The University has recently seen a lot of scandals involving sororities and fraternities. This semester’s first fraternity front-page news started on April 10 with the arrest of Adam Schelberg, a member of Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT), on felony charges of robbery, kidnapping, criminal use of a firearm and assault for the alleged pistol-whipping, beating and stripping of another student, according to police.

The next scandal came out in a New York Post story on April 29 about a student who said, according to the Post, that she “has been hounded by vengeful sorority girls who verbally and physically attacked her and threatened to ‘slit her throat’ when she decided she didn’t want to join their group.”

Melissa Connolly, vice president of University Relations, said in a Newsday article dated April 30, “‘A thorough investigation of her most recent claims, which we first learned of yesterday, is ongoing, although hampered by inconsistencies and delays in reporting incidents.'” Connolly also added that incident reports have been filed against Courtney Holt, the student who claimed she was hazed as a Phi Epsilon pledge, as well.

So what exactly is going on? Which party needs to grow up? Probably both. Welcome to college.

Let’s start with ZBT. At one point, a member of ZBT was seen wearing a shirt with Schelberg’s face on it and the words “Stop Snitching.”

Again, how old are we? Wearing a shirt like that is pretty ironic if one doesn’t want to look involved in the incident. Might as well wear a shirt that says “Look at me, I helped, too!”

What allegedly happened was a bad solution in the first place. It really made things a lot better, didn’t it? But 90 minutes in jail doesn’t even come close to a pinch of punishment, so who knows if a lesson was learned, at least in that aspect. There’s not much more to say about that than how about we start making better decisions.

So hazing. And sororities. No matter how much it seems that universities try to keep hazing under control, it happens. Some types of hazing are worse than others. Some sororities probably do worse things to their pledges than others. However, certain “rituals” go just too far, like branding the groin with a hot fork (which is supposedly Phi Epsilon’s initiation ritual). If things like that are true, then why do such sororities exist? What kind of sisterhood is that? You don’t have to have a mark to show loyalty or whatever it is that a fork shaped scar on your groin is supposed to mean.

Sororities that go that far shouldn’t be on this campus. It doesn’t make the University look good at all and it also hurts the reputations of other sororities here. Who knows what really goes on in any sorority or fraternity, but some things should not be tolerated. We’re not little anymore, but who wouldn’t pick a secret handshake over branding?