FEATURE
STOPPING HAZING
ONCE AND FOR ALL By Julian Jackson
“Do you trust me?” “Yes.” “Do you trust the brothers?” “Yes.”
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hose are only words an anonymous pledge could recall after being admitted to the hospital and undergoing surgery to replace the skin missing from his buttocks after being brutally abused by a “whistle” paddle. It is incidents like that which keep fraternities and sororities in the headlines for all the wrong reasons—with hazing allegations. But the bad behavior lies not just with Greeklettered societies. The trial of four members of Florida A&M University’s marching band on charges of felony hazing and manslaughter got underway in October, nearly three years after drum major Robert Champion died from being beaten. In 2013, the NFL’s Miami Dolphins football team had to confront the issue of offensive lineman Richie Incognito’s reportedly hazing and bullying teammate Jonathan Martin. In 2011, 19-year-old U.S. Army private Danny Chen shot and killed himself—just two months into his deployment in Afghanistan, after reportedly being abused by his fellow soldiers.
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There is no justification for anyone’s committing hazing. However, both the hazer and the hazed need to ask themselves: Why do they feel the need to haze, and why do so many subject themselves to this abuse, just to join an organization or to feel accepted? Has it become a masculinity/femininity complex, or truly envisioned as a glorified rite of passage? You often hear: “It was done to me so I have to do it to them.” For the more “tenured” hazers they may equate a process or action to a style of learning that equips their new members or initiates with the tools they say they need to become better brothers, sisters, or members of the organization, and to become an overall better person in life. Those replies do little to comfort the parents and family members of victims like Chen and Champion. So where do we go from here? How do we approach the “$64,000 question” of what can we do to stop hazing? THE SPHINX