By: Jim

Jim
Fri, 17 Nov 2017 17:00:28 +0000

First off, I’d like to say that as a former active member in a fraternity at Ohio State it pains me to see the lack of insight, transparency, and awareness the administration has executed. It’s no secret that Student Conduct, as well as, IFC are impeccably incompetent at their jobs. Nobody in either office has the courage to stand up for due process, and instead, they broad-brush the entire fraternity system. This does no favors to anyone.

If there are allegations of hazing, conduct an investigation and if they’re found guilty, proceed further. Suspending a chapter’s operations because of the POSSIBILITY of hazing isn’t fair, nor efficient. By suspending fraternities, now student conduct and IFC have to use much more time, resources, and energy to make sure each chapter is abiding by the cards they’ve (prematurely) been dealt. If there is evidence of hazing, the administration should proceed further and seek justice, but there’s no good in putting the vast majority of law abiding fraternity members in purgatory.

Hazing has obviously been an issue in Greek Life not only at Ohio State, but everywhere in this country.

One of the authors of this piece wrote an article last month about the history of hazing at Ohio State, and subsequently quoted blog postings from GreekRank. For those of you who don’t know, GreekRank is a public blog where anybody (including non-Greek people) can rank chapters and post discussions. The bulk of the material on the site could (and should) be construed as satire. The quote below is from the article I referenced.

From Oct 31st, “Take greekrank.com for instance, the forum and discussion board where anonymous users can rank and comment on fraternities and sororities at different campuses across the country.
The page on hazing at Ohio State is filled with comments such as, “a frat that doesn’t make you earn your stripes shouldn’t be a frat. It’s not barbaric, it’s tradition and fun.”
“Yeah there was hazing, as there should be,” the most-liked comment, from March, reads. “It’s pathetic how [politically correct] this society has become. Hazing during pledging is beneficial and even fun. Gives you the best memories honestly.”

Sure there are some idiots in Greek Life who may actually believe what was said above, but it’s journalistically irresponsible to quote a anonymous blog post, especially when talking about this vast history of Ohio State fraternity hazing back to 2011.

This isn’t a culture issue. If you want to write about that, go down to an SEC school.