Fraternity Brothers Aren't Real Brothers

Fraternity Brothers aren’t real brothers

I was walking home from school one day when I got a call from my mom saying that one of my friends was in the hospital, I asked why and my mom said that when he was going into college he decided to join a fraternity and was hazed. He drank to much beer and had to go to the hospital where he could have died. My friend is also my neighbor so this hit me pretty hard. Ever since then I have been very serious about the end of fraternities.

Hazing is an “initiation” to a fraternity using sexually humiliating, physically abusive, and/or forcing alcohol types of strategies to the hazing victim to show brotherhood to the fraternity, but it is really just torture. Hazing consists of the other fraternity members handing the person being initiated so much beer that it could be lethal, and some fraternities paddle whoever they are hazing which leave very explicit marks on the victim to such an extent that the victim can die from that as well. Hazing is a huge problem because hazing occurs 76% of the time when somebody new joins a fraternity which is 3% more than in gangs.

http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/file.php?path=/images/CQ_Researcher/r20040109-whohazesmost.gif - This is an image of the percentage of people who get hazed when they join one of these social groups.

A huge misconception about hazing is that people think that it is a very rare occurrence that doesn’t do much damage to a person or society when it is committed, but in actuality hazing happens a lot, and when it happens it does hurt. As in almost every fraternity hazing happens when new members join, most times that this happens the victims get sent to a hospital, and at least one hazing related death per year with seventy deaths since 2000, so hazing is getting worse. Somebody named Timothy Piazza who was a member of the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity died because of hazing last year. Timothy  was given eighteen beers in 82 minutes, Tim fell down the fraternity houses stairs, fractured his skull, went through irreversible traumatic brain injuries, had his spleen ruptured in multiple ways which caused extensive internal bleeding and hemorrhagic shock. Tim then died after being left at the bottom of the stairs for twelve hours. This incident not only killed Timothy, but ruined every other fraternity “brothers” life because themselves and the Beta Theta Pi fraternity have been charged with 850 charges including involuntary manslaughter. The shocking part bout this case is that the fraternity that Timothy joined was a “reformed” fraternity, which means that it has a strict behavioral policy, a no alcohol policy, and adult supervision with security footage. This was shocking to me not because they weren’t supposed to do these things, but because nobody knew this was happening, not even the adult who was supposed to be supervising the fraternity members. After I researched this case and others like it I became shocked because I thought that what happened to my friend was the worst that it could get, but I became scared and thought about “what if that happened to my friend?” I would have been devastated if my friend died, which made me devastated when I heard that many other people have died and made me hate fraternities even more.

https://www.unilad.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/111007_brandbox_americanpie.jpg.CROP_.rectangle3-large.jpg - Picture of students being hazed or “running the gauntlet” at a fraternity.

Fraternity deaths are getting more numerous which makes fraternities get more known which reveals more of the horrifying truth about fraternities to the world. Right now people are considering shutting down fraternities because of all of the deaths that fraternities have caused and the side effects of fraternities that affect the members, such as, being more likely to become a rapist, alcoholic, drug abuser, and much more.

Help fraternities get noticed so all of the deaths and ruined lives can stop. Fraternities are very close to coming to an end such as Timothy Piazza’s fraternity, and some schools are already banning fraternities from their campuses. We can help shut fraternities by working together and maybe even getting into contact with schools. Stand up against fraternities!

          http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/embed/public/2017/05/15/timothy-piazza.PNG - Picture of Timothy Piazza, the person who died at the hazing incident at Beta Theta Pi Fraternity.

If you would like to see my annotated bibliography, click here.