The idea of joining a fraternity or sorority is very appealing to many incoming college students. However, most students do not know that the Greek life is not all it is cracked up to be. Many students spend a lot of time and money on getting accepted into these Greek organizations. There are many good things that can come out of being involved, but the cons can ruin a person's life forever. Schools should end sororities and fraternities because it requires an enormous amount of time commitment and money, along with promoting alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and hazing.
Although many cons are present, a few pros need to be noted as well. The first, and probably the most prominent pro of being a part of a Greek letter organization, …show more content…
Hazing, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is the imposition of strenuous, often humiliating, tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training and initiation (“Definition of Hazing in English”). Unfortunately, fraternities and sororities tend to take hazing to a whole other level. There are countless different types of hazing rituals. For example, Braylon Curry, a Southern Methodist University junior, was forced by his fellow fraternity members to keep drinking from a gallon jug, threatening to beat him if he stopped. A few hours later, he was rushed to the nearest hospital as a result of having a seizure. Curry was not drinking whisky or beer, but water. He drank as much as fifteen liters of water in a short period of time. This extreme amount of water in such a short period of time caused his body to go into shock as a result of a deadly sodium imbalance (Childress). Braylon eventually recovered, but the water torture has not ended. There have been many other cases of students dying of this same type of hazing. There are also much more vicious forms of hazing. Some fraternities actually use paddles with the organizations Greek letters carved into them, and beat the incoming members with it. It frequently got so out of hand that their bodies were permanently disfigured, and occasionally even death occurred. In fact, since 1970, there has been at least one hazing-related death on a college campus each year. More fascinating statistics reveal that over 82 percent of deaths from hazing involved alcohol, and the first recorded incident of hazing involving sexual abuse occurred in 1983. Other hazing incidents involving sexual intimidation, nudity, or stimulation, have been increasing in their frequency since 1995 (“Stop Hazing at UMD”). There are many organizations that have assembled to try to reduce the amount of hazing. Colleges have even