As always, raj is bringing in all of your Live Feedback in the show, and raj, whether you pretended or not, it seems that everybody has an issue with hazing. The reason i never pledged, i would never join a group that hazed its members, but a lot do. Tony says he makes a good point. Tradition and Strong Social bonds, on College Campuses are a centerpiece of the social scene, but some say that membership comes at a high price. A rite of passage or pledging is a rite for all new members. Its rooted in secrecy and involved with hazing. By definition, hazing is any kind of abusive or humiliating initiation. The practice is outlawed in 40 states, but its often unreported. Epsilons the Second National fraternity to eliminate hazing from all of its chapters. But some wonder if the move will force practices under ground. So why is hazing allowed to thrive in greek life . Here to help us answer some of these questions, frank noore, specializing in education, and shes the president of the council. Nate burke is an alumni of pi alpha at the university of florida, and colin, a student and unaffiliated member of alpha he has lan pi in connecticut. He left the fraternity following differences with leadership. Welcome to the stream. And hank, for decades, we have heard hazing stories, and we have seen them reenacted in animal house and old school, so why is one of the largest fraternities in the nation doing something now . Theyre doing it as a means to try to bring back the reputation of bloomberg using some of the research i did, it was a fraternity that had the most deaths of aid certain period, ten, and they called them americas most deadly fraternity. And it stucked but its insurance that theyre paying, and lost reputation, and not being welcome on some campuses where they have had problems. Colin, more people are starting to speak out and break the code of silence, and youre one of them. Was the idea that knowing that the system has to change part of your reason for speaking out . Yes, [ audio difficulties ] if youre new to watching the extreme, we bring in a variety of our guests on different platforms. And its a way to get voices into the show. Sometimes the technology is not always perfect. Were going to work on getting nate a little clearer there. But illian a. I wan ileana, i wo you about this, what are you saying got it into this predicament in the first place . Knowing what goes on inside of fraternities and sororities. Thats a really good question. I think that one thing that perpetuates hazing and power, perpetuation of power, its a tradition of preservation over progress. And i think that ive seen it in my role in greek leadership among my peers, theres a real hesitancy to speak up and a real loyalty to tradition and a fear of going against tradition and a normalcy with all of these behaviors, but when you have come in, they might seem absurd. A night of drinking or what youre expected to do, but then theyre normalized in a culture of questions, during your pledge term. So once youre normalized to it, you then perpetuate the same cycles of power when youre an older member, and you bring that to the next generation, a feeling that you earned this in your fraternity. So i think that kind of cycle plays a big part into it. Why anybody would endure hazing, lisa, and to be fair, its not just frats, athletic groups, and why is hazing worse in frats over any other group . Talk to me about the psychological motivation of hazing. Absolutely, i think one of the main things why anyone would join an organization in their college appearance is because they want to connect with the community. They join different groups, different clubs, whatever, because people need people. Were a social organization because were social beings, and we many to interact with people. And create a home away from home. And i think thats a lot of what it is. Just these groups that already exist, and you want to be part of it because you want to feel like you have a place where you can belong and connect, and find answers to questions in the community. So its this sense of belonging and desire to connect with other people and connect to your campus in a way that makes you feel less alone. So those can be really great things, and theyre what gives us a lot of positive data as far as the retention for our university. But at what cost . Sometimes that desire to be part of something also comes at the no matter what i have to do to get there, and thats where hazing scenarios they want that experience because my father went through this, and any grandfather, and i want the same things they have. So that part of it as well, the ideas this they think the fraternity experience should be, and they even want that themselves. Colin, we have you back on the phone, so i think your audio is going to be clearer. We talk about hazing, sometimes it includes excessive psychological abuse, and then talk about the push back that you got when you spoke out about it. So my organization got rid of hazing on paper about five years before i joined, so that went getting rid of alcohol, and a culture like that doesnt just change like that. Some things that ive experienced, a night that really sticks out to me is, we were brought into the living room of the offcampus house, and told to surn in our cellphones, brought into the house, and forced to recite greek information, the greek alphabet as our pledge brothers are doing wall sits and pushups, and one would be picked from the group. And i remember as im watching this, im thinking, this is not happening right now. This is occurring right if front of my eyes, and it was shocking. Ileana mentioned the normal organization of this kind of behavior, and if your research, do you see a big role in how this is being perpetuated in. Two researchers have information, and number one, theres more liking for a group where the initiation is and getting . Harder, and