By Katherine Hobson
Florida AM University President James Ammons addresses students at a rally earlier this month following a hazing incident that killed a member of the school band.
Recent reports of serious injuries and even death tied to hazing rituals has us asking ourselves: How do otherwise sane people participate in this kind of activity?
As the WSJ reports, Robert Champion, a 26-year-old drum major in Florida AM University’s renowned marching band, collapsed and died after a hazing incident in November. Last week the medical examiner’s office declared the death a homicide, caused by internal bleeding resulting from blunt-force trauma. (Yesterday, the paper reports, trustees of the university rejected a call by Florida’s governor to suspend the school’s president.)
Hazing — whether it’s making newbies go to class in stupid costumes, stand outside in the cold, drink until they’re sick or undergo physical abuse — is “a process based on a tradition, used by groups to maintain a hierarchy or to discipline” members, says Susan Lipkins, a psychologist and author of “Preventing Hazing: How Parents, Teachers and Coaches Can Stop the Violence, Harassment, and Humiliation.”
It’s perpetuated by a “blueprint of hazing,” in which someone comes into a hierarchical group — whether at school, in the military or in a police or fire-fighting department — and undergoes the hazing him or herself. Then there’s a year or more of being a bystander as even newer group members are hazed. And at some point, those formerly hazed become the perpetrators, Lipkins says.
They think that “it’s my right and duty to pass this on to the next generation,” she says. And they justify it as a bonding exercise that helps the member feel he or she is worthy of being part of the group.
There’s a continuum of mild to severe hazing, says Lipkins. Problem is, there’s no way to delineate what is harmless from what isn’t. Forcing someone to sing a song in public, for example, doesn’t sound particularly bad, but it might be pretty traumatic for some people to do against their will, she says.
And mild hazing often deteriorates into something more sinister, since the perpetrators tend to “add a little something” to what was previously done to them, she says.
Lipkins says there’s a major code of silence that can make it difficult to stop a cycle of hazing. “It’s as if they enter a door that says ‘hazing’ and drop their morals and judgment,” she says. And fear of retribution often keeps people from speaking out.
Lipkins says universities need to be aware of what’s going on with their student groups and to set up ways for people to report abuse anonymously at any time of the day or night. And bystanders need to be trained that they have a “duty to report” abuses they witness, she says.
They constitute the “biggest group,” and “have the most power,” she says.
Image: Associated Press