The scariest element of dangerous hazing activities is that many accelerate from innocuous to dangerous over a period of a few years.
Here are some thoughts for chapter officers, chapter advisers, and general members to nudge their chapters away from dangerous hazing trends.
potential members need to be able to envision themselves as a part of your fraternity, and that’s easier to do when they know exactly what your fraternity is about.
Getting On Track: Overcoming Our Fraternity Chapter’s $18,000 Debt In the fall of 2010 I was elected to the position of Chapter President. I was elected via tie-breaker against another brother (who happened to be my little). It was an … Continued
I was at The Ohio State University working to re-establish a chapter of my fraternity in the spring of 2012. It was an interesting recruitment campaign as it was one of the rare instances where our entire team of five worked together to set up one chapter.
In our 2nd or 3rd week of the campaign, Woody Woodcock from Phired Up visited to offer coaching support to our team. Our recruiters were trained in part by Woody and his colleagues, and we had built a fraternal bond with one another over the course of our fall term – Phired Up staff would visit twice during each of our expansion campaigns.
Woody noticed some disorganization and distractions among the members of our team, so one evening he asked us to meet in one of our temporary apartments. We entered into a dark room, the only light coming from candles set on a table in the shape of our letters. The six of us stood around the table while Woody spoke. Some of what he said was written on a piece of paper, some of it may have been improvised, but the purpose of it was to reconnect us to why we were setting up a new chapter and the bond we all shared as fraternity men.
New members of Delta Sigma Phi memorize the Preamble to the Constitution prior to their initiation. Many forget it shortly thereafter, and few are required to or ever take time to analyze its meaning, which is strange; It explains the … Continued
It was my third or fourth day as a lifeguard, my tan was hitting its stride, and I came to the final stop in my rotation around the pool before I could take a break out of the sun. I … Continued