I too am a member of a fraternity and was initiated in Canada into Phi Delta Theta Fraternity. Phi Delta Theta is a bit of a leader in its alcohal free housing policy for all fraternities, something that didn’t go over well in Canada where the drinking age is much lower in most jurisdictions at 18. While I can’t say that alcohol free is a complete solution, when on campus with a group from age 17 to 22, there is always someone of age that can get the keg, but I think alcohol free has gone a long way to solving the problem as stuid things happen more frequently when alcohal is involved.

While for some reason Fraternity Hazing makes the headlines it is everywhere, in every organization to some degree of severity. I know people at my university that had a rite of initiation into the debate club and the chess club. My brother was a competitive hockey player and from about 14 years old there was always an initiation to the team and some were gross or dangerous. Hazing in all competitive sports is a very serious issue, and sometimes people have died in these rituals in Canada.

Taking things back through history most College Fraternities are based on Masonic rituals, all of Phi Delta Theta’s founding fathers were Free Masons, and the Free Mason’s have rituals that at some level may be considered hazing…though very mild by many of today’s standards, but back in the 1700’s were likely to induce a level of PTSD in some.

If we look at our military, basic training is all about breaking down the individual and building them back up in the name of the team. I was in a high school Cadet Program, and there was hazing involved, I’ll bet that it is common in High School ROTC Programs all across America.

I think that the military aspect of the 20th century did bring a lot of the more serious aspects of hazing into our organizations in general and Fraternities in Perticualar. These men who returend from war had some experiences that most of us will never experience.

And then there is the problem of legend in organizations that are all about their shared history, things that were done a long time ago, take on a life of their own, and get distorted far from what really happened and then when executed by the new generation go terribly wrong, all too often the legend never actually occurred, but it was a heck of a good story.

I can’t justify or excuse hazing, but at the same time Fraternities & Sorrorities build leaders and I think in whole, the experience, good and bad leads to this. We often think that fraternities are just a bunch of drunken kids, but the reality is that you are giving a bunch of 18–20 year-olds a house and a budget, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollares a year and telling them they must run this “Business” sucessfully. These large chapter houses don’t operate for free, and National HQ’s expenses for each chapter run into the hundreds of dollars per member. Almost all chapters learn how to give back to the community through local and national charities, and on a national basis raise tens of millions of dollars each year for worthy causes. The leadership skills that are leared at this young age carry many individuals into the highest levels of our political, judicial, and industrial offices. There is a reason such a high percentage of our politicians, judges, and captains of industry, and leadership in many of the universities are greek. It may also be part of the problem as to why the legal system is lenient on some of these activities, I can remember at least one occasion in a city far from home, drunk and underage and doing something stupid, when we encountered some police officers and should have been in some level of trouble, but the police officers turned out to be Phi Delts, and while we had to stop what we were doing, we didn't get the trouble that we could have and likely diserved.