Post date: Sep 23, 2019 5:41:53 PM
Well, just returned home from Fort Collins, Colorado and celebrating 100 years of Sigma Chi at Colorado State University. We talk about Sigma Chi being a lifetime experience so always great to see a wide age range of Sigs at an event- proves that brotherhood transcends time.
Tomorrow starts National Hazing Prevention Week. An important week for us as we look to address an important subject confronting our undergraduate chapters.
Sigma Chi Fraternity has a strict, no hazing policy. Period. You haze- we have a problem. At the commencement of his biennium, 68th Grand Consul Mike Greenberg created the Jordan Initiative to aggressively deal with eradicating hazing within Sigma Chi. We have had a formal no hazing policy since the 70s when I was a pledge. However, despite our best efforts, it continued. And, although we have made real inroads into eradicating hazing within Sigma Chi, it still persists.
I am absolutely committed to making further progress in the principles contained within the No Hazing Initiative. Brothers, hazing of any kind is just plain inconsistent with our values. You cannot talk about true brotherhood and have hazing as part of our culture. Throughout my time working on CAMAC and doing 20+ membership reviews, I learned several things. One of those is the Legacy of Hazing.
I have seen personally what hazing can do to chapter culture. I have seen it where the freshmen cannot stand the sophomores, the sophomores cannot stand the juniors and so on. You can literally have 4 chapters within one chapter structure. That is not brotherhood. A real brother would never purposely demean or physically or emotionally harm another man. How is that having your back? The fallacy of hazing that it somehow builds unity within a pledge class is just that- a fallacy. Quite the opposite- it only builds long lasting resentment. How sad to attend an event and people will not speak to each other. This resentment lasts decades. We have way too many alumni who will not volunteer or financially support the fraternity because they had such a bad undergrad experience. That is just bad for business.
At KTLW 2019, we heard from three parents who had lost a son to hazing. As a father, I cannot fathom the unspeakable pain of losing a child to begin with- let alone to something so preventable as a hazing incident. The stories told to us at KTLW are surely not limited to those sad incidents. Far too many young men have lost their lives or suffered physical and emotional damage from these activities.
I will be shortly creating a hazing task force working under the Jordan Initiative who will be taking an aggressive approach on preventing these activities. To my young brothers- if your chapter is hazing (or just certain brothers)- I do not want your charter- I just want you to stop hazing- period. We will help you and I do not want you being worried about repercussions of asking for help. Let's work together to make the promise of Sigma Chi a reality for all our future brothers. Let's build our chapters under the promise of real true brotherhood and show our fraternal partners and our university partners that Sigma Chi is doing it without hazing
So, to all my undergrad brothers and the thousands of alumni brothers involved in some fashion with undergrad pledge education- I ask you to stand with me and JUST SAY NO TO HAZING.
See the Facebook post here: https://www.facebook.com/SigmaChiGrandConsul/posts/127237338654158?__tn__=K-R
IN HOC,
-Steve Schuyler, ARIZONA 1979 - 71th Grand Consul