I’ve been to two universities in the States, both of them had Greek life. Neither was as problematic as Dunedin’s initiation scene. Stop celebrating, that’s not a good thing.
One thing that you can celebrate (I guess) is that Kiwis would absolutely destroy American frat boys in a drink-off. They’d put them under the table. It wouldn’t even be close. There’s a reason Americans identify with the 6-pack and Kiwis identify with the coffin. There’s a reason Kiwis have a drinking problem.
American frat parties make headlines with student injuries, assaults and deaths reasonably often – more often than is acceptable. It happens here, too, but much less frequently, so it’s tempting to say that we aren’t as bad. But remember, though, that the USA has 65x more people than we do, so there are bound to be more incidents there than here.
Personally, I think it comes down to a difference in what we celebrate, as drinkers, and how. Dunedin flatters have a lot in common with American Greeks: we both celebrate how much you can drink, and how fast. We both celebrate what you can steal from your neighbours, how good you are at pong. We both like a broken window every now and then.
But Dunedinites take it further. We don’t just chug beers, we have yardies. Americans have “forty-hands”, which is like Scrumpy hands, but Kiwis have crate day, which is basically just playing forty-hands six times in one day. That would kill an American frat boy no matter what they tell you. But it’s also about how we carry out initiations.
Initiations here are absolutely cooked. They’re cooked in the US, too, but there’s a marked difference: American Greek life usually has an oversight body, someone at the Uni or some alumni of the frat that is kinda sorta in charge of keeping it under control and supervision. We do not have that here, and it’s not a good thing. It’s only a matter of time before that lack of supervision leads to an accident that nobody saw.
It’s initiation season now, at the rowdiest Uni in Aotearoa. Since we don’t (and shouldn’t) have someone watching over us at all times, it’s up to you to make sure that these initiations don’t go overboard. Notice when you’ve got a gut feeling about something, and think to yourself: “is it REALLY that cool of me to drink someone else’s vomit? Is that REALLY what I need to do to get into this flat?”
Year after year, people get initiated, grow up, and then take their turn initiating the next round of munters. And every now and then, one of them might say “y’know what? Let’s just add a little new thing to this tradition. Just a small thing.” Year after year, those little things add up, and eventually you’re left with an initiation “tradition” that’s so half-baked you can’t even tell what the original recipe was. That’s how people get hurt.
Anyway, see you all next year.