POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL
This is a terrible situation.
No one can accept the acts that were on the video.
But one has to reflect on the vicious culture of fraternities in the United States, an unpleasant institution that has never caught on the same way in Canada.
Initiation rites in some American bone-head fraternities have included ugly stuff like this or cleaning crap off the floor or being urinated on and worse.
The other fact we must consider is the horrid violence that exists on the streets of South Africa. Waves of rapes, armed robberies, and brutal murders.
The violent crime rate there is among the very highest in the world.
Your chance of being a victim of violence in South Africa's main cities is on the order of twenty times what it is in Toronto.
Imagine commonplace rapes in a population heavily infected with AIDs?
That kind of hellish environment is not without its psychological effect, I'm sure.
