LSU frat members arrested for hazing death

Fuckabuncha nerds who need to rent friends.

 

I get so much pushback from frat guys and sorority girls (including my wife), when I crack jokes about this. They're very sensitive about it.

Every experience I had with a frat guy in college made me not want anything to do with frats. It's a generalization (some, I assume, are good people!), but man, there are a lot of douche bags.

I had (and still have, mostly) a great group of friends in college. I did not need to join a frat to meet them.

 

Good for you guys.

I never looked at it as renting friends. I can get where people think that, and I'm ok with you thinking that. I take no offense to it.
I didn't just rent friends. I got involved in college in ways I never would have as an Individual.
Because of My fraternity I got involved in paid school positions including SGA, where I was business manager, and student body president.
I served on the student court system. I went on road trips and spring break.... I did a lot of things GDIs at my small school didn't do.
I am part of a national fraternity that didn't tolerate hazing, and actively promoted educational campaign on things like hazing and date rape (No means No).

I don't know if my fraternity connections ever got me anywhere in life after college, but I try to make that effort as alum. And as I said, I wouldn't be the person who was in college or who I am now - including having met my wife - without my fraternity experience.


One more thing:
I don't understand the assholosh hazing... We picked big brothers (like most fraternities), as a 1st semester freshmen my big brother was a senior. And we clicked. Great guy. Super smart and a super smart ass. One of first nights after pledging we were blindfolded and put in the back of a truck to go to a ritual. As we are driving along, he leaned over to me and whispered ... I'm your big brother and I will not allow or do anything to harm you. Do you believe me?
I said yes. I had no reason to doubt him. We were friends and I trusted him. He also wasn't alone. There was no real hazing in our fraternity. None of the fraternities on campus did much hazing. We had a few that branded members (I'm told it was optional).
(I know I'm getting sappy), but that exchange with him, bought him my loyalty and friendship for life. It also helped me grow and learn how to treat my little brothers. I uttered those same words to them in similar situations.

Anyway....

 

There are six guys who remain inner-circle friends that I see multiple times a year, although one is my actual brother. Several others I see at least every other year or so on golf and ski outings. No rentals.

 

That's the thing. How could you ever respect someone who hit you for no reason? How could you not hate that person? Hazing engenders hate, not camaraderie. I still hate the guy in our frat who pseudo playfully kicked me in the ass and said "get moving, fat ass" back when I weighed about 30 pounds more than I do now. and that is minor shit.

 

I never really felt the draw of Greek life, although at my alma mater housing was so tight when I was a freshman that I lived in the Kappa Sigma house (which was just half of an assigned dormitory). Nevertheless, I knew a lot of people who really, really, really were fixated on it. I had a second cousin, couple of years older than me, who trotted off to college and promptly flunked all but one course for the year (and he got only a D in the one he passed). So when he transferred -- if you could call it that -- to the big state university up the road, he started with absolutely zero credits. Anyway, he wanted to do the fraternity thing but his parents asked him to please wait until he got his academic bearings. Nope. He sold his meal ticket to pay for his dues and spent the rest of the fall cadging and bumming to get his stomach full. And, of course ... he flunked out a year or so later.

Even more amazing to me, however, are the people whose parents are fixated on it. My godson somehow got into his college of choice by the skin of his teeth, but his mother was more excited about him having pledged SAE. He held on academically for a year-and-a-half and is now in the Coast Guard (with easily $30K in student loans on the books).

 

Some people manage to get significantly higher than that and survive, although anything above .25 is alcohol poisoning territory and .40 is the threshold were death becomes a worry.

Hardcore alcoholics will routinely get up in those ranges. Some even struggle to function when it drops below .10

I once saw a guy blow a .39 in open court. He had not been able to have a drink in four hours, and unless you smelled that distinctive sweet odor of metabolizing alcohol on his breath you would have had no clue he was hammered.

 

True, veteran alcoholics have a tolerance for amounts of booze which would lay out normal people. I imagine that if I had tried to do cocaine and keep up with Tom Petty or Stevie Nicks at the height of their addictions I'd have gone to the ER in full cardiac arrest. Thing is that we're talking about a college freshman, and most of them are pretty much lightweights.

That's a lot of alcohol.

 

It's not -- not for long, anyway.

 

The fraternity I was in was perfectly suited for me. About one-third Jewish liberal, one-third Catholic conservative, one-third asian. I connected with pretty much everyone on some level, it also helped me learn to live under the same roof with someone I may disagree with a bit - the arguments were lively, but respectful. Not saying fraternities in general don't deserve the rep, but we didn't haze, if pledges didn't want to drink, we drank water instead of beer.
I think its time that nationals start being decertified by campuses. Frat X screws up at College A, all the colleges bounce chapters from Frat X. It's not fair, but if chapters realized they could blow it for other chapters as well - it might improve accountability and vigilance.

 

Sigh. The military isn't what it used to be.

 

I'm not saying these personal stories aren't true from people on here, but I've heard similar constantly from frat defenders. Essentially, "well, we didn't do that at my fraternity."

Seems like an avalanche of shrugs, yet this shit is still happening. It's happening, but never at my frat. I'm guessing a lot of people don't want to cop to some stupid shit they did in college.

I'm just tired of hearing it, I guess.