Hazing is any effort to demean or discipline fellow students by forcing them to engage in ridiculous, humiliating or painful activities. Although the risks and impropriety of hazing should be self-evident, many club and fraternity members continue to defy laws and logic by maintaining such practices. For the sake of true brotherhood, real justice, and unfettered learning, the Sigma Chi Fraternity condemns and prohibits hazing.
Some well-intentioned brothers attempt to justify hazing by arguing its "unifying" qualities or by saying that prospective members can demonstrate their loyalty to the organization by enduring extreme physical or psychological tests. It is also commonly defended on grounds that those being hazed, usually pledges expect it, or that they actually enjoy it. Truly thoughtful, honest men will recognize that hazing is a reckless and unbrotherly means to achieve the true purposes of pledgeship. Hazing is reckless because the experiences can easily become emotionally or physically harmful. It is unbrotherly because it requires that otherwise good men - even as they are professing ideals of friendship - treat fellow students in ways that friends should not treat friends.
In addition to that facts that hazing is illegal and might result in severe consequences - not the least of which is punishment by the university and state or province - the very nature of such practices runs contrary to the objectives of Sigma Chi. Pledgeship, in particular, is a period for teaching future brothers the virtues of lifelong friendship organized around the principles established by our Founders. Hazing is a confusing, inappropriate, and potentially dangerous element of pledgeship. It undermines the bond of the Fraternity because it sometimes causes brothers to identify/define their Sigma Chi experience more with inappropriate activities than with our Ritual or ideals.
The elimination of hazing practices in the fraternities and other clubs is an urgent priority, chiefly because this outdated and romanticized tradition is wrong, but also because the perpetuation of hazing poses a serious threat to our existence; our universities and their surrounding communities are no longer tolerating demeaning, hazardous student activities. For Sigma Chi, this means we must reject whatever remnants of hazing remain, and move toward practices that cultivate the best in human nature.
