Whatcha think? Would campus life be happier?
Following a night of heavy drinking at a fraternity at Texas State University, a 20-year-old was found dead. Another 20-year-old died at Florida State University in nearly identical circumstances.
At Penn State University, the victim was 19. Security cameras and text messages documented the fumbling attempts by fraternity members to revive him and then to cover up the link between his unconscious condition and the 18 or so drinks that they forced on him in a roughly 90-minute span. As he moaned and thrashed and blood from a lacerated spleen filled his abdomen, they waited about 12 hours to summon medical help, by which point it was too late.
At Louisiana State University, the victim was 18, with a blood alcohol content of .496 percent. That’s more than six times the legal limit for driving and about two and a half times the amount of alcohol that can cause someone to black out.
All of these incidents occurred this year — the Texas and Florida ones in the last two weeks — and yet 2017 isn’t some nadir. At least six young men died in connection with fraternity hazing rituals in 2014, according to Hank Nuwer’s Hazing Clearinghouse, a website with a ghastly, heartbreaking tally. Two years before that, seven died.
Across decades, the toll of deaths related to fraternity revelry and recklessness is surely in the hundreds. And while physical stress plays a role in some fatalities, most reflect the kind of extreme drinking that’s in the DNA of so-called Greek life... (Frank Bruni, continues)
Here is an interesting topic. I personally only know about Black sororities and fraternities, but the message is the same. Black greek organizations are known to haze and beat their members to massive proportions. I have seen this first hand with a guy friend and the bruises covered on his body. YET, with my knowledge if given the opportunity I would still want to join a greek organization. We could do without the rituals of drinking until you die and beating the crap out of people but the original benefits and the reason they were created we could create a new greek life.
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