SAINT PETER, MN – For a few years now, Gustavus Adolphus College has proudly boasted that it has had relatively few hazing problems with its sororities and fraternities. Or so we all believed. This week, campus Greek advisor Aerdna Joseph announced that all Greek organizations would be temporarily suspended on campus due to a recently discovered bizarre hazing ritual: making new members join the United States military.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love the military industrial complex just like every other red-blooded American patriot,” began Joseph in a statement she released to the wider campus community, “But making it mandatory for membership in a Greek organization is hazing, and it cannot be tolerated at Gustavus. Or, wait, let me rephrase. It can be tolerated if it’s the Blues doing it, but otherwise, it cannot be tolerated.”

Joseph has received widespread praise across campus for taking such swift action so quickly, but there are some on campus who are concerned. One such person is Rick Lee, faculty advisor of both Campus ROTC and Anime Club. He described the move as “dangerous to the future of the U.S. military,” adding that the ritual was a “standard and fairly common way of keeping up membership in our Armed Forces.”

In the wake of the announcement, the Fourth Crown reached out to the presidents of each of the eight Greek organizations for a comment. We only received one reply, from Sigma Deize Knuts co-president Olivia Bergstrom, who said that the idea of banning this hazing ritual was “ridiculous.” According to Bergstrom, “I had to do a whole tour of duty in Afghanistan! I had to take six years off of my college career, plus a seventh because I got stop lost, just to be a sister. To make it easier for future girls to become sisters without experiencing what I have is unfair to me.”

While we here at the Fourth Crown definitely can’t deny that Greek Life has a certain pizazz to it by hazing members, we also believe that it is an American patriot’s duty to enlist in the military to “protect” ourselves from terrorism that seems to only take place outside of America. What this decision means for the future of both Greek Life at Gustavus, and indeed, perhaps the entire United States military as a whole, remains to be seen.