HEALTH
SEEING PAST the haze OU faculty and health professionals address different types of hazing and give prevention tips. BY HELEN WIDMAN *This article contains graphic references of hazing that may trigger a physicial or mental reaction from readers who have had traumatic experiences.
S
teamy locker rooms filled with power-hungry athletes. Disheveled fraternity houses with broken beer bottles. Sororities turned into houses of embarrassment and ridicule for new members. Those are some of the stereotypical scenes of hazing. Although those stereotypes do make up a portion of the harsh reality, hazing is not always an obvious act of dominance. Not all hazing on college campuses is extreme; it can range from forcing college freshmen to do the “dirty work” of the upperclassmen, to alcohol and drug abuse that often dominates modern dialogue surrounding hazing today. “I talked [to freshmen] about ‘little h,’ small things—things that are meant to embarrass you, things that are meant to degrade and demean—up to big scary hazing, like being forced to drink alcohol or being beaten,” says Jenny HallJones, the dean of students at Ohio University and the senior associate vice president for Student Affairs. The definition of hazing varies across universities, institutions and even states. Arguably, there is no universal definition of hazing. According to Alcohol.org, “...a number of states have their own laws that prohibit hazing, but definitions of what constitutes ‘hazing’ vary across borders. In Alabama, for example, hazing is identified as any action that intentionally or recklessly puts the physical and mental health of a student in danger. New York, on the other hand, does not mention psychological abuse as part of its anti-hazing laws, but specifically prohibits physical abuse as part of an initiation ritual.” The topic of hazing is especially relevant for OU after HallJones responded to hazing allegations made last semester. Although the levels of hazing in fall 2019 were not as serious as past hazing allegations, Hall-Jones stood by the university’s zero-tolerance policy and helped launch an investigation
38
backdrop | Spring Fall 2019 2020
which resulted in several organizations and all fraternities receiving suspension in October. “This is a community effort,” Hall-Jones says. “It's an effort that's got to start at a younger age before college. We need national organizations and sports teams and things that have a history of hazing, we need their leadership and partnership on campuses to eradicate hazing. Personally, I believe that a kind of a zero-tolerance policy on hazing is important.” At OU, hazing prevention was not implemented into the official university policy until a few years ago. Hall-Jones helped push for this addition in order to start cracking down on hazing. “We wanted everyone to recognize that it could happen, not just in student [organizations], it could happen anywhere,” she says. “We also wanted faculty and staff to realize that they should be mandated reporters. One of the university stances on hazing is that it's unacceptable, and then if a faculty or a staff member becomes aware of hazing or suspects hazing, that they have a duty and obligation that's written into their jobs that they have to report [hazing] very similarly to sexual assault.” Hank Nuwer, researcher, author and journalist, has been collecting data on hazing-related deaths for over four decades. After a student died due to hazing-related causes at the University of Nevada during Nuwer’s graduate work in 1975, his passion for hazing prevention piqued. He published his first article on hazing in 1978 in “Dead Souls of Hell Week” for Human Behavior magazine. Nuwer says that researching hazing proved challenging at the time because very limited information existed on the topic. Now, his database that tracks yearly hazing-related deaths in the United States since 1959 continues to grow. “It's just mind boggling to think that it's going on for 60 years,” Nuwer says. “And it's only been in recent years that
