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Good old spanky fun

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Ashley Weaver

Occam's Razor states that of all possible outcomes, the simplest explanation is probably true. On the night of Oct. 6, a 19-year-old member of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity was admitted to University Medical Center with a .220 blood alcohol content. He was examined by a doctor, who found what looked like "paddle marks" on the member's behind. When he was asked how he got these injuries, he declined comment. But why haven't these violent and potentially deadly rituals ceased? Because most frats, and to a lesser extent, sororities, revolve around these activities.

Of course, the ultimate medical authority in this case wouldn't be the doctor who examined the pledge, but rather the ZBT President Ron Gilbori, who stated that "He got drunk at a party somewhere." Not at the ZBT house of course, and that the injury the doctor observed was "not factual."

Hazing isn't out of the ordinary for many frats, nor is underage drinking. Yet these practices don't seem to change.

The rare alcohol-free and hazing-free houses (not just houses that claim it on the surface, and behind closed doors revert to Bacchanalian violence) have memberships that decrease every year for the lack of these disgusting pastimes. Phi Delta Theta, a no-hazing and alcohol-free fraternity for example, risks being kicked off campus for their low membership, while other neanderthal-ridden frats are bursting at the seams.

This, of course, is the distinction between "frats" and true "fraternities," which in the most people's eyes, are stereotyped as being just as vile and loathsome.

The general populace doesn't know the greek houses for community service or car washes, they know them for drinking and hazing, and the combination of the two. But when someone goes through the tedium and anxiousness of rushing, being prodded along by the friends they have purchased in their house, obviously they will go along with whatever stupid practices their elders push on them.

Some fraternity hazing practices include making new pledges run through the Rainbow Gate in jest, while older members capture it on film, or the alleged practice of "Elephant Walking" (which involves naked frat boys in a circle and some dirty thumbs). But the standby is, of course, a nice paddling with the good ol' Board of "Education."

If a young frat member becomes generously sloshed, he may submit to his fellow members acting out their suppressed homo-erotic/sado-masochistic urges on him by way of a slab of wood. If they become scared and take him to the hospital, he won't turn in his brothers.

The pledge will defend the friends he has paid so generously for, because he will be revered and possibly avoid future hazing incidents. He will go along with the cover-up, and he won't make a fuss about the incident. After all, when he reaches the age of the brothers that beat him, he won't want to be deprived of the opportunity to whack the bottoms of the younger pledges too. Why join an organization known for drinking and violence if you don't dig those kinds of things?

It may be easier to live in a house with a group of boys who you know will get you drunk and hit you if you like being intoxicated and spanked, easier then, say, getting a boyfriend and telling him you've been a bad, bad boy. At this experimental stage in youth, you won't have to explain the lash marks on your buttocks as sexual, but rather attribute it (if you choose to admit anything at all) to your frat "brothers" hazing you, that it was all in good fun.