Monday, January 25, 2010

Best of Busted!

DU Recruitment Event Under Investigation …. Books “hardcore midget wrestling group”

“Northwestern's chapter of Delta Upsilon fraternity may face disciplinary action from the university after hiring an entertainment group, which bills itself as the “one and only hardcore midget wrestling company”, to perform at a recruitment event…”

“At a…event…, the Half Pint Brawlers performed a show, during which they simulated sex, jumped off a ladder onto one another and stapled each other in the face, among other acts depicted in photographs and videos... In the videos, attendees cheered and chanted, urging the performers to ‘Hit him with a chair!’ and ‘Do it again!’’


The specific theme of this issue of Connections was about fraternal relevancy and values based leadership. While this type of event may occur at a local club or bar in some college towns, how does it connect with the principles that your fraternity or sorority has been built upon? The most ironic part of this whole scenario is that it allegedly occurred during a recruitment function. Believe it or not, this is the event that the recruitment chairman and recruitment committee believed would attract the highest number of quality “hardcore” members to the chapter. What’s that you say?: we are all social organizations and we must show potential members a good time to give them a true picture of what we are about and you need to know how they handle themselves socially?

Let’s snap out of it folks; if we are using parties and events such as “Hardcore Midget Wrestling” as our tools for recruitment, what are we saying about ourselves, what it is that we value and who we want to join our organizations? We are going to get the type of members that expect events like this to be the sum total of their fraternal experience, and these types of joiners are least likely to make positive contributions to the chapters. To top it all off, the videos of these events are likely going to end up on YouTube and Facebook… which is a whole new example of how to get Busted!
Rakov, Abe. (2008, January 14). Rush Event Under Investigation. The Daily Northwestern, Retrieved January 15, 2008, from http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/news/2008/01/14/Campus/Rush-Event.Under.Investigation-3151139.shtml

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