Fraternity scavenger hunt

oasisob1

Seems legit.

GlyphGryph

Edit: Whoops, this was supposed to be a top level comment.

Overall it’s not /that/ bad. But there are a few items on the list that seem downright nasty.

Sure, it doesn’t explicitly say you need to STEAL the items on the bottom, but it certainly hints at it very heavily while nudging you in the ribs and winking, and items like “a homeless persons shoes” and “a baby cat” aren’t exactly things I could imagine ending well.
- ethicalcannibal
  
  Were you being sarcastic? I think it’s terrible.
  
  Targeting women as things based on shallow physical characteristics, then manipulating them to do something for you, for the amusement of your friends at their expense, because you know, their fat. That us sucky and dehumanizing.
  
  Pushing, with plausibly deniable language, for someone to steal something from a person that has probably nothing but the clothes on their back? In the cold months? When getting a new pair of shoes could be a major endeavor, and huge set back? Total disregard for other people, also sucky and dehumanizing.
  - GlyphGryph
    
    I meant overall, as in, “the majority of the list”. I noted that a few of them were particularly nasty (and neither forgivable or understandable), though, the homeless shoe stealing in particular.
- nowimnothing
  
  Well they did have piss on the Church of Scientology…
  - SomeGuyNamedMark
    
    That would be the only item on my list
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  I don’t think “getting a pic of a cop to give you the finger” would work out too well either. The next pic would be a pic of your friend getting arrested.
  - Frank Lee Scarlett
    
    I found that item enlightening. It suggests that the pledges are the clean-cut, middle-class people who, far from fearing cops, trust them and view them as responsible people who exist to protect and serve them.
    
    If I ever held that view, I lost it far before I turned 18. I’d witnessed too many examples of police overreach and brutality towards my friends and I, queers and POC, often both. I had also made the mistake of reporting a case of sexual harassment. With traumatizing and woeful results.
    
    My friends and I would have considered it sheer suicidal idiocy to piss off a cop enough to make him/her flip us off. That kind of smart-assery would occasionally result in someone being thrown in the back of a squad car, driven out to a desolate spot near the (SF) bay, being beat up and left to one’s own devices. Before cell phones.
    
    These frat boys are the people who often mature into the internet bloviators who defend, and even support, police brutality. I’d guess they’re also the ones who vote against legislation that would provide better care for mentally ill homeless people. Because after all, they “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and the ‘bums’ wouldn’t be living on the streets if they weren’t lazy, worthless scum looking for a hand-out.”
    
    But to end on a positive note: Some frat members are intelligent, kind and compassionate human beings. Phi Alpha Tau at Emerson College recently conducted a pledge drive to help a new brother pay for top surgery. They’ve raised $17k+, and the remaining $9k will be donated to support others in transition.
    
    http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/02/frat_brothers_raise_159g_for_emerson_college_student_s_gender
    http://bostinno.com/2013/02/26/emerson-college-frat-raises-money-for-surgery-donnie-collins/#ss__302432_270418_0__ss

kartwaffles

Well to be fair, the list only says players “CANNOT purchase” a homeless man’s shoes.

Theft is merely implied. The douchebag training at this particular fraternity is quite thorough.

dmatos

A good samaritan pledge would buy the homeless man a new pair of shoes, and simply offer to dispose of his old shoes for him.
- dragonfrog
  
  A good samaritan would immediately recognize they want nothing to do with this fraternity.

Cowicide

Well… sociopathic, corporatist megalomaniacs gotta start somewhere…

ganman

Picture of yourself and other future venture capitalists with money stuffed in your pockets and mouths: 10 points
- Daneel
  
  http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/the-bullingdon-club/
beepbeep

Of course, you could always decide to be a cheerleader, too…

oasisob1

They really should only let responsible, mature adults go to college. They would never get up to this kind of nonsense.

beepbeep

Wrong, wrong, wrong!! It is hard to tell if Poe’s law should be invoked here…

SamSam

Also asks for homeless people to humiliate themselves by burning money.

Even if the pledger decides to pay for the privilege of videoing this, it’s still humiliation and is simply gross.

