Delta Phi Beta or Binan's Badboy Barkadas?

Lately I've been entertaining the thought of joining a medical fraternity but have been having mixed feelings about it. The pros of joining one are the support from other medical students which includes access to their secret stash of notes and obviously an instant boost in your social network. Seeing how I haven't figured out yet where the subject matter for our test actually comes from all the time and how I'm not much of a socialist joining a frat could be especially beneficial for me.

So what's stopping me? Well the cons. Actually I guess technically there is only one con which is the initiation. The typical initiation into a medical frat out here consists of recitation, humiliation, and a good beating. I remember seeing these two poor girls from last year who decided to join one walk around for a couple of weeks with black and blue bruises all up and down their thighs and shoulders. I assuming this practice also occurs in the States but I don't know for sure. Anyway, I don't quite understand why an organization of soon to be medical doctors would condone such a practice. It would seem to me that beating someone like that is just a tad bit contradictory to a doctor's role as a healer. If these people were joining a gang then yes I could probably understand the mentality behind it all.

I remember back when I was in high school this... umm, friend of mine joined a gang. Why he did it I don't understood. You know kids. Anyway, his initiation into the gang also consisted of getting a beating. You could say at the time he did gain a lot of immediate support and his network did expand as well but looking back on it in the end overall the whole thing was... well, pretty stupid. Just to reiterate for my mom, I'm speaking here from second hand experience of course. I think she still reads this thing.

Anyhow a medical fraternity is nothing like a gang... I suppose or would like to believe so but as the old saying goes if it sounds like a duck and looks like a duck then it probably is a duck. Some of the guys here like to brag about how tough the people in their frat are and how other frats are scared of them. It's a freckin' medical frat what are you planning to do later? Bully the nurses in to give you their lunch money? I'm nolonger interested in joining a gang these days. Though at times I may still act like an adolescent, I'm too old for those kind of things.

There is one frat here though that seems less like a gang, in their initiations anyway, and doesn't inflict a beating. However, you just got to be prepared to be humiliated while doing some singing and dancing for them. Hmm... Well, I'm not really sure if that's for me either cause...

"gangstas don't dance, we boogie."