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Hazing Frenzy!

McAvennie

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Mar 13, 2003
Messages
3,998
Im not familiar with the term 'hazing', maybe the Americans can explain but from what I can gather its a kind of school initiation thing. Anyway this one in Illinois went wrong and the kids all got drunk and tied up their victims and basically beat seven bells outta them.
What caused such a thing to happen? I saw some footage on CNN and it was quite brutal. Kids were taking a real beating, girls laying into other kids like wild animals. Several needed stitches and concussions were sustained.
Surely it was not just youthful exuberance mixed with alcohol that caused such an extreme incident or we'd see this more often.
Maybe itwas just cos someone had a camera and was filming it that this has been exposed.
Is this kinda behaviour commonplace or was there something more sinister going on?


From CNN.com, video can be found here also...

GLENVIEW, Illinois (AP) -- Teenage girls caught on videotape brutally hazing their classmates were suspended from their suburban high school for 10 days and could be barred from prom and graduation.

In addition to the suspensions, which began Monday, officials are recommending the girls be expelled from Glenbrook North High School.

"We have never tolerated actions of this nature within our school or by our students within the community, nor will we now or in the future," said the school's principal, Michael Riggle.

The students have three days to begin the appeals process.

Within hours of Monday's disciplinary decision, one of the students filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court seeking a temporary restraining order to keep the school from suspending her, according to her attorney.

"You are entitled to an education so when someone takes that right from you without giving you due process, they have violated (your) due process rights," said Naomi Valas, an attorney representing 18-year-old Marnie Holz. Holz declined to comment on the lawsuit.

A judge Tuesday agreed to expedite consideration of Holz's request and set a hearing for Wednesday.

Senior girls from the school beat their junior classmates and showered them with mud, feces and garbage on May 4 at a Cook County park. Five girls were injured seriously enough that they needed to go to the hospital.

Although the hazing took place off campus, Riggle said the school district's lawyer advised him that the school had broader powers to discipline students than he had thought.

The 10-day suspensions are the longest the school can give, Riggle said. The district will decide whether to expel the students, which would bar them from the prom and graduation ceremonies.

Expulsion from the school would not prevent seniors from graduating. Those seniors who have not yet earned enough credits to graduate will be sent to "alternative education" to complete their studies, Riggle said.

Video of the incident has been shown on national television, to the embarrassment of the affluent Chicago suburb of Northbrook.

Dave Hales, the superintendent overseeing Glenbrook North, called the effects of the videotapes "devastating." However, he noted that the incident involved just a fraction of the school's nearly 2,100 students.

The principal would not say how many students were suspended, citing the privacy of educational records. He said only senior girls who participated in the hazing were suspended, not other students who watched.

The school found that the students violated laws on hazing and assault. The investigation also found the students violated the school's hazing policy and the Illinois school code.

Authorities have said criminal charges are likely. Steve Mayberry, a spokesman for the Cook County Forest Preserve Police, said investigators spent the weekend interviewing students and parents. Interviews continued Monday, with charges expected sometime this week.

Authorities have been investigating anonymous tips that parents provided kegs of beer for the hazing, which started as a "powder puff" football game. So far, they have no solid leads, Northbrook police said.
 
I don't pretend to have an "officicial" definition of hazing, but I think it can fairly be summarized as putting new members -- of a team, a club, a fraternity, etc -- through one or a series of (GENERALLY!) mildly embarassing, silly, uncomfortable, arguably MILDLY painful, etc "rites of passage". Anything from making rookie members of a pro football team get up and sing their college fight song before the entire team on the first night of training camp to more elaborate -- but still generally harmless, if stupid! - rituals. Hazing has been under fire for some years now, on a number of fronts ... not PC, tendency for some to get carried away leading to some injuries/deaths (nationally, not sure just how really prevalent that is!).

The case you mention has got a lot of attention, in large part because it was GIRLS doing the beating, etc. Can't tell you how many folks I have heard saying that something like this on the part of BOYS would be much more understandable... Hmmm....

As to WHY -- that is a tough one. The propensity for some to succumb to "mob" situations is pretty well documented, no? And with reality TV, and shows like JACKASS and the like (has that taint reached the UK yet?), maybe we have blurred the line between "sadistic but kinda harmless" and "just plain wrong"? I don't know the details, but I believe some clueless adults helped fuel the situation with beer (believe most or all of the girls were under drinking age?)....