SomeGuyNamedMark

Or give them 20 bucks to burn 1
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Actually on 2nd thought that still would be sort of cruel. Nix that. Just give them the 20.
beepbeep

As someone who has been homeless and who has been tempted by beer to amuse frat boys (I declined), well, hell, I don’t really know what to say. I worked in THE frat bar in Austin. A very few of them were monsters (I truly mean that), some were quite nice and most of them were just guys with perhaps too much money. This was the 70′s so take of that what you will. As an aside, the guys who originally scared the crap out of me (because I just didn’t know better), the ROTC’s, were the best damn guys to work with (although, the Marine ROTC I was introduced to seemed certifiably insane within 30 seconds; then again, he was the only one of that tribe that I actually met). Also, the frat boys were awash in drug dealing. Surprise.

mtdna

Fake. A real frat house scavenger hunt would be have a lot of racist and homophobic stuff.

peregrinus

I reckon that was the prototype list, and they edited it before issuing.

chgoliz

Still? It’s the 21st century — every word, photo, and video is now recorded for posterity on the internet — and yet fraternities are still acting like this? Are they that clueless that they no longer enjoy endless privilege, or are they just that arrogant?

GlyphGryph

There’s a market and needs, organizations will rise to fill them. People served by these frats haven’t gone away, and specifically seek them out. I don’t expect it will go away any time soon.
beepbeep

”Are they that clueless that they no longer enjoy endless privilege, or are they just that arrogant?”
Ah, I am in Austin and can answer that with, yep, mostly they are that arrogant. Not all, but enough to matter. And/or rule the world.
bill_mcgonigle

yeah – I mentor some of the young men at my College fraternity (SigEp) which abandoned the pledge/hazing model in the early 90′s to build a system based on community service and leadership. As a result they’ve gone from a barely-thriving group in the late 80′s to the most popular and respected fraternity on campus. But they still get dragged through the mud when the troglodytes at other houses act like horses’ asses.

franko

judging by the list, i’m pretty happy not knowing what “upper decking” is. i’m afraid i can imagine, but i really don’t want confirmation.

jarmstrong

In this case, I am afraid the reality is probably not as bad as what you imagined. “Upper decking” is the act of crapping in a toilet’s water tank, as opposed to the toilet’s bowl.
- SamSam
  
  That’s exactly about as bad as I would have imagined.
  
  An actual person needs to clean that shit out.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Where is this? Fecophilia U?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    That would be the University of Coprophilia.
    - feetleet
      
      Great moments in pedantry.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

If this is real, and, based on my experience with fraternities I’m inclined to believe it is, I don’t know what’s worse: that they’re really doing this sort of thing, or that they’re recording it in such a way that will encourage future members to “up the ante”.

fuzzyfuzzyfungus

Given that their infosec is probably only slightly better than their taste or sense of human decency(if nothing else, the first rule is Don’t Leave It By The Copy Machine, Dumbass, and they couldn’t manage that), I’d say that the recordings are probably for the best.
All it takes is one of them getting Own3d, or failing at facebook privacy settings(or, if you are a real optimist, quietly getting cold feet and leaking) and the perps could face years of fighting bad internet press, unwanted pizzas, and possibly the occasional swatting. One or two items might even be good for charges if they were to hit the press just right.

Without recording? Nothing going anywhere and no consequences at all.

10xor01

“Video of pledge being hit in the face by a stranger with a black-fist dildo: 10 points”

I would have been glad to help them out with this one. Repeatedly.

Snuffy2

Frat Rats were pretty much the same when I was an undergraduate back in the 60s.

feetleet

You might say those wizards at Columbia are a little silver spoonsped.

Donald Petersen

That was a weird one. A goofy practice that somehow deserves its own term (as do, apparently, felching and blumpkins… no, don’t bother looking those up), but which is admitted to be obscure enough that the scavenger hunt form itself needs to define it.

I guess frats have always been lame, but must they insist on getting lamer? How about they video themselves… uh… bicpicking? That would be extracting a recently-extinguished Bic lighter from between the buttcheeks of a fellow pledge, using only their own buttcheeks.

Surely that’s worth 3 points?
- feetleet
  
  No, I’m familiar with the blumpkin (how courteous of you to try to correct my typing there, computer. But alas).
  
  It’s like – you’re either into anal play our you aren’t. Shit or get off the pot, so to speak.

robuluz

The technical term is ‘kitten’.

Andy Simmons

Surely, these kids are going to college expressly to learn important facts like this one.

Halloween_Jack

I’m kind of surprised that most people think that this is legit. My reaction is that it’s disinfo put out by a rival frat.

Donald Petersen

Seems like they’d have gone to more effort to make it outrageous. I mean, if you’re out to frame a rival frat for outrageously dickish behavior, it wouldn’t take too much imagination to whip up something even nastier than this one.

This one seems juuust awful enough to be legit. Like they’re making some extremely halfhearted attempt at plausible deniability of assholery. Coming up short, of course, but still.

Anna Libey

I’ve never been more ashamed of my school… :(