No, this is a frat. These are rich children playing about to practice exploitation, dehumanizing faces they see every day, and allowing sociopath tendencies.

There’s zero debt in this picture. There’s donations to the university to keep most of these people enrolled.

No.

Bail was $400.

Which is kind of shockingly low but two guys posting a $400 bail is not a trillion. Nor is it even “rich kid” money.

It shows they are willing to take abuse and follow orders without asking questions and not answer questions or reveal things to others. It lets employers and higher ups find people with those qualities which is part of why they fail upwards into management and administrative positions and end up in finance so frequently

Genuinely some do great public works but are overshadowed by this sort of nonsense.

Idk I was in a frat and it was mostly about volunteering and partying. No hazing that I was aware of. No pledging process. I ended up dropping because it felt a bit like paying for friends and I was broke. But many do really good work and are well meaning.

now do sororities

Especially in the more elite institutions, these are the good ol’ boys clubs that funnel into positions of power.

It’s a long chain sunk-cost-fallacy. It starts with going to a party at the house and seeing all the guys and their camaraderie and realizing you are on the outside of that. Who doesn’t want to belong somewhere? You can build your own friend and family tribe over time but a frat gives you a whole community at once, a name, a gathering place, a permanent association that they tell you you will carry through life. Some of their dads are also still members. So you think wow and try to join. They say you’ll need to prove yourself. You don’t want to back down of course.

So you go through a few trials and chores. And from that point on, every chore or trial they hit you with is an opportunity to quit, but then everything you put into the previous chores and trials will be wasted so you persist. And ultimately, when you are inducted to the group, you value that more because of what you suffered to get it. It turns out value goes both ways deep in the human mind: something gives you great pleasure, it’s valuable if it can keep doing that. Something you now possess cost you great pain to get, it must be valuable and you’d better hold onto it so you don’t need to go through that again.

And then it’s on to the sadism and power flexing of putting others through it, secure in the knowledge that it won’t harm them because you endured it.

This is just a weird human social phenomenon that pops up no matter how many times it is banned. How do you get someone to join a group and stay loyal? Put them through hell to get in. They’ll never want to invalidate that investment.

Well, almost never. I did have one friend in college who went through the entire ordeal of rushing a frat and then on the day they were inducting members, he stepped up to the podium to be named a member and told them all to go fuck themselves and walked out forever. But I think he was the exception.

Would be impossible to ban, freedom of association is part of the first amendment after all

That’s just locker room talk.

We wouldn’t have the phrase “cunt punt” without the greek system.

Traditional abuse is traditional!

Including medical residencies tbh

Heh, you just described Agile and about 7 other workplace methodologies.

and then the onion dip, and mustard, and mayo wrestling.

Holy crap…

And people questioned Brett Boofinaugh. I wouldn’t hesitate to think that there were plenty of parties with Gang Bang Greg and Handsy Hank.

Lemme guess, SAE?

This is america bro they can’t stop these dudes from running a party house, in fact the more they try the more allure it has for the participants. “The bad boy frat” is an american media icon.

The university does not have the authority to block students from participating in an off-campus organization unaffiliated with the university, basically.

It’s amazing how many of them take pride in shit like this.

no one gets forced into joining a frat. Its a decision each person makes. Not all frats are bad either, but like people willingly chose the bad ones knowing their reputation and meeting their members.

They might have a vague idea that something happens, but it’s not like they’re invited by someone saying “hey want to come sit in a hot dirty basement after we throw condiments at you?”

Hazing (and lots of other kinds of abuse) exploit that uncertainty and the reluctance to back out.

It comes with a lot of opportunity with allums

networking/connection to lawfirms, Politics, other bougie jobs like executives for companies.

It’s the far right side of school life, where the frat is a hierarchical in-group. The pledges put up with it for access to the priviledges that come with being in the group and ones that go through with it have a mix of a) thinking it’s paying their dues now to reap the benefits later, b) don’t appreciate how much it might escalate until it does, and then have peer pressure and sunk cost fallacy driving them to continue, and c) the escalations might also excite them because if this is what they have to put up with to get in, if this is acceptable for senior members to subject junior members to, just imagine what the frat will let them get away with when they are full members or senior members. It’s like the “it’s ok for billionaires to treat my class like shit because I’m planning on joining them one day” mindset, except with an actual path to joining them soon.

There might also be some S&M aspects to it where some on the M side even enjoy it, though I can’t really relate to that myself so it’s only speculation.

It builds a cult like environment and makes people feel exclusive that they got through it

What value does frat membership have

Networking? Lots of people in these orgs are good for job contacts.

These days, ppl don’t let strangers into their homes, many feel the need to join to literally have somewhere to go on weekends that isn’t the dorms. Most dudes Ik in a frat dropped a year or two in once they knew enough ppl to go out on weekends and hangout at different houses without needing the frat. Most may not be accurate, a lot of people stay. Tbh I only got away with having fun drinking and partyhopppng because many of my friends were in frats and would let me in.

Also they get laid a lot just by being in a frat, the amount of woman I had act thirsty over me asking what frat I was in just to lose all interest when I said none is hilariously high. Obv not all women, but a good small amount does like fucking dudes just because they are in frats.

Throwing parties yourself or with your friends sucks, it gets dirty really fast, unless you have someone watching the door like frats do it gets packed with freshman who desttroy your home every time. Everytime I kicked people out of my own house for it randomly getting packed they broke something on the way out.

From what I’ve heard of hazing, it’s realtively tame compared to what it used to be. They try to avoid getting banned off campus or are trying to come back on after being banned typically. Most fked up things I heard at my school was being chased in a forest with paintball guns and needing to chop a tree in teams (which got that frat banned since it was protected land)

Then there’s hell week where they toss them in a basement and throw flour and oatmeal type sht (claiming its vomit) at them while telling them it’s actually gonna be 2 weeks.

I mean yes, but… pot, kettle. The US shares much weird fraternity hazing culture with the UK even nowadays.