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Rites & Wrongs

Hazing, be it silly or scary, is banned in many schools. But it still exists--just ask a freshman.

By Matthew Bowers The Virginian-Pilot http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SPL2300-0-3494&artno=0000238315&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=Y&ic=N Accessed on 03/29/2006 from SIRS Researcher via SIRS Knowledge Source <http://www.sirs.com>

 Five years haven't erased Casey Culpepper's menacing memories of entering ninth grade.

     It wasn't simply a bigger school, older students, or going out for volleyball. The threat of "initiation," a decades-old hazing tradition, haunted her all summer.

     That tradition "made the first week of school very terrifying for me," said Casey, now a sophomore at James Madison University in Harrisonburg. "Like every corner you walk around, you're afraid you're going to run into a senior...I had that freshman look. They could smell it."

     The initiation was this: Friends got snatched by seniors waiting outside after classes, and smeared with concoctions that included canned dog food, eggs, ketchup, mustard, horse manure and pet feces. Then they were hosed off so hard that it hurt. Casey escaped, but only because more than once her big sister Jill, then a senior, intervened.

     To many students and adults, "initiation" was just an expected part of the Western Branch High School experience. That changed last fall. Parents of hazed freshmen in one incident complained to Chesapeake police and, apparently for the first time, criminal charges resulted. Some students were expelled.

     Still, students returning Tuesday to public schools across South Hampton Roads--as well as their private-school peers already in classes--bring with them a variety of hazing practices, despite policies against it. They reflect what many researchers call a growing presence in high schools nationwide, even as the practice wanes in colleges, according to a report on hazing nationwide published last year.

     Male soccer players at Tallwood High in Virginia Beach have been trussed in tape and dumped outside girls' team members houses.

     Band members at Lake Taylor High in Norfolk have endured painful "beat-downs."

     Norfolk Academy tennis players annually poured cake batter ingredients on teammates.

     Freshmen all over get dumped into school trash cans or have "F's" scrawled on their hands. Drama students, service club members and athletes are made to wear costumes and sing, yodel and bark in schools and malls and restaurants.

     But researchers say it's easy for seemingly harmless, prank-like teasing to evolve into more harrowing activities.

     Adolescents commonly try to outdo one another. Their judgment is largely a work in progress, prodded by peer pressure and the need to belong, overdosed on gross-out TV shows such as "Fear Factor."

     Lines blur. The three Western Branch High victims last fall suffered welts from being pelted with frozen eggs, and their skin turned blue from being doused with chemically treated waste scooped out of a portable toilet, police said. The three must undergo regular HIV and hepatitis tests for two years, because of the bodily wastes thrown on them.

     "It gets more and more severe, and that unfortunately is where I've seen it go," said Susan C. Bon, who this year taught legal issues in education at Ohio's Ashland University. "Hazing is so dangerous because of the potential for crossing that line."

     Hazing generally refers to "rite-of-passage" activities expected of someone to join or remain in a group--activities that intimidate, humiliate, ridicule or risk emotional, physical or legal harm. It can vary widely, from wearing embarrassing outfits to sexual assault.

     "A very extreme form of bullying" is how Sara Jo Williams, director of Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for School-Community Collaboration, describes it.

     The law construes it more narrowly.

     Virginia's statute that makes hazing a crime added a limiting definition in 2003: The activity must "recklessly or intentionally endanger the health or safety of" or injure a student, whether or not the hazed student participates voluntarily. It's a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. But expulsion was deleted as the only available school punishment, to leave educators more flexibility.

     "Criminal statutes should only be reserved for the worst things," explained Del. David B. Albo, a Republican from Fairfax County and a sponsor of the change. "Merely humiliating somebody--it's not nice, but it shouldn't give you a criminal record."

     Virginia is one of 44 states with laws prohibiting hazing, according to StopHazing.org, an online information site created by New Hampshire anti-hazing lobbyists. Three states require schools to take steps to prevent hazing, Bon said. Virginia is not one of them.

     A landmark 2000 study of U.S. high school hazing by Alfred University in New York found that almost half the students who joined school or youth organizations were hazed--1.5 million students a year--and more than a quarter were expected to perform potentially illegal acts.