I don't know if we can read anything "larger from this... but it sure does make you wonder where the bulge in the bell-shaped curve on intelligence REALLY falls... ;)

Shadow
 
Any hazing sucks. It is simply an abuse of power. That being said,

In that situation with the girl's soccer(?) team, there seemed to be some latent animosity involved. Not your "typical" hazing where you're just enforcing your higher position in the pecking order by forcing new subordinates to do humiliating things. Possibly some of the girls that got out of hand had doubts about
the security of their positions in the hiearchy.
 
Hazing is quite common in universities in France and Belgium, although it's officially frowned upon.

The hazing at the uni I went to was pretty harmless and they were fine with you not going through with it if you didn't want to.
But in some places students who don't do it are systematically excluded, and sometimes even picked quite nastily on for not "being a sport".
The idea behind hazing being to create a feeling of belonging to a group in the hazees.
Med and vet students are renowned as the worst, probably because their gross-out threshold is higher.

There was an incident a few years back where two girls had to be treated for third degree burns on their lower bodies. They had been forced to sit in large vats containing various rather disgusting substances as part of their hazing.
Unfortunately, the bright sparks who came up with the idea didn't realise the vats had previously contained rather corrosive industrial products.
The fact that the guy who was supervising the hazing - and who was supposed to stay sober throughout - got trashed, didn't help either.
 
The game was American football not soccer, for what it's worth. The girls involved were high school juniors and seniors which would put them between 16 - 18 years of age. The legal drinking age in Illinois is 21. Two moms have been brought up on charges, one for supplying the beer and the other for allowing the drinking to take place in her home, before the game.
Hazing still occurs on college campus' here, but I believe it's been completely outlawed due to the frequency of accidental deaths.

The entire area is appalled and shocked over this occurance and how far out of control the whole thing was, and just what were the parents involved thinking.
 
Cruel and/or humiliating initiations were very widespread once upon
a time. At its mildest, the young greenhorn would be sent to the storeroom
with a request for skyhooks but things could be much rougher. I think
printers used to tar and feather apprentices!

I had heard of hazing, usually in the context of male sexual humiliations in
US Colleges but, as suggested above, this new severe outbreak among
females may owe a lot to cruelty-tv. :eek:
 
I find it really amazing that people attending unversities can actually go through with this. If someone at my uni (Edinburgh) performed some sort of "hazing" rite, it would be big news and they would most likely be in a lot of trouble.

Having said that, American universities never cease to amaze me - like that one where the students voted to ban alcohol... and that's not even starting on fraternities/sororities...

I suppose US university culture/organisation is just completely different to UK.
 
Looking into it there are some disturbing cases out there...CNN archives tell two particuar tales that are quite disturbing.
One where two college students were forced to walk out into the sea up to their necks while handcuffed. Unsurprisingly they got washed away and drowned.
The second was in the marines wherenewly recruited members who won their wings (?) had their pin bage pinned to their bare chest.
I think there is a clear difference between 'hazing' and pair evil sadism disguised as 'hazing'.
 
James Whitehead said:
I had heard of hazing, usually in the context of male sexual humiliations in US Colleges but, as suggested above, this new severe outbreak among females may owe a lot to cruelty-tv. :eek:
Good point.

How can the most homo-erotic, sadistic, even homicidal, of the fraternities and sororities possibly compete with some of the Japanese (POW camp, rather than gameshow) style shite on TV these days?

There's a few programme planners and TV producers that need setting about with a stout cudgel, or two.
 
While I am one who mentioned the possible "reality TV" influence, I don't want to unfairly turn this into a 'reality TV" thread...and yet...

Even if the particular hazing incident had no direct tie-in, I do think there is definitely a "coarsening" component to programming that invites the audience to laugh at, scorn, sneer at, etc, the suffering/shortcomings of real people (granted, often in artificial situations for which they have volunteered!). For example, I think there IS a level on which "The Osbournes" is very funny... but there are other levels, maybe more profound levels, on which it is rather sad. If you assume Ozzie is in on the joke, that much of his behavior is in fact an act, perhaps the laughter quotient exceeds the pathos quotient...but if not, I think the show is more akin to a slow motion car wreck. And dreck like JACKASS lacks even that potential duality - to say nothing of all the myriad "Jerry Springer" like talk shows, "mock court" shows, etc (sorry -- all references to American TV!) . Basically, you are invited to laugh at how stupid and base some people are, to enjoy their stupidity, suffering, and sometimes their punishment. The overall net effect, I think, is to encourage seeing the lives of others as a potential source of amusement and entertainment, and to discourage empathy and understanding.

