Last week we took part in National Hazing Prevention Week at BSU. There were some great events, including a presentation by Travis Apgar. After everything that was discussed last week, I feel like I have a pretty solid understanding of what hazing is and how it can affect a person. Fast forward to this week when a story broke about hazing at Needham High School** on the soccer team. Now, the hazing incident itself was shocking enough, but it doesn't compare to the reactions of the players' parents and the news media.
-The school reacted (correctly, and according to policy) by suspending the players and not allowing them to play in a championship game.
-The parents reacted (wrongly, and outrageously) by attempting to get a court injunction that would allow the girls to play. They did not deny their child's actions, or even argue that what they did was right. They basically argued that they shouldn't be punished for behaving in an illegal manner. One father stated to the nightly news that it was "a misguided team-building exercise", which, frankly, is pretty much the definition of hazing.
-The media reacted by sending mixed messages to the viewing public. They descended upon the families to question their motives, and used graphics with their stories that implied perhaps the school was wrong in their reactions. At the same time they all aired or wrote opinion pieces that derided the players, the coach and the parents for their actions while celebrating the school's reaction.
Perhaps it is time to consider how entertainment programming presents hazing. Movies like Animal House and Old School present it as something that is fun and brings people together. Even the popular television show Greek has shown hazing as a normal activity. I can't think of any sports movies where hazing is presented off the top of my head, but I know they exist. I wonder if presenting hazing as both normal and entertaining has led to the average person thinking it is both normal and entertaining in the real world.
What do you think? Both about the situation in Needham and the way hazing is presented in entertainment?
**Check out the comments on this link. They are pretty outrageous.
I think hazing is, like a billion other activities, an event that happens everywhere, cannot be stopped, occasionally makes headlines, and otherwise go by the waist side. We're programmed to have an opinion from media models the same way we do about drinking, smoking, driving fast, etc...It exists and it's always going to. True, it can be regulated on campus. But what do you do when the students just bring the hazing off campus? When they throw pies and use paddles on willing particpants in their homes? Call the cops? There's no laws against excessive pie use of students not being held against their will.
ReplyDeleteActually, that is part of the hazing law:
ReplyDeleteThe term ``hazing'' as used in this section and in sections eighteen and nineteen, shall mean any conduct or method of initiation into any student organization, whether on public or private property, which willfully or recklessly endangers the physical or mental health of any student or other person. Such conduct shall include whipping, beating, branding, forced calisthenics, exposure to the weather, forced consumption of any food, liquor, beverage, drug or other substance, or any other brutal treatment or forced physical activity which is likely to adversely affect the physical health of any such student or other person, or which subjects such student or other person to extreme mental stress, including extended deprivation of sleep or rest or extended isolation.
Notwithstanding any other provisions of this section to the contrary, consent shall not be available as a defense to any prosecution under this action.
I think hazing is something that does not get a lot of attention because, like you said, it has been made the "norm" for colleges because of television shows and movies. It's seen as a "rite of passage" and something that one just has to deal with.
ReplyDeleteI read the article you posted about the hazing in Needham. I think it is good that these girls were made examples of. I think their parents are ignorant, and bad role models for the girls, acting like what they did isn't wrong. The hazing in Needham may not have been extreme, but there are cases where it has been. What if someone was badly hurt, or even killed? For what, a right of passage? Those girls deserved to have to sit that game out.
ReplyDelete