Feisty giaOlt lok

  
   

vAuate

> How fraternities have influenced team sports

Katie Czenczek
Staff Writer

students were treating each other just as
terribly. In 387 BCE, “Plato commented

on the savagery of young boys” that

 

few weeks ago, I wrote an article
bout hazing and its application

to sports. To follow up on this topic,
I thought that it would be important
to go back to where it all began.
Ancient Greece, said to be the creator
of European democracy, also had an
influence on what we know and hate
today as hazing. It turns out the Great
Thinkers of that time also forced new
students and teammates to binge drink
at a raging kegger.

Ina report created by Hank Nuwer,
a professor of journalism at Franklin
College in the United States, it is
revealed that Plato was allegedly one of
the first to observe hazing. Back when
toga parties were just called parties,

attended his lessons. By this time, the

Olympics were alive and well in Athens.
Often fraternities would establish their

own sport teams to play against one
another.

Nuwer’s report also highlighted
how Justinian of the Byzantine Empire

“decreed that the hazing of first-year law

students must be ended.”

Martin Luther, not to be confused
with King Jr., even held a personal
account of his own experiences with
hazing at Erfurt.

It appears as if hazing started with
the introduction of fraternities, and later,
sororities. It was in educational institutes

where higher learning was expected to

be conducted, that hazing became what

we know it is to be today. I think that

this is an important distinction to make

Not all tall people
play basketball

> Please stop asking

Jillian McMullen
Staff Writer

 

’m 61. According to a CBC report, the
average height of Canadian women
in 2014 was 54, placing my eye level far
above most people's. I’m often stopped

in public or at work, and the first
question I usually get is, “Wow, you're
really tall. What are you, like, 5’10?”
in answer to which I obviously must
provide my actual height. The second
question I always get is, “So, you must
play basketball, right?” No. No, I don’t
play basketball because my height—
unfortunately—does not determine
my ability to shoot three-pointers.
Height is a fascinating focus in
so many sports. When you think of
athletes who are playing hockey or
football or volleyball or even baseball,
most people would think of someone
with a much larger stature than
themselves, at least at the professional
level. Height, in all those sports,
statistically helps one’s chances in
being successful. The top of the hoop
is set 10 feet above the ground, if you
are closer to it then—logically—you

should make baskets more easily.
Tall hockey players can use their

size to knock opponents off the puck
easier than shorter players. However,
some of the best players in each

sport are people shorter than what is
considered advantageous. Height and
its correlation to ability is simply a
convention of the professional sport
industry.

While height may inherently
provide an advantage in many sports,
it does not, however, determine skill.
I would love to say I was a basketball
or volleyball star in high school, but I
wasn't. I could never synchronize my
long limbs enough to figure out how
to effectively dribble the ball up the
court. My height mostly made me an
unwilling target for poorly-planned
passes, my teammates unaware of my
lack of coordination. I’m more of a
solo sport person, preferring cycling,
mostly. I prefer that my abilities affect
only myself, whether positively or
negatively.

Ultimately, what I’m saying is
stop asking tall people if they play “tall
people sports” because the answer,
unlike the question, will not always be
universal.

Y History of hazing

¥ Not all tall people play basketball

And more!

because the majority of hazing incidents
on sports teams occur on both college
campuses and also within high schools.

For all of the older historical cases
that report hazing incidents, all of which
had ties to educational institutes. This
may be due to team sports only being
organized by students and not yet
established on their own, but I do still
find it puzzling that this pattern has still
continued well into the modern era.

I believe this is due to the hierarchy
set up froma school’s structure of
freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior.
New athletes often do not get the same
respect as seasoned athletes get even at
the professional level, and | believe that
it is an even more dramatic line drawn
between rookie and veteran in college
and high school sports.

The line drawn between veteran
and rookie, or hazer and hazee, sets up
a power dynamic that leaves the rookie

 

Image from Archives of Ontario via Wikimedia

having to do the veteran’s every bidding.
If you ever want to see how much power
can influence a person’s treatment of the
said “lesser person,” take a look at the
Stanford Prison Experiment. I believe
that a similar phenomenon is occurring
when veterans haze rookies. This
predominately occurs due to fraternity
and sorority culture influencing college
team sports. Initiation ceremonies come
first from sororities and fraternities, as
established by firsthand accounts within
history, and later bleed into teams like a
poison.

The Greeks have influenced us in
many wonderful ways: The Olympics,
theatre, the baseline for Western
philosophical thought, and trial and jury.
I just don’t believe that we need to take
on all of their practices. One of which is
hazing new teammates on high school
and college teams.

Photo by Davie Wong