How to Recognize Hazing in College and Not to Become Involved

Several weeks ago, eleven students were charged with unlawful hazing that led to the death of Adam Oakes in February during a pledge party for the Delta Chi Fraternity. Adam was told to drink the entire bottle of Jack Daniels and passed out on the couch, where he died of alcohol poisoning. For the first time, an article on a similar topic was published by the site https://writemyessay.nyc/.

Over 200 hazing deaths have been registered in the USA since 1838 when the first tragic incident of this nature was recorded. The past decade claimed 40 of those 200. Being a part of the sorority or a fraternity has been the epitome of the American college experience for decades. Moreover, the sense of

community and belonging that comes from being a part of the group is a deeply ingrained need. That’s the major appeal of student organizations, including the Greek-letter ones. The latter adds to the mix a feeling of being special, chosen, and participating in things outsiders aren’t allowed to join. That tickles our egos as well as gives us the satisfaction of being a part of something bigger.

For freshmen students, this need is even more acute. They feel homesick, disoriented, and lost, so latching onto the readily available community seems like the best option. Maybe that’s the primary reason why so many of them are ready to put up with risk, intimidation, humiliation, psychological torment, and physical ordeal that is hazing. Another reason people are willing to participate – often against their better judgment – is the respectable façade of “tradition” that hazing often disguises itself with.

What is hazing?

Hazing is intentionally causing emotional or physical harm to a member of a group or team regardless of the person’s willingness to participate, according to HazingPrevention.org. More detailed descriptions of hazing include such things as forcing you to do anything contrary to your moral or religious beliefs, causes you emotional distress, compromises your dignity, causes you to be an object of malicious amusement, ridicules emotional strain, or impairs your academic effort. New member activities and initiation rituals supposedly must prove dedication to join the organization and bond pledges together.

However, as often as not, they are about exerting the power that senior members feel over new recruits.

Fraternities get into the spotlight for criminal hazing more often than sororities because hazing rituals used there are more violent in nature. This is not at all the case when students chemistry homework help each other. Sometimes, they result in serious injuries or even deaths of the hazed members. Alcohol poisoning tops the list since drinking competitions and games are the most popular hazing practices. Other types of hazing behaviors include illegal activities (stealing, trespassing, consuming drugs), consuming vile substances (such as rotten food), isolation, kidnapping, abandonment, and sleep deprivation. Sororities, however, aren’t blameless. During their initiation process, they also cross many lines, coercing their pledges to do degrading things that can be disturbing and psychologically traumatizing: dancing naked in front of other sisters, lap dancing while blindfolded, sucking on a banana, and doing other sexually suggestive things for giggles. There are also cruel mind games like the notorious “blow or blow” that got the oldest continuously active chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma suspended earlier this year.

More than half of students involved in college clubs and organizations experience hazing. The list includes varsity athletics, Greek-letter organizations, club sports, music bands, drama societies, recreation, and even academic clubs. Not all hazing practices are hazardous. Some tamer variations might be seen as distressing, annoying, or just silly, depending on who you ask. For example, singing or chanting in public, going to

classes in groups dressed in crazy outfits, or memorizing tons of useless information.

How to stop it

That “tradition” part of hazing might not be entirely baseless. Indeed, Greek life on American campuses has existed for over two hundred years, along with an unsavory part of it lurking in the shadows. According to Abby Jackson, an author for Insider, hazing deaths are not a new phenomenon. “One of the first high-profile deaths occurred in 1873 when a Kappa Alpha Society pledge at Cornell University was blindfolded in the countryside and left to find his way home in the dark. On his way, he fell off of a cliff and died,” she writes in her piece about hazing. Yet hazing practices are much older than that. They stretch back through colonial times and Medieval European universities to Hellenic antiquity. Further still – to the tribal rites of passage that youths were subjected to since time immemorial. Those practices survive by preying on our fear of ostracism, on our yearning to prove ourselves to others and be accepted. However, don’t forget that hazing is outlawed. Hazing is illegal, so you cannot consent to it like no one can legally consent to be murdered or mutilated. You have the power to stop it.