The “Scenes of Hazing”, as portrayed in an early student yearbook of the Massachusetts Agricultural College. Circa 1879. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m listening to yet another call in show on hazing and once again am disgusted and mystified. In an advanced society such as ours, I find it unconscionable that hazing still exists, and in fact, that is has ever existed. How does hazing even make sense? A young student wants to make friends and join a particular group. Current group members taunt, harass, embarrass, injure, torture and sometimes kill the new member. At the end of a certain period of time, they stop this process and say “now you can be our friend.” I fail to see a) why anyone would want to be friends with these kind of people,and how they could possibly have a valid friendship after the way they were treated, and b) how this barbaric system persists, especially in academia, where, students (and parents) pay large sums of money to attend, and in the military, where service persons in life and death situations should be working as teammates. Hazers are small-minded insecure people, who only feel good when they are making other people feel bad. Why anyone would want to join others of this mindset is beyond my comprehension.
How can we stop hazing? Apparently no one really knows, as this practice persists, despite universities’ so-called attempts to end it, and despite deaths, serious injuries and expensive lawsuits.
I don’t pretend to know the answer to this perplexing problem. My best suggestion is to punish institutions that allow hazing by withholding money. Alumni and university donors should withhold donations from institutions with known hazing occurring, and make known to administrators why they are declining to donate. If serious injury, lawsuits and death will not stop hazing, maybe money will.
© Huffygirl 2012
Related articles:
- The Diane Rehm Show: The dangers of hazing and what’s being done about it
- Bounty for all (huffygirl.wordpress.com)
- FAMU says it’s not responsible for hazing death (miamiherald.com)
- Wilfrid Laurier suspends baseball team over hazing (thestar.com)