the second one, which is more recent research, the liking for a high status group is more if the participants perceive it as a particularly high status group, and theyre willing to do anything to not leave that group, so those are important and piggybacking on what she said. What you want, you perceive you cannot have. I interviewed irving janice, who passed away at yale, who invented the group think theory, and he said a lot of hazing is all about comradery, and none of us can get enough pats on the back indeed. Does a ban on pledging mean more hazing . Join us on consider this. President jimmy carter joins antonio mora my administartion has a very strong human rights element. His perspective on the conflicts facing the world in the state of america. On Al Jazeera America welcome back, the fraternity that Bloomberg News has reported as having the most fraternity related deaths is sigma alpha epsilon. But will this change hazing . I was in the greek system, and i remember all too well that the National Organizations instructing chapters to do something didnt necessarily comply. Do you really think that getting rid of pledging really means getting rid of haying . Haying . Not necessarily. I think what well see in the implementation stage what will happen. But youre absolutely right. There are things that happen at a National Organization that are important. Because that sets the tone and its what we value and put our resources, so thats important. And i applaud their effort in making a bold move. Whether it transfers to every organization, well see. But things dont always go along with all of our organizations. All of our offices right now say that hazing is not allowed, and they have strong policies about that, but we know that hazing occurs. But thats no reason to discredit it. Because deciding what we value and is important matters as we say who we are and what were trying to accomplish. Hank, a lot of this exists and is defined because hazing and pledging is a cherished tradition. This is something that goes back for decades, and its cultural and deeply engrained. How do you unravel something thats so set in the cultural psyche of the system. Its the multitiered process. Number one, you have to reach the troop level now and were possibly hazed last semester and are now told that they cant do it, you have strong donating money, and theyre disappointed that the tradition is gone, and you have pretty strong executives who are tired of attending funerals who must convince Board Members that its wrong. So the issue is this. Limiting to maybe three days the intake of new members, and members then try to get all of their abuse, if thats what hazing is, into three days, or can they learn from this . I think it can be done over time, at least over a three or four year time because phi delta did that by making all of its houses alcohol free. Not all of them have, but a lot have. They have increased their membership, they have lowered their insurance, and they have increased their prestige and trust. And i think that will happen to sae in three or four years, but they have to really watch their individual chapters in that amount of time until the current undergraduates graduate. Eliana, i want to the go to you, and hank, we were just talking about how its in the culture, and it will merely force hazing to go underground and off campus. I really think thats a major concern. I think its something that ive read about and experienced on my campus, hazing with a capital h and hazing with a lower case h. So you have the hazing that goes on behind closed doors, the dangerous drinking and behavior, and then you have the hazing thats wearing the same clothing and having an older member of your fraternity or sorority wearing the same clothing as you and having a partnership, which is also hazing. I think there can be a murky definition and a blurry line as there is already. And i think that across the board, hazing exists in some capacity, whether its at the team level of wearing the same clothes or at the dangerous, sort of behind closed doors level. And i think for me, the big part of is it is not so much attacking hazing but placing an emphasis on not asking questions, and not accepting what youre told when you first join a house. Thats the most dangerous act. Youre expected to dob what youre told and not and questions, and be a follower, and thats what perpetuates the hazing. Its not so much the hazing itself, but it seems like an offproduct of a culture where you cant say no to things in your community. 82 of deaths from hazing involve alcohol. Is the larger problem here really this binge drinking and excessive use of alcohol on campus, particularly in the fraternities . I dont think its separate from it. I think you have to take them all as a package. For example, the Phi Delta Theta serious drinking incidents dropped considerably when the houses went dry, and a lot of sororities have existed without any hazing whatsoever because they have kept their houses dry. For me, any kind of aggravated risk, whether its driving while intoxicated, coming back from a pledge party, the hazing itself, the beating of a human being, all of those things together are aggravated and remind me very much of why people get in trouble for driving a car while intoxicated. It happened to jim mersa of the indianapolis colts. And anything you do is going to result in a death and it has done so 11 times in the last few years. It reminds me of the sae in 2011, they tried to ban alcohol and all of its chapters vote today down. How is it that the chapters trump what the National Organization is recommending. Im not entirely sure of the structure of their organization, if thats something that needed to be voted on by a certain number of capitals at a convention, and sometimes those policies matter and are different from other organizes, so i cant necessarily speak to that. But i