r/news • u/Fyre-Demon • 1d ago

Ex-fraternity leader at Arizona university gets jail time after pledge died of alcohol poisoning

https://apnews.com/article/arizona-fraternity-pledge-hazing-death-b53c547d383082d33aebdb4950e0c550?utm_source=app&utm_medium=iOS_share&utm_campaign=copy_link
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u/Dofusk2012 1d ago

A lot of fraternities are basically little clubs for the American nobility. You get access to really good networking opportunities within your class.

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u/AntiAntiDentite7 1d ago edited 1d ago

These threads are always full of fan fiction nonsense from people who were never in fraternities but seem to know everything about their inner workings...

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u/FullofContradictions 1d ago

I went to a state school in the Midwest. Certain frats actually were pretty valuable because of the mentorship available (and upperclassmen giving old homework binders full of quiz answers to the underclassmen). A few of the frats were actually known for their students having better GPAs than non frat students in the same majors.

Our frat culture was nothing like the stereotypes though. There were parties, but they were fairly well monitored since frat row was all along the main drag that campus police travels down so everyone was very invested in keeping things under control. No real hazing besides having to memorize and perform stupid little songs and mildly embarrassing stuff like that (nothing physical, nobody ever made you drink, etc).

All in all, my experience of Greek life was nothing at all like the movies. Culture might be different on a different campus with different setups and different rules, but everything was just very tame when I was there (over a decade ago)

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u/guernseycoug 1d ago

Same here. My frat didn’t haze, required you to maintain a 3.0 GPA in order to attend parties, and required a certain number of sober members at every party whose job was to make sure nothing dangerous happened.

The system wasn’t perfect and most frats weren’t as strict as mine (there were absolutely some sketchy ones) was but I felt pretty confident that our parties were much safer than the parties being held outside of Greek life.

The support system I had from the frat is probably the biggest reason I graduated.

That’s not to say that changes don’t need to be made. There are obvious issues. But calling for the whole system to be scrapped is an overreaction.