by McKenzie Snellgrove<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the chaos following rush week, many Centre students have witnessed the effects of hazing taking hold of their affiliated friends. While hazing has been a long time tradition of college fraternities and sororities, some are starting to wonder if it has gone too far.
In one recent testimony, a junior was walking back to their dorm in Old Quad from the library after a late night study session, and saw a hoard of naked freshmen running towards them in the dark. As a seasoned Centre student, this was not the first time they had witnessed a Flame run in action. No \u2013 what alarmed them was what happened when they reached the infamous art piece. One by one, the pledges were seen being raptured up into the trees by a separate group of freshman, crouching on the branches of the nearby trees. The witness, when questioned, stated that the affiliates were wearing fraternity t-shirts and nothing else, but was unwilling to name the group.
According to one DPS officer, these \u201cGreek Tarzans\u201d have come close to being caught multiple times, however no one has been detained as of now. Most victims of the \u201cpledge-nappings\u201d have managed to escape and make their way back to Greek Row with their sanity intact, but when approached, have been reluctant to speak of their experience. One brave Delta was able to tell us that it was \u201ca slanderous experience akin to the removal of the cappuccino machine in Cowan\u201d that left her feeling \u201cworse than the entirety of the sorority house\u201d \u2014 78% of which had recently come down with a nasty strain of the flu.
Another perspective of this issue comes from a concerned Kappa whose roommate was one of the pledges that has yet to descend from the trees of terror. This sister was able to get into contact with her roommate, offering a brief insight into the minds of these tree-dwellers. Allegedly, these pledges have been indoctrinating their victims into a sanctuary above their sacred Flame. She spends her nights singing frat party songs, playing beer pong with acorns and red solo cups, and eating scraps of food out of stolen Deke hats. She told her roommate she has hope that she will one day be able to descend back to campus and rejoin her sisters and Centre community, but for now she is trapped in the web of hazing, desperately trying to learn the Greek alphabet. So far, she\u2019s only missed a weekends worth of parties, though for committed affiliates that can feel like a lifetime.
This conundrum has left students, both affiliated and not, wondering if hazing has gone too far. How far must these pledges go to prove their worth? Where will Centre draw the line as to what counts as \u201ctoo much?\u201d Running the Flame seems harmless, pledges drinking every day doesn\u2019t have too many adverse effects, and cracking skulls on the concrete while wrestling over a Deke hat can\u2019t be too bad \u2014 right? Where do we draw the line?
We\u2019re all part of the Centre community and, Greek or not, we have an obligation to take care of each other. Let\u2019s approach hazing the way we played capture the flag at recess: play for your team and have fun running after your friends, but remember that the kids you see on the field might also be in your class the next day \u2014 or have a really cool gaming system they\u2019re willing to share. Either way, stay safe and keep your eyes on those trees. You never know when the next hazing ritual will begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by McKenzie Snellgrove During the chaos following rush week, many Centre students have witnessed the effects of hazing taking hold of their affiliated friends. While hazing has been a long time tradition of college fraternities and sororities, some are starting to wonder if it has gone too far. In one recent testimony, a junior was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-centonion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}