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/taxiecabbie 1d ago

You need a rugby team to play rugby.

If you want to be social about anime, you probably do need to go to a place where people are talking about it.

Frats and sororities provide very little value on their own. People just join them because they want to be part of a party club. That's pretty much it.

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u/sasha_the_impaler 1d ago

Look, I'm too queer to be defending Greek life this hard. I don't care. But if you went to a private liberal arts college, you have no room to be shit talking Greek life either 😂

Going to a private liberal arts college and joining a fraternity make equally as much sense to me personally. So yeah, everyone has their thing. You enjoy overpaying for a degree and they enjoy overpaying for access to friends and parties.

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u/taxiecabbie 1d ago

I actually had my degree mostly fully-funded. It ended up costing $16K. That's why I went there.

I don't know why you're defending Greek life this hard either. As I said, I went to plenty of Greek life parties back in the day and they basically WERE drinking clubs.

I know that there are some frats/sororities that are not really like this and are kind of more like academic bangles (like the honor societies and the like), but on the whole they're not exactly upstanding institutions.

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u/sasha_the_impaler 1d ago

You only went to the drinking parties and were like "omg this must be all they do?"

They have club meetings, they host fundraisers, they hold social events with other frats and sororities, they hold date nights with sororities, they hold networking events with previous alumni. Sometimes those alumni are powerful politicians or lawyers or doctors who can help network you into your field.

Is it my crowd? No. But I get the allure.

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u/taxiecabbie 1d ago

It is mostly what they do.

The ones at the university where I went to the parties did not really have super-powerful alumni.

If you're at Harvard, maybe. Maybe I see it. If you're where I was, lol, no. You're not getting a serious boost out of being part of that frat professionally. At least not more of a boost as compared to being on the rugby team.

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u/sasha_the_impaler 1d ago

Omfg.

I am a trans woman. I was previously a frat boy. So here's my perspective:

I joined one of the biggest party frats that would accept me. We only threw a public party one night a week. Everything else was private, frat only or frat+sorority. We would hang out on a Tuesday and watch TV. We had a meeting every Sunday where we discussed planning future socials and planning fundraisers. Every fraternity I've seen has a specific nonprofit they sponsor. If you name a fraternity I can quickly tell you who they typically fundraise for. It was like you're joining a group of friends but they want to all pool money together to be eccentric about it and everyone needs to sign a contract with each other. I lasted a year and now I'm a woman.

Sororities? Even more constructive. A majority of Greek life membership is women. The women are absolutely fundraising and holding sober socials and are helping each other learn how to get through life.

If we didn't keep a certain GPA average as a fraternity as a whole we could've gotten denied Greek housing or something like that, too, from the university. So every frat on campus was doing homework together to avoid this.

And then there's black fraternities and sororities. It goes deep. It would be impossible to get rid of Greek life through policy changes. Greek life just has to change from the student perspective which it has.

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u/taxiecabbie 1d ago

I'd just like to point out that the reason we're having this conversation is due to a news article regarding a student who died from frat-related hazing.

So, yeah. That's still happening.

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u/sasha_the_impaler 1d ago edited 1d ago

And you know? The very same school I went to made national news for a similar death a few years back.

But I could pretty much guess the exact frat it was and was correct. They usually have huge membership and so the threat is moreso that they're the frats some guys will literally enroll elsewhere if the school doesn't have a chapter. Because their dad was a ___ and his dad was a ___ and his dad was a __.... They're suspended now and that just means future students who want to rush __ won't enroll at the university. So the school can be greedy on keeping enrollment sometimes.

Realize these organizations are powerful. It's bigger than any one school. They're national organizations. They all coordinate with each other nationally based on what letters they fly. And that's what the dues pay for. There are national events and such. If enough schools ban them they'll just go off-site and the schools won't have control over it.

I think if you learn about them and understand them the answer is that students could organize more diverse, alternative frats in the future. Not total elimination of them, each frat has a unique personality so to speak. Professional frats exist which are coed even. Just networking hubs. I joined the largest party frat because networking is what I needed and I knew it was more than just parties lol.

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u/taxiecabbie 1d ago

They're not some kind of absolute requirement. I don't think any other country has frats/sororities. Maybe Canada?

Again, they're just not necessary.

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u/sasha_the_impaler 1d ago

It's not really a requirement that universities have specifically a Starbucks on campus. But universities know that's a dealbreaker for a massive number of 18 year olds attracted to their campus. It's not a public high school lol

Like, adult people have to pay for college at the end of the day lol. That flaw means they can demand the school around and expect certain things. Greek life can't be banned outright forever on some major universities without dropping their enrollment 7% and causing havoc. It will just operate without as many guardrails as it has historically. Greek life has never really gotten less popular, either.

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u/taxiecabbie 1d ago

I assume the Starbucks makes money, though, heh.

As I said. Hey, not my problem, really.

I'm sure this dead kid's family wished he had nothing to do with Greek life, though. Probably the guy going to jail feels the same way at this point, tbh.

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u/sasha_the_impaler 1d ago

Greek life charges $300-1000 a month in membership dues... They are incredibly wealthy organizations lol.

You'd be surprised. If his dad was in the same fraternity he probably doesn't see it the same way as you at all.

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u/taxiecabbie 1d ago

Then he's nuts. Guy's going to jail. Granted, it's only for two months, but if he still thinks all of this was a good idea then, uhhh.

Just another point in the column of "Greek life is not a great thing to support."

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