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Black sororities and fraternities have become a staple of HBCU’s and the Black college experience. Movies like Spike Lee’s “School Daze” focused on Black Sorority and Fraternities in conjunction with the Black college experience overall. He showed images of stepping, parties and other positive experiences linked to Black Frats and Sororities. He also showed the darker side which included stressful and competitive hazing. However Lee managed to do so with humor. He never alluded to any real threat of danger being placed on the pledges.

Reality paints a different picture about Black sorority and fraternities. At Rutgers this year, six members of Sigma Gamma Rho were arrested in January and charged with aggravated hazing, a felony, after a pledge reported that she had been struck 200 times over seven days before she finally went to the hospital, covered with welts and bloody bruises.

Both the university and the national sorority suspended the Rutgers chapter. The charges were reduced to simple hazing, a disorderly persons offense. The trial, originally set for this month, has been delayed because of the prosecutor’s surgery.

In the San Jose State case, Courtney Howard, a former student at the university, charged in a civil lawsuit, filed Aug. 31, that over a three-week period in 2008 she was subjected to progressively more violent hazing from Sigma Gamma Rho members. Ms. Howard states in her suit that they beat her and other pledges with wooden paddles, slapped them with wooden spoons, shoved them against the wall, and threatened that “snitches get stitches.”

“One of the girls who was a big sister told me it was supposed to be so you can feel what your ancestors went through in slavery, so you will respect what you came from,” Ms. Howard said.

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In 2008, San Jose State suspended the sorority chapter until 2016. Four of the sorority members have pleaded no contest to misdemeanor hazing charges, and been sentenced to 90 days in county jail, two years of probation and barred from any further involvement in the sorority. Incidents like these portray a darker almost street gang like atmosphere in the Black sororities. In street gangs, in order for you to become a member, you usually have to do one of several things. You could be asked to harm a stranger and this act is you showing your obedience and loyalty to the gang. If you are female then the male members of the gang could have sex with you one after another in a style that is referred to as “running a train”. Or they could “jump” you in. A process where the current members beat on the recruit for several minutes. Sounds familiar?

Obviously not ALL Black fraternities and sororities subscribe to this type of violent hazing but it seems that…. To Read The Rest Go To YeahSheSaidIt

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