Hazing and Its Consequences
Iliana Ng
DeVry University
June 25, 2014

Hazing and Its Consequences
Over the years, there have been many stories published and movies made about the harmful and sometimes deadly consequences of the hazing rituals being performed by university and high school students, military personnel, professional athletes and most recently by middle school students. These rituals have affected the life of the people involve in hazing, whether is on the receiving end or on the delivering end. Educators along with the communities have confronted practical jokes, physical abuse, excessive consumption of alcohol and other humiliating and harmful events.
To better understand these rituals, we look at the dictionary definition for hazing. Hazing as defined in the Marrian-Webster Dictionary is “the practice of playing unpleasant tricks on someone or forcing someone to do unpleasant things.” Others definitions found and “they typically include two main elements: (1) the initiation of new members of a particular group by more senior members and (2) activities that result in physical, psychological, and/or emotional harm” (Finley, 2011, p. 225). As noted, these unfriendly acts may sometimes be cruel jokes that sometimes lead to more serious injuries even death.
Hazing dates back to Plato’s academy in 387 B.C. and it was known as pennalism. Plato associated hazing acts to those of wild animals and criticized the “practical jokes played by unruly young men that injured the hazed and citizens who go in the way” (Nuwer, 1999, p. 92). In America, the term “hazing” did not become commonly used until after the Civil War and it focus on personal servitude. Different than European universities, the faculty dictated the terms of servitude not the fellow students. The growth of social fraternities began in the ninetieth and twentieth centuries and it