Punishment
On the topic of punishments, I believe you can’t say whether they are better or worse than rehabilitation. There are some situations where being punished might be better. For example, in my sorority, we have rules when we have events. If you break that rule, that you are subjected to disciplinary actions. If we didn’t have these rules, then people would not be conscientious of what is acceptable and what is not. On the other hand, if we had rules but no repercussions, it’s as though the rule doesn’t exist. For example, in my sorority, we are responsible for attending weekly meetings. You are allowed 2 unexcused absences throughout the semester. If you need to miss more for class, you have to submit an excuse and get it approved. If you fail to follow those rules, you will be sent to the standards council and will face consequences. Standards are composed of elected representatives in each pledge class that holds sorority members to rules of the sorority. Some sororities make you pay a fine, but my sorority puts girls on social probation. That means they might not be able to attend social events. When organizations impose a fine as a punishment, it brings us back to the topic of making everything a financial transaction. Some people might rather pay the fine to get out of chapter because they value their free time more than the amount of money the fine is. I don’t believe this is the best punishment because if the fine is too low, the majority of the chapter probably won’t attend the meeting. If it is too high, then it would overall achieve the goal the fine imposes, but girls already pay to be a part of the sorority, so it seems ridiculous to continue to charge members. I think my organization's social ban works well because the events that you would not be allowed to go to are once a semester and they are the most memorable and are considered important events in the Greek community. In my sophomore year we had a mandatory sexual assault meeting on a Sunday morning. I went home that weekend and wasn’t going to make it to the meeting. Since going home was not an acceptable excuse, I was sent to standards. During the meeting, we spoke about how important the meeting was and how it was irresponsible of me to miss it. My punishment was to write an apology letter to the sorority, and I had to attend other meetings on campus. I was surprised that I had to attend other meetings because this was a private party my sorority hired to teach this lecture, but I knew that I wasn’t that upset because I was still allowed to attend events.
This example showed one way I believe constitutes as an acceptable punishment. You know beforehand that missing a meeting will have consequences and it is your decision if you want to abide by the rules. That being said, there are things that punishment might not be the best route. Punishing people for other actions was something that I am not a fan of. During my time as a site director, some of my constituents would put their entire camp in a “time out” because a few kids would be acting up. I didn’t think that this was a good choice because I believe that they are there to have fun and if that child is behaving, they should not have to suffer as well. Whenever a group of children would misbehave, I would make an example out of it. I would take those children who were not behaving and speak to them and try to solve the underlying problem. At the end of the day I would give out a star camper award to a child that did something helpful or nice that day and they would get a certificate and would choose something from the treasure box. After that child was given a reward, I would mention how we should treat others and try to address any other problems we had throughout the day. This allowed children to reflect on their actions, learn from others, and make better choices going forward. For the most part, I believe that incentives are more effective than punishments. After the first few weeks, I had very minimal issues with misbehaving children and was able to make it a great summer for them all.
In years past I had many posts about fraternities and sororities in response to my prompts. This may be the first one this year. I'm glad to hear there is still some Greek life on campus, because as you may know a few years ago the campus (and indeed this happened nationally) came down hard on houses about hazing and excessive drinking (and maybe some other practices that are important but I don't know about them). This was a consequence of some heavily publicized incidents that went very badly. i wonder if the rules in your sorority changed at all as a consequence of that.
ReplyDeleteNow let me be a little skeptical about some of the things you claimed, in part because when I was a student I was in a dorm (my first two years) and in an apartment after that. I did socializing with the people who were living in the same situation. To my recollection there were no explicit rules to govern our behavior. If it worked then, why do you need rules now?
You talked about attending sorority meetings. Why is that necessary? If you explained the purpose of the meeting maybe you would get a better sense of whether the rule makes sense or not. I will not that in our class, where attendance has been an issue, it says in the syllabus that attendance is not required but it is highly recommended. Suppose your sorority did something similar. What would happen?
Put a different way, there is a larger cultural ethos about making commitments and what that entails - some people would think joining a sorority would mean going to the meetings, no rules necessary to encourage that. Other people might not see it that way. So a different question arises, about who gets to join. Could the sorority recruit only those members who'd attend meetings even without the rules? Or is that too difficult.
You did suggest there can be extenuating circumstances - like additional coursework - that can interfere with sorority commitments. In a different regime, people would self-police on that rather than have rules and an enforcement policy. So you might ask why one is better than the other and in what circumstances that is true.
Well attending a meeting is just a responsibility you take when you join. You are expected to be part of the organization, and they want you to be informed with what is going on. These meetings around an hour long and touched on different topics. If they didn't make it mandatory, I believe the majority of the chapter wouldn't go due to selfishness and laziness. My sorority is in Urbana and it is pretty far from everyone else, especially us seniors that live on the complete opposite side of campus.
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