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Bullying
Hazing
Hazing is any activity expected of someone becoming part of a group or trying to keep status in a group that humiliates, degrades, or risks emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of the person's willingness to participate.
Bullying usually involves excluding someone from a group, but hazing is different because it’s part of a process to join a group. Most people think of college fraternity and sorority initiations when they think of hazing. But hazing happens at all ages, to both men and women, and it happens to people from all different backgrounds. At the middle and high school levels, hazing often occurs in sports teams, with current team members “initiating” new members. Many people think of hazing as a harmless part of growing up, as something that everyone goes through at some point, but hazing is harmful, both physically and emotionally. Physical wounds heal, but a victim of hazing can carry the emotional scars with them for life.
In a Chicago suburb, a powder puff football game between junior and senior girls turned ugly. Seniors kicked and punched the juniors and smeared them with a mixture of house paint, fish guts, pig intestines, blood, and human feces and urine. A number of the juniors were injured and had to be taken to the local hospital. One had a broken foot and another girl needed 16 stitches in her head. And those are just the physical injuries they suffered.
Source: CNN
Common types of hazing include:
- sleep deprivation and restrictions on personal hygiene
- yelling, swearing, and insulting new members/rookies
- being forced to wear embarrassing or humiliating clothing in public
- being forced to eat vile substances or smearing of such on one’s skin
- brandings
- physical beatings
- binge drinking and drinking games
- sexual simulation and sexual assault
Content last updated June 25, 2008
