Have You Heard About Hazing, Because It's Pretty Hazy
Hazing is a serious issue that involves things such as initiation and things groups force people to do to be able to fit in with the rest of the group. This includes such things as harassment, humiliation, and abuse. In one case in 2003 a football team was charged with sodomizing younger players with broom sticks, pine cones, and golf balls (Hamilton 82). This is very gruesome case of hazing but is just one example of what is happening around the world on sports teams and groups of friends. To begin, a long time ago when humans first started making cliques, they also created something horrible. That thing is called hazing.
Hazing is when people are subjected to humiliation, abuse, or harassment. This often occurs in initiation into a clique, sports team, or club. Hazing can occur among any one at any age. The first time someone has ever warned others of hazing was in 1626 “El Buscon” a Spanish novel was first published. This did not really stop hazing as much as it did to aware the public what was occurring. Furthermore, a large percent of the people hazed are in sororities and fraternities.
A fraternity is a Greek organization on college campuses allowing students a house to live and a lifetime of brotherhood with other members. A sorority is very similar but it applies to girls instead of boys. 76% of all the students who had participated in fraternities/sororities have been hazed. Fraternities and sororities also have the highest death rate of people dying from hazing. This is very hard to stop because the college has very little impact on the fraternity or sorority. Moving on, 1.
5 million High school students are hazed each year. (Hamilton 81) This is a very increasing amount that includes 47% of high school athletes. All of these students were in some way harmed or humiliated against their will. This is most of the time not noticed by school officials and is happening in a lot of high schools around America. The secrecy of hazing is the most difficult part is figuring out when it is happening.
80% of college athletes are hazed less than half have been reported. (Hamilton 91) The OSA are the people who take care of hazing in colleges and do not report the public unless there were already informed through rumors. (92) Barely any of the people hazed report that they were hazed. A large amount of teenagers who have been hazed are forced to take oaths to tell nobody the initiation practices. This is a very a big reason hazing continues today. If people don’t ever find out about it and no action is made then it will not stop.
To conclude, hazing is hurting the youth of our nation and needs to be stopped, but to do so major precautions need to be made to insure that it stops. In addtition, as stated before hazing is really hard to catch with all the secrecy behind it. Hazing has been happening for far too long and it is time that we make a stand and stop it. This will require everyone to take action and report hazing to public officials to have it be stopped and the hazers punished to insure they will not continue the tradition.