     Sports teams attract much of the notoriety, but the study found that virtually all types of organizations hazed--it happened to one out of four youths joining church groups. Making news just this past year:

     • Iowa wrestlers were charged with hazing and assault, accused of forcing their exposed genitals against freshmen teammates' faces.

     • A New Hampshire private school suspended 15 seniors after freshmen were sprayed with food products, asked sexually explicit questions and made to simulate sex acts.

     • Minnesota seniors were charged with assault and other crimes for a traditional last-day-of-school paddling of rising ninth-graders.

     • In July, Texas officials began investigating complaints that three basketball players at a private school held down a younger teammate and rubbed their genitals on his head, neck and shoulders during a January road trip. The practice is common enough that it has a name: "tea-bagging."

     Hazing has been traced to the mid-1800s Navy. It began as a way to instill respect in younger sailors, according to the Pace Law Review, which reported on high school hazing last year. It got so bad that by 1874 Congress stepped in and made military hazing a court-martial offense.

     Similar activities then popped up in other institutions, including universities. Many schools began denouncing hazing in the early 1900s after two students in Texas and Maryland shot their hazers. Instead, the practice went underground and spread in secrecy among collegiate organizations, notably fraternities, and then to high schools.

     Hank Nuwer, an author, speaker and professor at Franklin College in Indiana, tracks high school hazing back 100 years to a possible 1905 incident in which a young Ohio teen died of pneumonia after classmates stuffed snow down his back.

     Hazers don't lack for creativity. Nuwer's online chronology catalogs incidents of branding, tarring, paddling, sodomy and electric shock, but also forcible leg-shaving, running with crackers clenched in buttocks, and videotaped games of naked Twister.

     Locally, students say initiation activities run more to silly costumes and empty threats. But not always.

     Male band members at Lake Taylor High in years past have endured what's known as the "freshmen beat-down," the "band beat-down" or "the treatment," where older members corner new ones and punch them in the arms, said several students who know about the practice but said they hadn't participated in it.

     "It's not hard enough to cry, but you'll feel it," said Ramon Jones, a senior.

     Ray Ilas, a senior Tallwood High School tennis player, said he had to drink a mixture of salad-bar fluids--pickle juice, olive juice, Thousand Island salad dressing--through a straw at a team party his first year.

     More commonly, variations of "Freshman Friday" are rumored early in the year at several schools. Threats are spread about stuffing first-year students into lockers, but typically they wind up only with "F's" scrawled on the backs of their hands.

     "It was like an urban legend kind of thing," said Ashley Wenners-Herron, a senior at Princess Anne High in Virginia Beach who got tagged twice--and did the same to a younger friend last year.

     However, at least one freshman at Tallwood High last year twice got dumped into school trash cans, students said. Sarah Kuhr, a graduate this year, said she helped pull him out.

     "I'm sure he was hurting inside, but outside he was laughing," she said. "I guess so he wouldn't look like a pansy to the older guys."

     Freshmen have literally been targets: for Silly String at Indian River High in Chesapeake, and for water balloons at Western Branch Highs band camp. At I.C. Norcom High in Portsmouth, they are assigned plain white T-shirts and nicknames by the band.

     Aarthy Thamodaran's tennis team at Norfolk Academy traditionally poured cake batter, eggs, chocolate syrup and the like on new players during an annual road trip to Richmond but stopped after school officials banned initiations.

     "I think they were just afraid that things had the potential to get out of hand," said Aarthy, who graduated this year. "Even though this was innocent, it had the potential to escalate."

     It's common for athletic teams to make the new guys lug ball bags and water to practice and to cut their hair. Costumes or strange outfits and signs are big at several schools.

     For most, students say, it's a laughing matter.

     "It's not a hazing kind of thing," said Crystal Johnston, a senior soccer player at Kellam High in Virginia Beach, adding that the initiates "enjoy the attention." She said her team rousts freshmen out of bed, dresses them in "funky clothes" from their own closets and makes them hold signs outside the school as buses roll up, bearing phrases such as "Honk if you want a date."

