After nine fraternity members were arrested for hazing-related crimes, and pledges allegedly being urinated on while laying face down on a basketball court covered in broken glass, being put in an ice machine wearing nothing but underwear and having ice with spices drip into their eyes, the question becomes, how does something like this happen?
Megan Thiel, Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New Orleans ..."It's mind-boggling really on why it continues, and why it is still kind of accepted, where the pledges need to do whatever," said Thiel.
She calls it the pressure to be in a fraternity and belonging. She says it most likely doesn't start out like that.
"Sometimes they're having a great time and they are treating the pledges as what they are called anyway, brothers, "where we're pals, good friends,' and then the next minute, it's like, 'well if you really want to be with us, this is what we all go through, so why won't you do it,'" said Thiel.