Categories
Hazing News

Unfunny joke making rounds on Internet

Writing about hazing all these many years, I read many stories about hazing outrages.

But there is a supposedly satiric post on the Internet on the that is perverse.  The unnamed poster’s sense of “humor” includes such unfunny matters as libeling a respected Hispanic society, STDs from unprotected sex, forced sex required by sorority seniors of pledges, etc.

About 1,900 sites (blogs, chat groups, local sits) have picked up the story and that’s just the ones I could find from my Google “safe search.” Many of them don’t list the story as satire.

Suffice to say there is no Westborn College in Florida. No sorority has asked its pledges to have sex with anonymous men on a dating service. There is no truth to the poster’s story that the anonymous men paid the sorority sisters.

Finally, the poster used the name of a real organization for Hispanics, Sigma Delta Pi, which ought to make members of that group good and outraged. Also, searches for that group on Google without quotes turn up a real sorority with those Greek letters in its name, a sorority founded in Florida. They too should be outraged.

–Moderator

By Hank Nuwer

Journalist Hank Nuwer tracks hazing deaths in fraternities and schools. Nuwer is the Alaska author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives; Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing, High School Hazing, Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader. In April of 2024, the Alaska Press Club awarded him first place in the Best Columnist division and Best Humorist, second place.

He has written articles or columns on hazing for the Sunday Times of India, Toronto Globe & Mail, Harper's Magazine, Orlando Sentinel, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His current book is Hazing: Destroying Young Lives from Indiana University Press. He is married to Malgorzata Wroblewska Nuwer of Warsaw, Poland and Fairbanks, Alaska. Nuwer is a former columnist for the Greenville (Ohio)Early Bird and former managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska.
Nuwer was named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists columnist of the year in 2021 for his “After Darke” column in the Early Bird. He also won third place for the column in 2022 from the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He and his wife Gosia, recently of Union City, Ind., have owned 20 acres in Alaska for many years. “The move is a sort-of coming home for us,” said Nuwer. As a journalist, he’s written about the Alaskan Iditarod sled-dog race and other Alaska topics. Read his musings in his blog at Real Alaska Daily--http://realalaskadaily.com and in his weekly column "Far from Randolph" in the Winchester Star-Gazette of Randolph County, Indiana.

Leave a Reply