     "As much as I felt stupid walking down the hall," said Candice Sweeney, a sophomore softball player at Tallwood High made to wear her uniform and eye-black and mussed hair to school, "it was funny. It was just doing it for the team."

     Kristy Conley, a recent Tallwood graduate and softball player, said she had to yodel while covered in Band-Aids at a shopping center. "I wasn't really embarrassed, she said, because everybody else was doing it."

     But not everyone goes along.

     Students said a Tallwood soccer player objected last year to an attempt to tape him up for initiation at an off-campus team gathering. He fought back, a mini-brawl erupted, and the entire team later found itself in the principal's office.

     "The bottom line is, we don't condone that kind of behavior, and we kind of explained to them what could happen," Principal Jobynia Caldwell said. "This is not what team members do to each other. It was a teachable moment, rather than a punishable moment."

     Afterward she re-emphasized that team gatherings should include coaches or other chaperones and be held in public venues.

     At Cox High in Virginia Beach, Jack Lukic unhappily donned a costume and barked on command as part of a weeklong initiation into a theater group. He had gotten involved in plays for fun and for something extra to put on his college applications.

     On the second day, he begged off. He was told he had to accept the treatment, or he couldn't join. He quit.

     "It was just humiliating," Jack said. "You walk in, and they all laugh at you."

     Two years later, college-bound Jack has never returned to drama, in school or elsewhere.

     "I kind of had a bad taste for theater," he said.

     School officials stopped a similar practice at the Beach's Princess Anne High last fall, after the Western Branch High incident became public, Ashley Wenners-Herron said.

     All initiations aren't necessarily bad. But experts say the danger rises when it turns into an exercise of power. Mix in teens with little or no adult guidance, with immature ideas about what's appropriate and what's not, in packs where its easier to lose individual values--the "mob mentality"--and "that's when it can get out of hand," said Richard J. Hazler, professor of counselor education at Penn State University.

     In addition, adults may seem to condone hazing by accepting it as tradition, by not making distinctions between the severity of acts they experienced and what may be going on today, and by referring to it as "a normal part of growing up...and kids pick up on that," said Jonathan K. Appel, assistant professor in educational leadership and counseling at Old Dominion University.

     "It isn't necessarily behavior resulting from them being wild out-of-control criminals," Appel said. "They could be normal...Good kids do bad things with the lack of guidance."

     Escalation is common. Adults remember "initiation" at Western Branch High once consisted of being sprayed with perfume, made to sing aloud or pushing a pencil down the hall with your nose.

     By contrast, police said, last fall's publicized incident involved three freshmen standing in a water-filled ditch off a remote road, surrounded by many teens they didn't know--including non-students--who assaulted them with frozen and raw eggs, Mountain Dew bottles filled with urine, vomit that had been saved in sealed buckets, waste scooped out of a portable toilet, and deer and fox urine used for hunting.

     But freshmen often go along. Amanda House, now a junior, said she endured Western Branch Highs initiation three times "just for fun," albeit with less-foul materials.

     "The need to conform and be part of the group at that age is just immense," Appel said. "It would take a unique and strong person to not bend to the will of the group."

     "Everybody wants to be included," VCU's Williams said. "And they'll go to any extreme to be included."

     Western Branch High officials for years have opened the school year with written, public-address and in-person warnings against "initiation" activities. They weren't effective, Casey Culpepper said.

     "Everybody would just start to laugh, because everybody knew that nobody ever got punished for it," she said.

     Perhaps that's what shocked students, parents and others who complained of overkill last fall when police charged eight teenage boys, including seven students, with abduction or assault or both. The students were sentenced to probation and community service, and expelled from school. At least some have been allowed to return, however, for their senior year.

     This week, those warnings will be amplified, said Arthur V. Brandriff Jr., the school's principal for 37 years. School officials will emphasize their legal right to discipline students for actions off school property, if they're on their way to or from classes, he said.

