Isn’t closing a frat for doing what everyone is doing anyhow somewhat hypocritical?

I haven’t seen the video, and the article is deliberately vague about what it contained.

IF the video demonstrated this as a hazing ritual, or something nonconsensual, or otherwise in violation of the law, then I totally understand.

If this was just a consensual kinky act between a group of adults, I disagree with the University’s decision.

Got to go with @Seek here.

I would add that it is none of the Universities business if, as you say, ”all the participants were onboard with it and did it of their own volition” even if they were stupid enough to put it on line.

@Seek IF the video demonstrated this as a hazing ritual, or something nonconsensual, or otherwise in violation of the law, then I totally understand.

The national chapter’s chief executive officer, Wynn Smiley, said “Our investigation revealed that no pledge was compelled to participate,” he said. “Regardless, the actions are contrary to the ideals and principles of Alpha Tau Omega and are highly offensive.”

By that, it would appear to me as the type of stuff anyone could get caught by cell video doing even if not a part of a college or fraternity. It seems the fraternity was just made to look bad, but anyone with an ounce of sense no there is boinking going on in the other chapters nationwide, just in the dark.

My guess is that they were shut down because this was a last chance kind of thing. They were investigated in 2010 for hazing and giving alcohol to minors. The school didn’t like how the latest stunt reflected on them, so they did something about it.

I agree that if it was all consensual, it’s stupid. But, again, the frat was investigated in the past for breaking the law, so who knows.

The relationship between universities and fraternities are always crawling with hypocrisies. And all of the participants know the drill. Asinine pranks, bigotry, misogyny, and all varieties of antisocial crap is tolerated until some of the nonsense acquires public notoriety. Then the school involved ponies up the routine denial of knowledge that frat boys misbehave “We’re shocked…..” The pathetic ass covering apology and disciplining of the frat ensues, and the game resumes. Ho-him.

I read this story yesterday and hit close to home as my chapter no longer is in existence because some jamoke pulled a stupid stunt. In that Alpha Tau Omega quickly revoked the charter of this frat due to alleged offensive and inappropriate actions of some of the members was without question the right thing to do. No matter how cool a young gun in college may think getting head from a stripper would be….this Fraternity Chapter is representing not only the reputation of it’s National organization but ultimately the University that allowed this Frat to be a part of this campus and reflect the educational and social opportunities it wishes to offer it’s students and faculty.

Hazing does exist in most every Frat and Sorority and most if not all hazing is purposeful and non-derogatory and meant to foster camaraderie amongst its membership.

Yes as you intone people are getting lucky in these fraternities and sororities just like the kids in on campus dorms and off campus apartments and in those cases much to do about nothing. But I make my point again in that the actions of each and every Frat and Sorority member is representative of the hallowed organization they took a pledge to represent and crap like this is reason to shut down a chapter that is doing shit that is not reflective of it’s mission and values.

@Cruiser – you make a college frat sound like a religion.

@seek not my intention with my answer….but I would have a hard time arguing they are in anyway different.

The presence of pledges, while not mandatory, was still expected. And it is still not clear if the active fraternity member who “performed” was really willing, or was forced by crowd pressure to participate.

And @Hypocrisy_Central, this is not going on everywhere in dorms on college campuses. It does happen in certain fraternities with alarming regularity.

“Boinking like bunnies”, your term for what other people call having consensual healthy sex, does not involve performing with sex workers in front of twenty teenagers that are obligated to watch.

Just because “everyone else does it” does not make it hypocritical for this organization to act when its members do it. Do you also call parents hypocrites for punishing their children over things that other parents let their kids get away with?

So wait, this question says it’s about “what everyone is doing anyhow”, which the details say is “a sex tape of a pledge performing sex acts with a stripper hired by the frat brothers or someone there”?

Seems to me there are three major things about that, which are not just sexual activity:

1) Making a sex tape (and apparently letting it get around, and also letting it go public).
2) Hiring a stranger for dubiously-consensual sex as a university organization (and were they hired as a stripper but pressured into sex? How about being in a tape that goes public? Did they pay the stripper for that?)
3) A frat pledge involving sex and the above 2), meaning that as a condition of joining, one had to have sex with a paid stranger, have it taped, and probably other hazing BS.

Does “everyone” do those things? I doubt it, and I hope not. At any rate, it’s not the same as just being sexually active.

And I’d expect a university to not support a group that does this and lets it hit the media, because that’s not what universities are supposed to do.

If it were just about sexual activity, I’d think that were ridiculously unrealistic. But the other stuff is screwed up, dangerous and abusive in various ways.

Two separate issues-
What colleges regard as proper behavior by fraternities, and what college age people tend to do.

