Can you explain the difference & history of made vs. paper ?
I am only going to do this once. This is moreso sociology than history. It is also loaded with personal bias.
In the beginning, there were fraternities and sororities. Their power was in selectivity. You didn’t pledge to be a member–you were selected and then initiated.
Shortly thereafter, “pledge clubs” were instituted. This provided a period of observation for men and women in a supervised setting. Pledge clubs had their own officers and responsibilities to perform service, cultural events, fundraisers, and learn about the org. Let’s say, off the top of my head, pledge clubs began emerging in the 1920s and were fully formed by the 1940s.
People successfully serving in a pledge club were invited to be initiates, usually going through a week-long work week, pledge week, probate week, initiation week, or hell week. Often times, a performance was a required part of the week, giving rise to the “probate show.”Men returning to college after serving in World War II began heavily influencing the pledge process. It has been said that marching in lines with drill precision came to be a major thing during this period. Others have said that hazing when from fun and frivolous during this period to becoming more physical. Through the 40s and 50s, and the early 60s, BGLOs were seen as conservative standards of manhood and womanhood. But by the late 1960s, they were waning in popularity with the black campus movement. People wanted more revolution and activism in campus organizations and not merely suit-wearing, tea dance throwing clubs.So throughout the 70s, the aesthetic of the groups changed. Instead of suits and dresses, you began seeing more African garb, head wraps, black berets, and other aesthetic traits of “the movement.”Concurrent to this period, PWIs began admitting black students in larger numbers. Programs began that created a better pipeline from poorer neighborhoods to college. Just as WWII veterans influenced the pledge program, so did this group of students who were more tuned into both the streets and the revolution. By the 1980s, HBCUs largely began to relax their admission requirements as well, because PWIs were essentially stealing many good candidates who would have otherwise chosen an HBCU had the local PWIs not been cheaper or even free. So, it has been argued, HBCUs went from training the well-heeled of society to training any man or woman who wanted to seek higher education. With them, they brought their own sensibilities. Also by the 1980s, Black Greek life was at its least popular, until School Daze–a SCATHING criticism of Greek life–actually revitalized it. So now you have a microscope on the worst of Black Greek life–hazing and misogyny–and it is turned into an ideal for people who don’t know any better.1989 hits. Hazing is growing out of control nationwide. A boy dies while pledging Alpha at Morehouse. This spurs a national conversation between the eight members of the NPHC at the time, which then spurs into sweeping policy changes. PLEDGING is abolished. New national programs are created to replace pledging. For some orgs, this means undergraduate chapters no longer were the responsible entity for intake–the grad chapter or a team of advisors would be in charge. For other orgs, this would mean other things. But for all orgs, the time spent on membership activities was to be reduced.
But there was always an underground culture. Even back when pledging was out in the open, people were always getting their ass beat. Believe that. And those who were sociopaths found that even in a new culture of INTAKE, it would be even easier to beat people’s asses now that you could pre-pledge and post-pledge, and have the session after the session.
By the mid 90s, the culture was already entrenched. “PAPER” meant that you only performed the official intake process. “MADE” meant that you submitted to an underground process.By 2010, many orgs began to re-evaluate what intake meant to them and made the official processes longer and more enriched, while still maintaining lots of oversight. But the damage had already been done. The culture of paper/made was now firmly entrenched in the generation of the parents of the new generation, with mothers and fathers turning a blind eye to what their children were going through.
I almost majored in anthropology.
germansingergirl
ellievsbear
kaledo-art
