The parents of Gary DeVercelly, Jr. (18), the Rider Univerity student who was forced to drink himself to death at a fraternity initiation, are rightly mad that the fraternity "brothers" who egged him on got off with a slap on the wrist.
But their anger -- and public anger -- should aim higher -- at the presidents of universities who know the fraternity system is both socially and personally destructive and look the other way.
This is not an attack on beer, which is one of God's creatures we can use badly or well. There is no logic in a legal syetem that says 18-year-olds are old enough to drive, vote, fly planes, hold jobs, marry and raise families, go to war and kill others and be killed themselves, but may not drink a beer with their buddies on Friday night, sip a glass of champagne at their weddings, or have a glass of wine with their families at Thanksgiving.
The laws against drinking don't seem to have worked. Rather, big boozing has moved down to the high schools and off-campus parties. There, by necessity, the young must drink in secret, without the mentoring presence of older people who might moderate their behavior. The frat house is the sanctuary where tribal rules set the norm.
Of course fraternaties and the universities that harbor them will tell us that, since hazing is "outlawed," their boys don't haze and don't drink. But the first rule of fraternity membership is secrecy. "Brothers" will not report their inside doings to the non-frat world.
Frats must haze because they need those painful, destructive rituals to bond. Because frats, as social, not service, organizations, have no higher ideals to hold them together other than a distorted concept of "friendship" itself. They have selected one another as "brothers" not because of high grades, or skills, or character, or community service, but because they perceive the pledge to be "clubable," someone like themselves.
And the pledge goes along with the abuse because he fears the loneliness of Thursday nights.
Since -- unlike every other college club without secrets and hazing (political societies, the newspaper, drama club and sports teams) which everyone is free to join -- they are not welded by a common exterior goal, they need torture and drunkenness to cement their "community." Then they must inflict the ritual on their successors, simply because they went through it themselves.
I suggest that if American university students could drink a legal beer like ordinary people in most of their world, and if adults would help train them to drink sensibly, and if moderate drinking was a deliberate part of the socialization of young adults, young adults might learn to act like the adults they are.