would like to add onto the comment that you made about will this push things under ground . I think thats a valid comment and concern, but its the same thing with any policy that we have. Any Risk Management procedure, alcohol behavior, policy, whatever it is, none of it works by policy alone. It comes down to implementation, and what sort of support were provide on the ground so. I think our al up nigh volunteers are key in that. If you have alumni who have been trained by the National Office and or the university institution, trained on what is, how they can mentor their members, and how they know what is acceptable behavior, and you have them present at ceremonies, and you have them involved in whats going on, and youre coaching the people through, thats the purpose of an alumni volunteer. When our officers who are 18 or 19 years old, transitioning every term. The advisers are there. Nate, you bring up who shouldish held accountable. Bob says colin, i want to get you back in the conversation, who should ultimately be held responsible for haze on College Campuses . Were all responsible. But obviously the people who do it are the most responsible, so the perpetrators themselves. I think the leadership in the situation also play a role. Whether they report it and they dont know, and they dont do anything, or they have no idea whats happening, they have partial responsibility right there. So i think everyone is partially responsible in some way. But definitely the people who do it are obviously the most responsible. Can i come in on that a little bit . Sure. My graduate degree, theres a Student Development theory that says behavior is a function of the interaction between the person and the environment. So we cant just focus on just the environment or the person, but we have to recognize that all of those things come together. So yes, the people involved are responsible for sure, but we have to look at what environment created by the organization, by the National Organization, by the institution that helped that person engage if that behavior. So you have to look at all of the players, and were all responsible because were all connected to this issue. Up next, 44 states have antihazing laws, and the states are stepping up with alternative prevention programs. Is it time to rethink the greek system Al Jazeera America. Welcome back. Were talking about frat he went taking drastic action to try to stop hazing. Sigma phi epsilon replaced it with the balanced man program several decades ago to foster leadership and personal growth. So nate, this is credited to contributing to higher gpas, and lower legal costs for the fraternity. And is it enough. The balanced man program is a great program, and a great example of a National Office determining what they value and how that should be lived out in the new Member Experience and just the general membership experience in general. I think their goal there is to eliminate Power Dynamics in groups, and i applaud it. But its still transitioning. Chapters are still figuring out how to make it work themselves and theres still time. But like we said before, it has to have the buyin and the chapter alumni from the chapter so it comes down from the National Office. It doesnt seem that there has been any significant action taken on these issues, even though there has been much wrangling for decades, and why do you think that is . It has been very difficult to get a hazing law passed that doesnt have a lot of compromise, and in several stays, they were not constitutional. And there has been an attempt three times to have a federal law, and it hasnt been well written, and its very difficult when you have Fraternity Members to get people to agree on a bill. Well, the community has tweeted in on the solutions. ,. Eliminating hazing is all about putting victims with faces, and im talking about putting the victims and the families facetoface with Fraternity Members. Guys who have served time and been arrested as a result of hazing crimes, they have to be put facetoface with pratt he went members as well. And finally, those of us who didnt think that hazing was such a big deal. We were undergraduates and we matured and now were dead set against it, and we have to speak out much more. Elian a. Give me your wisdom here, whats the way forward . One huge way is with the alums. Alums have a lot of power about keeping institutions intact and changing institutions. I abstained from my winter recruitment this term, and there was so much support from alums that is usually pretty silent. A lot of the time, the voices heard on campus and sororities are the ones giving money to preserve it. We need the alums of the fraternities or the sororities, whether they had a positive or negative experience to change over in the college leadership. I just left my position, and so really, its very little time to make concrete change. Then the next group has to come in and essentially reinvent the wheel. So we need people outside of it who have a lot of power to shape these institutions to come forward and help and really lead the way with that. Colin, we have about 30 seconds left. Some people have suggested banning the greek system altogether as the way to go. And is that the way thats safest . I dont think it is. You cant generalize the entire system as inherently bad. I think closing bad chapters possibly, but stepping up, theres a culture of silence going on, and when you have that, its so difficult. Thanks to all of our guests for joining us and were out of time. Until next time, well see you good afternoon. Weve got a busy news day ahead for you, can coming up in the half hour, rescue crews are on the scene in Washington State where a search for survivors is now underway. The coast guard told us, you know, dont eat fish you catch together. Plus a barge with 900,000 gallons of oil crashing off the texas gulf coast. A syrian jet shot down by