while i appreciate you guys not just posting about princeton, yale, and harvard, completely tearing apart cornell because of practices that go on at every school is a little much. i bet the frat bros are just as pissed at freshman for not being able to hold their alcohol as you are at them

Klein, I realize you write for a blog about Ivy League gossip, so your standards aren’t very high. But at least try to get some facts straight. As you correctly noted, this was a rush week event. There is no hazing during rush week. That would be a strange way to recruit new members wouldn’t it. This was a voluntary event that rushes decided to take part in and at no point were they forced. The event does encompass a lot of drinking, but it is done entirely on one’s own volition and people bow out whenever they choose. That these three freshmen were hospitalized falls on their own shoulders for not knowing when to stop. Members of a fraternity are not your mother, they don’t hold your hand and tell you when to stop. I realize that some responsibility does fall on the fraternity members to ensure safety. But mischaracterizing this event at hazing portrays it in a false and very misleading light.

PKAo8 needs to learn some close reading skills. Hazing was only mentioned in the context of a quote that is relevant and related to the subject of frats and drinking. But thanks for being in character for us.

This is three years too late for Pike. Thank G-d they are no longer on our campus.

How is it relevant if it wasnt hazing? Thanks for playing. Fail.

What a comeback! Scorcher. That’ll learn ‘em. Good job buddy!

See, at the end of the day, if you guys really DID practice what you preached, you WOULD hold your pledges’ hands and tell them when to stop. You could call that being their mother, but you could also call it… well, I don’t know, perhaps their BROTHER. People claiming “lifelong fraternal experience” look out for one another, and aren’t so childishly proud about their alcohol tolerance that they let younger brothers get alcohol poisoning when trying to impress you.

You think you’re fighting against a legion of frat-haters here, but that’s simply not the case. You’re just a bad frat.

A) the freshmen in question are not brothers. They are not even pledges. They are rushes, uncommitted to a fraternity on campus. If you believe that such a person should be treated as a *brother* then you simply do not understand the fraternity system and the rest of our conversation is pointless.

B) this has absolutely nothing to do with being “childishly proud” of one’s alcohol tolerance. It has to do with personal responsibility. Of course everyone at the event generally looks out for everyone else. However, there are many many rushes at this event and it is impossible to monitor whether each individual should be continuing. If the *rushee* can’t decide for themselves when to quit drinking, then he shouldn’t be drinking at all.

C) I don’t think I am “fighting against a legion of frat-haters.” I think that I am arguing against people that don’t understand the situation, which your post has made abundantly clear.

You are serving alcohol to underage students on your premises. You are wholly responsible for their well-being, both morally and legally.

In addition, do you not see how no one on campus likes your frat?

If you attend Columbia, then you live and study among Pike brothers. There were 18 new pledges last semester alone.

PKA08, thank you for confirming what many of us only suspected. You don’t want to live up to your standards, values and ideals. You didn’t even mention the fact that these freshmen are under the legal drinking age and that you are providing alcohol to them in violation of your own national risk management policy as well as that of Cornell. Hazing or not–and there are many of us who believe that what you did is hazing–you touched all of the risk management violation bases.

You know what the worst part of this is? We in safe, healthy fraternities will catch tons of flak simply for identifying as a fraternity. This snide and perjorative post seems to be written to make the author feel good rather than honest reporting. I guess that’s what gossip is.

This will pass, not the first or last time someone got drunk at college. It’s very hard to control kids when you don’t know where/what they drank before coming to the house, and rush is extra dangerous because kids try to impress by drinking beyond their limits.

Loved, hated, but never ignored,
who’s house?!?!