Students Question Hazing on Campus in Advance of New Anti-Hazing Training

Nikki Keating Managing Editor

The Ohio state legislature passed the Anti-Hazing Act in October 2021. In accordance with that act, it is now mandatory for Ohio institutions to hold anti-hazing training.

“Each institution shall provide students with an educational program on hazing, which shall include information regarding hazing awareness, prevention, intervention, and the institution’s policy developed under division,” the act reads.

Hazing is any activity expected of someone joining or maintaining full status in a group that humiliates, degrades, or risks emotional or physical harm, regardless of the person’s willingness to participate.

In order to comply with the new law, the College has implemented mandatory hazing training for all students. This training will be conducted online during the spring semester. In response to this, the Review did a poll on its Instagram asking if students believed there was hazing at Oberlin College and Conservatory. 140 students voted no and only 29 said yes. In response to that, I talked to students across campus about their thoughts on hazing. Many reported that they haven’t experienced hazing, and some didn’t understand how the concept applied to the College. While puzzling, this strikes me as completely normal for Oberlin students because, while we can’t completely negate hazing, it could be a lot worse.

When we think of hazing, we think of students being harassed and bullied to a gruesome degree. We think of fraternity and

Accessible Language Software

Sahil Novetzke Columnist

It may seem irrelevant, but online language-learning softwares have begun to take over, with user statistics increasing rapidly. Cision PR Newswire suggests the industry will grow to $10.5 billion by 2025. It’s become clear: People are done with in-person language courses.

Online softwares offer several benefits, most notably that they are incredibly cheap. Most of the highest-rated softwares offer yearly subscriptions between $80 and $120. In 2022, the cost of a single college credit was approximately $367 on average. Of course, this number can be adjusted according to whether a college is public or private. This places the average cost of a language credit at a public four-year college at $110 on average. At a private four-year college, the average price increases to $625. In addition, online courses operate yearly, and can be completed whenever the student feels like it. College courses occur at a set time, and the learning is not selfpaced.

Additionally, online softwares can offer a more immediate, foundational basis for a language, as most college-level courses incorporate grammar, spelling, reading, and writing, as well as basic vocabulary learning at the same time. For traveling, online courses can provide quick and easy vocabulary. Online softwares also offer a multitude of languages. Rosetta Stone, a top sorority pledges who go through rituals that humiliate them or, in rare cases, end in death. It’s a word that isn’t used lightly, making it hard to look at from an Oberlin perspective. We don’t have fraternities and sororities, and co-ops don’t require any trials or rituals to be a part of their community. While we do have sports teams, they live in a very different environment than other schools.

“I do not think hazing is a problem at Oberlin, but I should recognize the stance from which I am coming at this,” College fourth-year Liam Baxter-Healey said. “I transferred to Oberlin from a different institution that had a hazing culture, and it did not seem like hazing was a part of Oberlin’s community culture. It did not feel like an expectation that you’d sort of be thrown into a certain scenario in order to join a club or organization.”

I haven’t heard of an incident of hazing on campus, and there haven’t been any public claims in recent years. I don’t want to claim that hazing does not happen at all at the College, but compared to the statistics of hazing in America, it is not a major issue here. Statistics show that 22 percent of Americans believe they have been hazed, but 83 percent of our poll claimed that there was no hazing on campus at all.

“It’s hard to avoid hazing in colleges because they have a history of hazing, so it’s not like these traditions are going to get weeded out,” Baxter-Healey said. “But I also think there’s an appropriate context around what qualifies as hazing and what is hazing. I especially think Oberlin students seem to be hyper-aware of not