Hazing, still commonplace, must stop

It's been two years since the Technique last reported that a campus organization was caught hazing. I wish that were because the practice no longer existed on our campus. Unfortunately, as I suspect many of our readers are already well aware, hazing still permeates the Tech community both inside and outside the Greek system. Non-Greek hazing seems to easily pass under the radar, but many common interest groups, particularly those that require large time commitments, can foster hazing just as well as any fraternity can.

Hazing is, of course, that absurdly ubiquitous phenomenon on university campuses where organizations subject their new members to humiliation or abuse with the ostensible point of it being the ultimate bonding experience for everyone involved. Here are a few examples of what the Interfraternity Council deems hazing on its worksheet for new members: physical disfigurement, sleep deprivation, required participation in public acts of humiliation, head shaving and forced consumption of a food, liquid or other substance. You can use your imagination as to the various things that have over the years been eligible under that last category.

Resentment and shame don't strike me as good building blocks towards a meaningful relationship. It's actually a great way to cause divisions within an organization. That's me thinking rationally, though, and I think most organizations which haze are long past the point where rational thought is involved.

By that, I mean that after a certain point in time the bond-instilling ideals of hazing are no longer much of a consideration. The people who first dreamed up the rituals move on and leave their traditions behind them. It becomes comparable to a witch hunt where everybody knows in the back of their mind that what's going on is ridiculous, but nobody wants to rock the boat for fear that the consequences of doing so could be worse than anything that comes from the hazing rituals.

Speak up, and you could get ostracized by your fellow members or even risk jeopardizing the future of the organization if administrators or police hear about it. (Hazing is, by the way, illegal in Georgia-as in most other states).

Yet hazing persists, largely because its targets are almost always freshmen who are adjusting to what is probably the biggest and most abrupt change in their life-the transition from living with their parents to college. You'll have to forgive them if they don't have the self-assurance to stand up to people who might be twice their size and who carry all the confidence in the world bullying kids around on their home turf. The established members who perpetuate the hazing rituals also face peer pressure from current and former members, but I'm not giving them a pass; they can stand up for themselves.

It takes uncommon courage to invest so much of oneself into joining an organization and then risk throwing it all away. With many organizations initiating new members this fall, I have the utmost respect for anyone who can find it in themselves to stand on their convictions, but let's be realistic. On a broader scale, freshmen are not going to lead this charge.

Nor will it happen through the administration issuing threats. In this regard, I would view the fight against hazing as being a lot like the war on drugs. Over the last couple of decades, billions of dollars have gone into efforts to make drug abuse vanish with no meaningful reduction actually happening. This is because drug users are able to take their habit underground where the police can't catch them, much the same way campus organizations, especially in the Greek system, are able to keep most of their activities a secret from the administration.

The change needs to come from within, from senior members of organizations that haze. Hazing is a disease that infects organizations, one that can only be treated through the efforts of courageous individuals.

This is my message to leaders of organizations who haze: make yourself a part of the solution, starting this year. Otherwise you are truly a part of the problem and you-not your guinea pig new members-should be ashamed.