Tradition. It’s not uncommon for sport teams, military, and a lot of other group organizations to pick on the new guys. It’s sort of a “how bad do you want to be here” kind of thing. Nationals for basically every Greek organization is a lot more strict about it presently.

Most of the time it’s kinda funny/weird stuff like asking a pledge to carry a plank around at all times or wear a onesie to class. You’d have to be on-call if a brother needed a ride or wanted some food delivered, but most of the time they’d want you to stick around so they can actually get to know you. Despite what it may seem like from the outside looking in, I had a lot of fun and it really got me out of my shell.

But obviously there are fraternities that do really fucked up stuff; they’re typically the ones you don’t want to be part of simply cus they’re generally not really cool guys.