So before I start this article, I need to preface it with this: I do NOT condone any form of hazing. It has damaged the reputation of the Greek community. That said, I could not help but laugh at the suspension of Beta Theta Pi at Central Florida (Zeta Psi).

For those who do not know the story, here's an article from the Orlando Sentinel explaining the whole thing. To summarize, UCF Beta got suspended after having a pledge drink a "huge bottle" of Smirnoff Ice. You read that right, a "huge bottle" of Smirnoff Ice.

So, this must have been a truly massive bottle to result in a pledge calling home and begging mommy for help, right? Well, it was a 24oz bottle, which I'm sure would do a number on some high school girl at a party, but I've personally witnessed men and women in college down bigger and stronger drinks to pregame for a party.

Again, I don't condone hazing, and the chapter deserved to be punished for their actions, but a pledge not being able to chug a bottle of Smirnoff Ice is a pretty sad way to go. Thinking about all the fraternities that have been suspended over the past year, this one sounds like the dumbest of them all.

I think the part that took it over the top for me was the reaction of the pledge's two family members.

First, the mom came to the defense of her poor baby, which is fair. She wrote a letter to UCF explaining what her son went through during pledge-ship, which I do not really blame her for doing because she was just reporting what her son told her, but one of the things that make fraternities and sororities interesting and complex is that the nature of the organizations is secret. The only people who know what goes on in the room are the people in the room.

To give it some perspective, the uncle of the pledge was a bit more understanding of what happened. He communicated the fact that he knew what it was like being a pledge/new member before. While that does not excuse the behavior of the members of UCF Beta, but it speaks to the fact that the vast majority of chapters within Greek life nationwide have some variation of pledge expectations.

Still, the highlight of the entire situation is that most of it did not become an issue until AFTER the pledge was cut.

So the expectations of being a pledge were fine when he would have become an active member, but once he was cut they had to do something about it. A fraternity cut a pledge who told everything to his mother, and the mother comes after the fraternity.

Now maybe this is just because I've got trust issues, but that seems concerning to me because protecting fraternity secrets is a serious thing. If a pledge is reporting all the informal activities that we do, I find that there is a reason to be concerned about the formal things that we do. That feeling seems like a justifiable reason to cut a pledge, especially one from Beta, where we hold trust in very high regard.

Now maybe I am just defending a guilty fraternity who truly did mistreat pledges and deserves punishment. If that turns out to be the case, and the pledge was cut because he did not want to do things he felt was wrong, then I apologize for assuming so little of this former pledge, but this just seems to weird to be a coincidence. As fraternity members, we must be better than hazing pledges, but we also must keep our house in order and ensure that we recruit members we can trust, not because we do bad things, but because the secrets of Greek life belong to its members.