     Officials also plan to emphasize that volunteering to be hazed also is wrong. Police will beef up their presence around the school, including officers on bicycles. And student leaders will be recruited to talk to their peers, under the assumption that students will listen to them more than to adults.

     A specific prohibition against hazing was added to the school division's policy in the fall, following a state directive. No other steps are planned, board members said. They're expecting that expelling hazers last fall put students on notice.

     "How many times," School Board member James A. Jay Leftwich Jr. asked, "are you supposed to tell somebody that you're not supposed to do something?"

     "Some of them were good kids," said Jack J. Bider, the Chesapeake Police detective stationed at the school. "It sounds like it could be an innocent thing when you're back. But you have to put yourself in these victim's positions."

     "School shouldn't be a place you're scared to go to, especially your first day."

"Powder Puff" Football Game Out of Bounds

     A muddy, violent girls' football "game" pushed high school hazing into the public eye. Television viewers around the world repeatedly saw the videotape in May 2003 of Chicago-area seniors beating and kicking their junior schoolmates and dumping buckets of urine, feces and animal entrails on them.

     Five students were hospitalized, one with a fractured skull and tailbone. Sixteen others were convicted of battery or alcohol charges, including Marnie Gaule. Thirty-three were expelled from school. Two mothers were convicted of providing beer to minors. Lawsuits were filed.

     Researchers say hazing occurs regularly in high schools nationwide, affecting many thousands annually.

Tips for Parents

     • Educate yourself. Read books on hazing from your library. Find out what your state's laws and school division's policies are concerning hazing.

     • Ask what measures your school or division is taking to prevent hazing and how they respond--the repercussions--when it occurs.

     • Ask your PTA or school administrators to invite police to talk to parents and students about hazing and the law.

     • Talk to other parents, especially of older children and your children's teammates. What have their children seen or experienced about hazing?

     • If your children have been hazed, tell school officials immediately. If physical abuse was involved, call police. Though your children may be reluctant to "tell on" peers, get details from them about the incident.

     • Set a good example--be independent yourself. Don't participate in activities that degrade people.

     • Encourage your children's individuality. Help them choose activities fostering positive social skills, and encourage them to choose friends who show them respect.

     • Most importantly, talk to your children. Make sure they know they can talk with you about anything that's making them uncomfortable.

     • Here's where you pull out the "if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you, too?" speech. Remind them that they shouldn't feel pressured to do something, despite tradition or crowd mentality.

     • Talk specifically about hazing. Discuss how they should handle a hypothetical hazing situation. Don't lecture--it's more effective for your children to tell you what they'd do or what they think. Remind them that often it only takes one person to speak out or take a different action to change a situation, that it's important to tell them or school officials whenever students cause other students harm.

     • And explain that physical or mental abuse, big or small, shouldn't be part of joining groups or being "cool." It also could be illegal.

Sources: KidsHealth, StopHazing.org, Guidance Channel Online

News researcher Ann Kinken Johnson contributed to this report.

Reach Matthew Bowers at (757) 222-5120 or matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com.

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INDIANAPOLIS STAR (Indianapolis, IN) Nov. 17, 2004, n.p.

Reprinted by permission. Distributed by Tribune Media Services.

When Rites Are Wrong: Opponents of Hazing Mobilize Forces

By T.J. Banes The Indianapolis Star http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SPL2300-0-3494&artno=0000205419&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=Y&ic=N Accessed on 03/29/2006 from SIRS Researcher via SIRS Knowledge Source <http://www.sirs.com>

     A scar the size of a dime on Jessica Zimmerman's right hip tells the story of an event that changed her life forever.

     She was a freshman at DePauw University, among people she considered close friends. After inducing her to drink alcohol, they branded her with a lighted cigarette as part of an initiation.

     "If I had a daughter or a friend who wanted to pledge a sorority today, I wouldn't discourage her, but I'd make sure she knew how to set boundaries," says Zimmerman, now 26. She has a master's degree in mental health counseling and is four credits shy of her school counseling license.

     Hazing, as a rite of passage, has been documented in professional football, the military and other groups. But it is most associated with college fraternity life.