@zenvelo And @Hypocrisy_Central, this is not going on everywhere in dorms on college campuses. It does happen in certain fraternities with alarming regularity.
I was not emphasizing paid strippers, or doing it to a crowd of onlookers. I was limiting it to the sex jumping off, how and with whom, notwithstanding.

“Boinking like bunnies”, your term for what other people call having consensual healthy sex, does not involve performing with sex workers in front of twenty teenagers that are obligated to watch.
The chapter chairman or whoever the head honcho was said there was no evidence of coercion found. However, if these individuals are allegedly reps of their fraternity even when at non-fraternity functions I can’t see what is the difference of them boinking on their time where they might get caught on phone video or even might make their own sex tape, have no audience or an orgy or whatever, to say that is OK but if you get caught boinking, getting a blow job etc. on official frat time then there is something to say about it, just smacks of a double standard.

@Darth_Algar Just because “everyone else does it” does not make it hypocritical for this organization to act when its members do it. Do you also call parents hypocrites for punishing their children over things that other parents let their kids get away with?
If you did not come to champion the college I would have been surprised, had I said the college acted correctly I am sure you would have used the consenting adult route. However, it changes the point not one tittle. As far as parents go, it is in no way the same as here unless the parents punish the child for doing something at home they know that the child does away from home or at school. It is not really a sex issue more than an image issue.

@Zaku 1) Making a sex tape (and apparently letting it get around, and also letting it go public).
In a near gory situation, one doesn’t have to be performing for an audience, with video being easily and quite stealthily captured on camera phone and uploaded to the Web, anything you do where it is not just you and the other person can be leaked. I don’t view Instagram, but the things others talk about on it appears some of it was just captured, others purposely posted there by the participants.

2) Hiring a stranger for dubiously-consensual sex as a university organization (and were they hired as a stripper but pressured into sex? How about being in a tape that goes public? Did they pay the stripper for that?)
From what I read there were no pressuring, and I am sure the strippers did not consent to the video. Whether or not they had planned to perform a sex act on anyone, who knows, if it meant a bigger tip, they might; sex is just a commodity these days anyhow. I do not think the strippers got paid for that because I don’t believe they expected or knew of it.

3) A frat pledge involving sex and the above 2), meaning that as a condition of joining, one had to have sex with a paid stranger, have it taped, and probably other hazing BS.
I do not think it was a condition to joining, but you have a party, half-naked women, drunk guys, maybe some ”party favors” and things jump off.

Does “everyone” do those things? I doubt it, and I hope not. At any rate, it’s not the same as just being sexually active.
Who says? My Redbook and other such sites populated by call girls do a pretty robust business. People have sex with stranger or people they hardly know all of the time. Crazy things happen at parties with strippers, and I guess you would argue not many people have party with strippers. When those ”things” at a party with strippers jump off as unplanned as they do, I bet you will also try to argue cell phones won’t come out and pics taken. Not being the same as being sexually active, what kind of sex is it then, I am curious how you plan to split that very thin hair?

@Hypocrisy_Central

The college didn’t close down that chapter, the fraternity did. And evidently it’s not the first time the fraternity has had problem out of that particular chapter. Regardless you ignore my point – there’s no hypocrisy here on the fraternity’s part, unless you can demonstrate that this particular fraternity regularly lets this behavior slide from its other chapters. I know you’re obsessed with trying to brand everyone as hypocrites over anything and everything you can, but hypocrisy isn’t acting on something that others might ignore.

^ Regardless you ignore my point – there’s no hypocrisy here on the fraternity’s part, unless you can demonstrate that this particular fraternity regularly lets this behavior slide from its other chapters.
I did not ignore the point you tried to make, but you missed the real point; students be they in a fraternity or not are screwing like crazy in college. The double standard here is:
• Members of that fraternity are boinking every week, on and off campus.
• If these members are supposed to be representing the fraternity simply by being members, than the fraternity should care what they do anywhere they are, like the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
• If the fraternity would not shut the chapter down because members of it were boinking off campus, or on campus in some coed’s dorm room, etc. no matter what sex, threesomes, foursomes, moresomes, etc. then the standard is not the same.
• Sex outside the frat house is just as capable of ending up on video and the Web, so to treat this as unique by the fraternity is ludicrous.
• Any past violations for underage drinking, gambling, making bombs, etc. has no connection directly to this incidence unless you want to apply linkage by fact it was the same fraternity just maybe different members.

@Hypocrisy_Central No matter how many ways you try to slice this and make it into some form hypocrisy by the decision of the National Fraternity to revoke this chapters charter it is not. I am fairly sure most Fraternities have some form of restrictions over sexual activities inside the Fraternity and I am just as sure nothing in their bylaws and code of conduct would sanction any form of sexual activity inside the Fraternity especially video taping a sex act with a stripper. Since this was an active member of the Fraternity who engaged in this sex act and not a pledge you cannot say this was a hazing incident either. Yes kids on campuses all over the world break the rules but this alleged incident was way out of bounds again according to most every Fraternities and Sororities acceptable code of conduct. The National Chapter did the right thing by immediately revoking this chapters charter no hypocrisy involved in their decision either.

