I guess they never told you about the Aggie "jizz jar." I'd also take popped up collars over this:
yep. I was "independent". went to A&M after a couple of years as MOS 0321 but never got the 8654. The corps at A&M is like any college organization. Unless you have senior NCO's that will bust some balls, the little sadists come out to play. It's the same in the Corps. I've seen some real bad "training accidents" when people got out of line. Fall off stuff, run into stuff and sometimes just decide that their brain housing group needed to be adjusted. But the first sign of hazing, laxity of discipline or any of this stuff occurs, you gotta drop a frickin sledgehammer on it. HARD.
We were brothers and training for something different than the Corps of Cadets or frats. But I have to tell you, there are some fine young men that came out of the Corps of Cadets and still do. Aggie Muster names a lot of them. ..that's another "tradition" I love about A&M.
In first two weeks of Parris Island Boot Camp, he publicly had the shit kicked out of him by his drill instructor, and also saw another recruit die of heart failure right in front of him.
Did the fraternity thing in college for a few years. Don't have any special loyalty to the fraternity system, but it was fun. I never did anything nor had anything done to me that I couldn't tell my Mom about, so I was really never hazed. I wouldn't take any humiliating rituals from a khaki popped collar kid either, but nor would I take it from a 50 year old with a buzz cut.
People are different, as is their choice of associations.