Quantcast
Channel: phitaublog » Ritual
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Building Brotherhood

0
0

By: Brad Joutras, Purdue ’00

LYO Profile PicThroughout my experience in working with fraternity men, and being one myself, I have found that one of the largest issues is figuring out how to “build brotherhood.” In an effort to develop friendships and lifelong bonds we seem to incorporate activities that end up doing the complete opposite. These are the activities where we see hazing develop. I want to share a story I heard along the way that brings to light the feelings of someone who was hazed.

Imagine for the first few weeks of your college career you are making your way around campus, finding where your classes are located, setting up your dorm room and looking for new friends to hang out with. You are invited to a rush event through a friend of yours from high school. You attend the rush event and end up meeting some guys who seem fun and could be good friends down the road. Before you know it you are being asked to join their fraternity. You immediately say yes thinking these are all good guys that you can see yourself playing intramurals with, talking about dating with, getting involved on campus with, etc. Sure, you might have to do some things that you don’t want to but it will all be over soon and you will be a part of this thing called brotherhood.

Several weeks go by where you truly believe you are making lifelong friends. Although, you had to clean each week and stand in line-ups to be quizzed each week you thought it was going to make you a better brother. You made sure to keep your fellow pledge brothers motivated towards the end goal, initiation. You became pledge class president and felt like you had the respect of the brothers. You had many conversations with a group of chapter leaders on how to take the chapter to the next level. You were very excited to become a brother to implement some of the goals you had been talking about throughout the semester. Then, hell week was here. One more week and you would be a brother.

During hell week you were not allowed to sleep and tested on fraternity facts fairly consistently. On the other hand, there were a few fun games and inspiring stories that the brothers share and you start to feel like you are a part of something special. The last night after days of no sleep you are accused of doing something very wrong that was detrimental to the chapter. You are brought up into a dark room, by yourself, and yelled at by brother after brother. Your close friends in the chapter come in the room to tell you how disappointed they are of you and you break down. You start to feel like you not only let down your pledge brothers but the entire chapter even the fraternity as a whole. You have now lost the bonds that you had made over this past semester. All the goals you talked about for the chapter were meaningless now. Finally, you are brought downstairs for what you think is going to be more yelling from the brothers. In actuality, you are taken through your initiation ceremony. You hear pieces of values, passages from the bible and you wonder what is happening? At the end, your blindfold that you have been wearing for almost six hours is removed and you are congratulated. It was all a hoax. You are a brother now. You made it. It is over. Thank God, it is over.

The reason I shared this short story is to show a perspective of how one starts their experience of joining a fraternity and how it changes throughout their orientation period if we haze. We should be excited to just have learned the true meaning of our organization through our true Ritual not met with a feeling of “it’s over.” This should be a beginning of lifelong experiences, not the end to “something you never want to do again.” When we haze like the example above we steal that person’s one chance to experience the Ritual. That is something we can never give them back.

However, there were several places in this story where true brotherhood was shown. For example, talking seriously with associates about ways to move the chapter forward, including them in intramurals, sharing historical stories about the chapter, etc. All of these things truly build brotherhood and lifelong bonds that we are all looking for. Let’s not steal anyone’s chance to experience those critical pieces of our great organizations through meaningless activities for our own amusement.

For resources on hazing prevention and National Hazing Prevention Week, please visit: http://www.phikappatau.org/preventhazing.



Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Latest Images

Trending Articles



Latest Images