A "ROLE MODEL'S" AWAKENING

Fraternities in the Philippines did not come from nowhere. It hitchhiked and rode on the wings of colonization. The lure of Western culture, with its art, religion and politics, has tantalized Filipinos to embrace a culture that proved to become violent while the quest in becoming real men have silently eroded.

Excerpts from: HAZING

"Too many men die, long before their physical deaths, in the quality of their lives. Most of us were raised without actively present healthy models of masculinity and manhood. Through healthy initiator rites we can learn how to be with ourselves, with each other, with the women in our lives and with life itself in a vital, passionate, responsible way.

"As a culture over the last several hundred years, we have failed to pass on, in a meaningful way, the wisdom of men to our children. Today's male has grown up with little or no positive male training from his father or other elders. And, the Boy Scouts, a bar mitzvah, confirmation, learning to hunt or fish, the first date, first sexual arousal, first car, first alcoholic drink with parental permission, or the military, have tried, unsuccessfully, to replace those ancient rituals. Our sons, as well as society as a whole, have been the losers."

Starting college is an ideal time to develop "A Modern Rite-of-Passage for Contemporary Heroes~", bringing in the freshman "boy", giving him a positive adult system in which to function and learn what it is to be a man in this culture in this day and age. And this "being a man" doesn't have anything to do with how much you can smoke, drink or do drugs. Those are generally tools to escape being a "real man" and dealing in a healthy way with life. The fraternity system is one way to develop young boys into the role models of the future!"

here's more...

"Hazing doesn't build brotherhood. It builds dissension, undercutting, and eventual retribution. It strips a pledge's self-esteem and often goes beyond their physical and mental limits. The result is an unquestioning abeyance of any command by authority (as in the military system). People can't demand respect, it's earned. (The highest mortality rate during the Korean War was among our Lieutenants being shot by their own troops.) Within a fraternity system, we shouldn't be building a system around respect, rather one around trust, support, and brotherhood."


All these years our society have rode the train of moral decay while we are fast embracing the global culture of materialism, apostasy and secularism. People are probably wondering what happened to Jose Rizal's vision of our "youth becoming the hope of our fatherland".

Well, you don't have to look farther away for answers. Just examine our country's campuses from high schools, colleges and universities and you will know the answer. And with a track record of violent hazings and the death toll of fratwars all these years these facts could prove to be an effective cure for collective amnesia.