     A half-dozen "pledge paddles" line the wall of Sigma Nu's fraternity house TV room at Butler University, but they are for decoration only.

     "We don't haze; we don't believe in any of it," says Daniel Walt, a senior at Butler and a fraternity member.

     Sigma Nu does not allow hazing, but it does employ a seniority system: Younger members mop the floors more often than the older ones. That isn't unlike a football practice, in which rookies do the grunt work, such as lugging the veterans' shoulder pads from the locker room to the practice field and back. Like Sigma Nu, most Greek organizations agree not to haze initiates.

     Still, the number of hazing incidents nationwide continues to make headlines.

     Last year, Franklin College professor Hank Nuwer tracked more than 200 media reports of hazing throughout the United States; nearly double the number of reports two years ago. With a grant from the college, Nuwer plans to compile the most up-to-date listing of national hazing incidents. He says his current research shows that more incidents involved fraternities than sororities. The greatest increase was in high school athletics, says Nuwer.

     "Nobody really knows if the incidents are increasing, but the media is definitely more on top of it," says Nuwer. Part of that is making people understand what hazing is, added Nuwer.

     "Hazing means different things to different people," says Daniel Walt, who came to Butler from Quincy, Ill.

     He advises anyone considering joining a group to learn precisely what's involved in its initiation ritual. "You have to be clear with yourself: 'This is what I'm going to accept; if this happens, no.' Know what your limits are. And if you can't comfortably talk with (the members) about what makes you uncomfortable, then you're best not doing it."

Ritual Burning

     In Zimmerman's case, she didn't see it coming.

     As a condition of a lawsuit settlement between her and members of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, Zimmerman is not allowed to publicly discuss specifics of the ritual that took place in the fall of 1997. The incident, however, was widely publicized at the time, including a national report on ABC's "20/20," and in a book on hazing, "Wrongs of Passage," (Indiana University Press, $13.97) by Nuwer.

     Zimmerman's mother, Cindie Shaleen, who is organizing the first Indiana chapter of Mothers Against School Hazing (MASH, Inc.), says Zimmerman was one of six "pledges," or would-be members, taken into a darkened dorm room.

     Sorority members entered the room dressed in sheets, chanting, and encouraged the girls to drink alcohol. They then burned them with cigarettes, causing scars said to be "a family sign," "a tradition," recalls Shaleen. The next day, Zimmerman received medical treatment for the burns.

     People often think of hazing as paddling, drinking games and other "Animal House" behavior.

     Hazing ranges from seemingly innocuous activities such as blindfolding and scavenger hunts to dangerous, extreme physical punishments including sleep deprivation and excessive exercise, according to www.stophazing.org.

     Those involved often look at hazing as an unpleasant way of earning membership in a club, team or even military branch.

     The U.S. Department of Education requires colleges to report offenses. However, some psychological abuse such as insults or name-calling go unreported

     Some experts say laws and school bans might actually increase interest in hazing as a kind of secret taboo. Others say television shows such as "Jackass" and "Fear Factor" might contribute to the number of hazing incidents across the country.

Mothers List Tips on How to Stop Hazing, Bullying

The Indianapolis Star

     Mothers Against School Hazing Inc. (MASH), a nonprofit national organization, describes hazing as bullying, a negative act or words to hurt, embarrass or humiliate another person.

     Following are some tips the organization offers for parents and their children to stop bullying and hazing:

     • Refuse to be a spectator.

     • Report incidents. Tell school or university authorities.

     • Use distractions to stop the incident.

     • Befriend a lonely student who may be vulnerable to bullies.

     • Talk about hazing and bullying with friends, school counselors and parents.

     • If you or your child is subjected to bullying or hazing, seek medical attention and counseling.

     • Understand that feeling threatened is a form of hazing.

     • Educating children and young adults about hazing is the first step in stopping it.

On the Web:

www.mashinc.org, Mothers Against School Hazing.

www.stophazing.org, provides definitions, laws and resources about hazing.

www.hazing.hanknuwer.com, Hank Nuwer, author of four books on hazing.

www.campuspeak.com, Denver organization provides educational speakers and programs for college students and administrators.

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