I’ll be honest with you: I don’t understand the point of “pledging” a fraternity by doing a bunch of random dumb shit, but this seems pretty benign. Beta Theta Pi at the University of Florida was put on probation for making its pledges baby sit a watermelon that they named “Walter.” Someone narc’d on the pledging activity to the via an anonymous email sent to the Dean of Students Office. via The Alligator:
[Dean of students Jen Day] Shaw said forcing students to stay awake could negatively impact their health and academic performance.
“You do not deserve to be hazed,” she said. “We don’t tolerate that at UF.”
First of all, wow — What a dumb thing to narc on a fraternity for. Look, I’m just a stupid GDI. But I’m on the fraternity’s side here. Not really sure asking people to demonstrate their responsibility by a watermelon is considered hazing unless there’s something malicious going on. Like, if they drilled a hole in Walter to use him as a sex toy or filled him with vodka and they had to eat him in the most cannibalistic ways imaginable, then yeah — I get it. That’s pretty fucked. But just watching the poor dude is pretty chill as far as pledging things go.
[H/T: TFM]