@Cruiser I am fairly sure most Fraternities have some form of restrictions over sexual activities inside the Fraternity and I am just as sure nothing in their bylaws and code of conduct would sanction any form of sexual activity inside the Fraternity especially video taping a sex act with a stripper
Not being stuck on the fact that a stripper was there, she was just a byproduct of the sexual activity, and it makes it no worse or better than if it were just a bunch of horny coeds. However, let’s take the approach there were no strippers, and it was off campus, say on the yacht of one of their rich daddies, and it was just a booze induced orgy as happen at times when you get booze, gals, and guys together. If someone videoed it and it got to the Web, would the Chapter be closed because frat members were ID as some of the orgy’s participants? If they would not close it for that, regardless of their rules of conduct on campus or on fraternity property, it has the stain of hypocrisy. If it were an orgy on a yacht and they sanctioned the participants and not throw the baby out with the bath water, that is the action they should have done here; just punish those involved and all others who were not even there or knew of it would not be blanket punished.

Sorry @Hypocrisy_Central I have zero interest in participating in you warped fantasies. The facts as I see them is frat boys hired a hooker to blow them….some there had sufficient amounts of liquid courage in their veins and subsequently believed they could do what ever the hell they wanted at that time of being too inebriated to remember they were representing their national charter of the said Fraternity they pledged that they would follow their rules. This did not happen off campus where they just may be given more slack to get their jollies….bottom line is these guys F’d up and were caught.

@Hypocrisy_Central The biggest mistake in your premise of hypocrisy is that this is going on all over every college town all the time. Just because young men and women are having consensual sex does not mean this is common. It is, in fact, pretty rare for a guy to have one or two strippers having sex with him in front of twenty other guys.

Almost all the sex at college is the same as it is amongst the Brethren and on the street where you live: two people, in private, not videotaped, not in front of a crowd of neighbors.

So to call this hypocrisy is to demonstrate your lack of knowledge of what really happens at college. It is as absurd as your thinking, “on the yacht of one of their rich daddies”. Fraternity members are not any more likely to have money or not have money. All of the guys in my fraternity worked hard all summer to save for school, many worked their way during the school year. Quite a few had student loans to help cover the expenses.

@Cruiser I have zero interest in participating in you warped fantasies.
No warped fantasies, maybe it seems like that to those with warped denial.

[… subsequently believed they could do what ever the hell they wanted at that time of being too inebriated to remember they were representing their national charter of the said Fraternity they pledged that they would follow their rules.
Hiring a stripper, having sex with said stripper planned or spontaneous is a byproduct of the sex, as I will say again, how the sex occurs is notwithstanding. Can you say the rules prohibit all sexual conduct, even if done in private and no one knows, on frat property or off? If that is the case, then the frat was totally justified. The frat owns the property plus they control the fraternity so their desire to close it, fine it, expand it, or whatever I am not disputing (though some seem to think I am). If the rules state only sex with hookers or strippers is vulgar, crass and an embarrassment to the frat but other forms of boinking is OK so as done in private, then at least they clarified something. (Guess this will be something we agree to disagree)

@zenvelo The biggest mistake in your premise of hypocrisy is that this is going on all over every college town all the time. Just because young men and women are having consensual sex does not mean this is common. It is, in fact, pretty rare for a guy to have one or two strippers having sex with him in front of twenty other guys.
No the biggest flaw is to just consider the manner in which the sex happened with Alpha Tau Omega, I said before, how the sex happened is notwithstanding, sex is occurring, in basic forms, threesomes, foursomes, orgies, etc. In some cases there are several couples boinking in the same large room. Who is to say one of those who finished early or got tired would not whip out a phone and capture some video which by some means make it to the Web? Maybe you have some secret knowledge that has never happened and there is no content like that anywhere out on the Web.

So to call this hypocrisy is to demonstrate your lack of knowledge of what really happens at college.
And I guess you do? You sound as if no wealthy people send their kids to college and everyone was blue collar stiff having to work their way through or take loans.

All of the guys in my fraternity worked hard all summer to save for school, many worked their way during the school year.
The operative word was ”your”, because you were in a blue collar fraternity chapter doesn’t mean every fraternity or ever chapter of your fraternity (if it was even that large), was that short in the pocket and no one had parents of means. But that is regardless of the point that had the members of ATO been on a yacht owned by a parent, leased, or otherwise and had a boinkfest that somehow ended up on the Web the fraternity would have shut them down anyhow.