Is It Hazing?

Learn Why People Haze and How You Can Stop It.

By
Relationship Advice Expert April Masini

Q: Dear April Masini,

I'm a freshman in college and decided to pledge at a fraternity. My school has strict anti-hazing rules, but I'm worried that the fraternity I'm joining may be involved in hazing rituals. They make us drink a lot, even when we say we need to stop or when we're throwing up. The guys in the fraternity say this isn't hazing; they're just trying to get us to bond and that they had to go through it too. I don't want to tell on my soon-to-be brothers and get the whole fraternity in trouble, but I don't want to be hazed either. Though the university has rules against hazing, they don't seem to pay attention when fraternities do it. Why should the guys who want me to be their brothers put my life in danger? Is this hazing?

Sincerely,

Hazing or Bonding?

A:

Dear Hazing or Bonding?,

It's understandable that you're concerned that you and your fellow pledges may be getting hazed by your new fraternity. If something is making you uncomfortable, you need to listen to your feelings and speak up. Here are some guidelines about hazing I've set up for you.

What is hazing? 

Hazing is what groups of people do to initiate others into the group. It usually involves some kind of pain and humiliation. Many people react badly to pain and humiliation and work hard to avoid it. Others, who are used to it, or have not healed from it being inflicted on them, repeat the pattern and inflict pain and humiliation on others as part of that pattern. This is the same kind of pattern that is seen in other abuses, like physical, domestic, and sexual abuse. Very often, unless the cycle of behavior is broken, it repeats through generations.

Why do people haze others?

What makes young men (and, to a lesser extent, young women) participate in hazing rituals that are humiliating and even dangerous — like excessive drinking to the point of near-alcohol poisoning and performing acts such as running naked in public or submitting to sexual abuse?

Hazing is an abuse, and the fact that many universities and groups either allow it, look the other way, and sometimes even encourage it speaks to the history of abuse in our society as established. Like violence, hazing — pain and humiliation — are part of our culture.

What do people do when they're hazed?

When people stay quiet and are victims it is because they accept this culture. This is exactly what abuse victims of domestic, physical, and sexual abuse do. They stay quiet about it and remain victimized, often to grow into offenders.

Those who do not stay quiet, however, are many. Sometimes the victim, himself, has had enough of the pain and humiliation and opts out. Sometimes a parent or family member or friend intervenes and gets help.

If you know of hazing, you should recognize it for what it is — abuse. Report hazing, like you would any other abuse or crime to adults or authorities. If you want to really make a difference, leave a paper trail, by putting your concerns and your wishes to stop the hazing, in writing. Communities start hazing and it is communities that stop it.

April Masini -- nicknamed "the new millennium's Dear Abby" by the media, is author of the best-selling books Date Out Of Your League and Think & Date Like A Man, the two (just released) step-by-step dating and relationship manuals, Ideas for a Fun Date and Romantic Date Ideas, and the critically acclaimed dating and relationship online magazine www.AskApril.com.

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