Over the past few years, the University of Oklahoma has heard of many incidents regarding the ethical conduct within fraternities. We have heard of racist slurs, sexist antics, and now we have a new alleged incident that is bringing our fraternities to a new level of national spotlight: hazing.

Hazing seems to accompany every stereotypical movie about college life, but what happens when real fraternity life starts to resemble a movie by a director going for a best motion picture award in drama?

According to Blake Novacek, he pledged Beta Theta Pi when he was a freshman in 2015. However, he decided to file a petition for punitive damages in the month of September this year. According to the petition filed, the allegations include the pledges being blindfolded by pillowcases and taken to individual fraternity rooms to recite the pledge facts. Once there, the drunk fraternity members and alumni showed them a video of a hog being slaughtered. Apparently, this was supposed to be a metaphor that pledges needed to understand. Novacek claims to have been knocked unconscious, and he woke up with his clothes folded and laundered right beside him. He claims to have been confronted by the same fraternity member who hit him, and he was told never to speak of the incident again. He was threatened with being kicked out of school, losing his family’s reputation, and damage to his property. Novacek claims that he met with the class president who told him not to file a report. He claims that the incident, although it happened years ago, led to a brain injury with brain damage. He says that his memory has been impaired as a result of this incident.

As for the fraternity members being accused, they are claiming that they are totally innocent and do not understand why such allegations are being said against them. They deny all allegations.

When it comes to pledging rituals, the public is generally kept ignorant of what actually occurs in the fraternities of the University of Oklahoma. Rituals between members of groups can be enriching when they are bonding experiences. However, it is safe to say that perhaps pledging rituals could be the bonding experience ideal for a group yet also ideal for a person’s rights.

Either party could be telling the truth, but one of them is definitely lying. Did this situation need to evolve to this degree? No, it resulted in a series of choices of either a fraternity breaking the law or a pledge making up a crockpot of lies to get some money out of it. Yet what would make this situation much better would be transparency in pledging rituals to extinguish hazing. If pledging rituals were transparent, pledges could not accuse entire fraternities and sue them for $75,000 like Novacek. If there was transparency, hazing rituals that break the law and cause harm to people would be extinguished.

Pledging rituals do not need to be secret for bonding to function. In fact, if pledging rituals were more regulated and transparent, no one would have a cause to complain because people would be held accountable for their actions. When actions are made secret by organizations, people can get away with harm.

Maybe transparency keeps us accountable, and maybe that is what we need to start demanding.