigurement or death could be inflicted.
Concerning fraternity hazing one several underlying themes nationwide are occurring. Every national headquarters has an anti-hazing policy, which it preaches to its chapters. Many National Greek organizations have even changed the language from “pledge” to associate, citing that the very word “pledge” is a form of hazing. Several factors for the local chapters continuing to haze include: “hard to break tradition; I had to do it and so should they, they need to learn to respect us before we initiate them.” Indeed several fallacies could be made in these arguments and we will touch on those later. ...