The Evils of Hazing

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Recommended: A short introduction about hazing

The Evils of Hazing

You have just moved to a new school, and it is the first day. You thought it was a dream to be on the wrestling team, but in reality it was a nightmare. After practice, you are hog-tied and beaten by your fellow teammates in a ritual known as hazing.

For many years, hazing has existed in high schools throughout America without many people knowing; more recently, however, laws are being passed against this potentially deadly ritual as people are becoming educated on the topic. This paper will address what hazing is, how it can be stopped, and my opinion on why it should be stopped.

According to the dictionary, hazing is to harass by exacting unnecessary or disagreeable work; to harass by banter, ridicule, or criticism; or to haze by way of initiation. There are three different types of hazing: mental, terror, and physical hazing. Mental hazing is "messing with the mind." It is used to make the victim look and feel ridiculous. It can include dressing embarrassingly in public, treating another member as your master, or begging strangers for unusual items (Schleifer 17). Terror hazing is used to terrorize the person. It can include laying in a ditch that you are led to believe is a grave, or drinking from poison bottles, that unknown to you, contain only a soft drink (19). The last type is physical hazing, which may include the person having to binge, starve, or stay awake for an unreasonable amount of time. It also includes just plainly beating a person (20). As stated in Everything You Need to Know About the Dangers of Hazing by Jay Schleifer, "No matter how the hazing is carried out, it always sends the same message: we have power over you - y...

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...are in high school." Nikki Consentino, a victim of hazing once stated, "I have met a lot of parents because their children are not alive to tell about it." Obviously, if laws are not passed against this ritual, more children may die just for trying out for a school team.

So do the math yourself. If at least one person has died from a reported hazing every year since 1970, over 30 lives have been taken from what some think of as only a harmless prank, and those are only the reported cases. Through this paper I hope you can see the importance of putting an end to hazing and one day it can and will be done.

Sources Cited:

http://www.stophazing.org

Olson, Tod. "Hazing Horror." Teen People September 2000: 134-141.

Schleifer, Jay. Everything You Need to Know About the Dangers of Hazing. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 1996.

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