To venture into still more dangerous territory... *S*... I am also not sure how much of this incident can be related to an increasing trend to equate the "liberation" of girls with the imitation of most of the "worst" traits of the male of the species -- loutish, coarse, crude, violent behavior. Believe me, I am NOT suggesting that high school girl atheletes should be dressed up in frilly outfits playing croquet...far from it... but I DO think that to some extent, the admirable goal of broadening the options open to young women has been coopted, perhaps with the best of intentions, into a perverse sort of encouragement of the emulation of the sorts of traits all too common in male bullies and lowlifes, with this seen as "liberating" behavior....

Shadow
 
Well, the reality is that this has been going on for a while, hense the Gregory Harrison tv movie Fraternity Row, which IMDB describes as the Story of an upper class college in the early '50s and how a "harmless" hazing resulted in a student's death. .

If I remember correctly, there it was having as the final initiation into the frat the kids running around in the middle of the night in their underwear and somebody winds up stupidly dead.

The thing that seems shocking to me is that violent hazing now seems routine, and this event happened during the day...
 
I agree with Shadow on both points
Firstly, it seems we now have to endure, in all forms of media, the treatment of human beings in a manner that circus animals were once treat.
Secondly, I have tried to instill in my daughter that equality gives her both rights AND responsibilities
I watched one of thos 'club rep' programmes last night and felt both sick and saddened
 
Here is a hazing website with facts and figures:

http://hazing.hanknuwer.com/

Here are some examples from the chronology of the site shwoing how it's been with us always:

1920
Waukegan High School (Illinois)
Shooting during freshman hazing incident

Carl Ambrose, 13, son of the commander of a local American Legion Post, whipped out a gun he'd been carrying when confronted by five masked sophomores bent on taking him with them. He had been subjected to intense high school freshman hazing. He fired a shot, wounding Theodore Lux, a sophomore. The other four pummeled Ambrose, until two girls, Elizabeth Lyon and Margaret Pulse, picked up the gun and began firing in the air to scare off the four.

1924
Brooklyn, NY
Erasmus H.S.
Sorority hazing

Members burned Greek letters onto the foreheads of Helen Chapman and Helen Steingester, using a solution of nitrate of silver. They also had crosses drawn with the sololution on their backs. "The sorority has no connection with Erasmus HS," the principal told the New York Times. "It is not an Erasmus Hall affair and there is nothing the school can do."

1984
Hamden High School (New Haven, CT)
High School Fraternity Hazing

Although 17-year-old Todd Depino was paddled so hard and often that he was hospitalized and his skin was discolored, he refused to turn in the hazers. Another youth suffered similar hazing brutality. (March 9, 1984, UPI regional story)


*EDIT* to add another link: http://www.stophazing.org/
 
Whizzer, your comment re circus animals couldn't help but trigger the observation that this comes at precisely the same time that such treatment OF circus animals is under attack! *S* I certainly understand the ethical difference between animals being compelled to do something and humans choosing of their (perhaps ill-formed) own free will, but... at the same time that many are decrying the lot of circus animals, we are basically replacing them with "circus humans"...

Shadow
 
Shadow said:
Whizzer, your comment re circus animals couldn't help but trigger the observation that this comes at precisely the same time that such treatment OF circus animals is under attack! *S* I certainly understand the ethical difference between animals being compelled to do something and humans choosing of their (perhaps ill-formed) own free will, but... at the same time that many are decrying the lot of circus animals, we are basically replacing them with "circus humans"...

Shadow
Exactly, and offering a 'choice' to someone who may not be capable of making such a choice doesn't wash with me
Dancing niggers?
Baiting bears on chains?
Nope, can't have them any more
Never mind, we'll just make do with 'trailer trash' or anyone socially 'inadequate'
What next?
Spastics?
Big Brother from a psychiatric ward?
I haven't gone OT on this
I believe that society's (generalisation, sorry) lack of compassion, disregard for others and quests for thrills at any cost is linked to this extreme hazing: how do you convince kids that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable when TV is full of it?
 
I believe that society's (generalisation, sorry) lack of compassion, disregard for others and quests for thrills at any cost is linked to this extreme hazing: how do you convince kids that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable when TV is full of it?

I concur absolutely!
I've never watched one of those shows and I've never talked to anyone who will admit they have. How are they staying on TV?
 
Midnight said:
I concur absolutely!
I've never watched one of those shows and I've never talked to anyone who will admit they have. How are they staying on TV?
They're cheap and they satisfy society's thirst for extreme/gross entertainment since we stopped doing it to animals (/christians/witches/natives)
 
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