Author: Hank Nuwer

Here is the link

Book by Rosalind Wiseman

Excerpt from her web page

All Charlie wanted to do was have a drama-free freshman year, but now she must decide whether to turn in her very best friend, who just told her he loves her, or live with the guilt of knowing what he did (nearly killed a delivery boy in a hazing prank).

Rosalind Wiseman’s first novel for young adults is a fresh, funny, and juicy read about friendship, betrayal, and how far som

Here is the link.
December 31  The brutal Russian military horror  revealed by the ambutation and genitalia loss of Andrey Sychov.  2005

January 1  In 1869, Sigma Nu was founded this day as an anti-hazing organization. Sigma Nu’s founders disapproved of the hazing they had seen while cadets at Virginia Military Institute.

Worth a reading.

excerpt:

The strong motivational drive to participate in these bands is the engine that drives acceptance of hazing, given that hazing is seen as a necessary prelude to becoming a member. I suspect that hazing will stop once it becomes clear that: (a) hazing is no longer necessary to achieve band membership, and (b) hazing in fact will prevent you from achieving that end. For both of these things to happen, it is necessary for mature adults to step in and end this “Lord of the Flies” drama, in which unchecked adolescents brutalize each other without reason or compassion.

Excerpt http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/23/florida-am-death-illuminates-prevalence-non-greek-hazing
“This would speak to the need for colleges and universities to recognize that this is broader than a Greek issue,” says Daniel Swinton, president of the Association for Student Conduct Administration and assistant dean and director of Vanderbilt University’s Office of Student Conduct and Integrity. “Oftentimes we’re aware of the hazing that goes on elsewhere, but so much is focused on the Greek realm that we neglect, I think, some of these other ones where it’s often not as high-profile.”

Kim Novak, a consultant in campus safety and student risk management and namesake of the Kimberly Novak Hazing Prevention Institute, says a limited perspective has led colleges to direct their hazing policies and prevention efforts primarily toward fraternities and sororities.

“It’s a comfortable audience to focus on — it’s easy. Who’s going to walk in and say, ‘We don’t have hazing in our fraternities and sororities?’ ” Novak says. “It’s a more difficult conversation to talk about hazing in performing arts organizations or paraprofessional groups. It’s a different type of a conversation; it’s not as easy to engage administrators in.”

She and others believe colleges should approach hazing as a public health issue – educating the entire campus, not just individual sectors, on things like what hazing is and what to do when it happens. (The bystander intervention model, for example, which trains students to step in when they see something awry, is a popular method for preventing sexual assault, bullying and alcohol abuse that could be applied to hazing.)

Some colleges have begun approaching the issue in a more holistic way, Novak said, and experts generally agree that Champion’s death will encourage others to move in that direction. The Novak Institute, for instance, brings together students, faculty and staff from different campus groups, administrators and law enforcement to discuss and map out this prevention approach. (And effectively addressing hazing clearly requires more than punishing the perpetrators — in the years leading up to Champion’s death, White had suspended dozens of students for hazing.)

The University of Kentucky, which sends a delegation to the Novak Institute and received the 2011 Zeta Tau Alpha Award for Innovation in Campus Hazing Prevention and Education, formed a Hazing Prevention Coalition made up of student leaders and staff representing Greek life, violence prevention, counseling, athletics, public relations, residence life, parents and alumni. They reviewed the university’s hazing prevention programs, as well as its hazing policy, the latter of which it proposed revising to protect not just students but anyone affiliated with the campus as potential victims. Kentucky’s prevention program includes workshops and seminars for Greek members and registered student organizations, presentations and meetings with varsity and club sports athletes, briefings for new Reserve Officers Training Corps cadets, and a session for parents during the fall season’s welcome week.

Here is the link

Excerpt: Although few HBCU band directors deny hazing occurs, many criticized the cable network for leaving its viewers with the misperception that the problem was endemic to their programs.

“Of course, there are problems with HBCU bands and hazing,” said Julian E. White, Ph.D., band director of the famed Marching 100 from Florida A&M University (FAMU). “But [HBO] made it seem like Black schools are the only places where it’s happening, and that administrators are turning their backs and ignoring it. That’s just not the case.”

An HBO spokesman said the network was standing by its story, which included an interview with a researcher who claimed that, overall, hazing at Black schools was more accepted and more violent than at White schools.

But Eleanor M. King, Ph.D., an associate professor of anthropology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., says hazing is neither a new phenomenon nor one confined to a specific racial, ethnic or cultural group.

Instead, she said, hazing often is a dangerous perversion of more familiar “rites of passage” that are used universally to signify an individual’s transition from one social status to another.

These rites can include such ceremonies as weddings, baptisms, graduations and induction into fraternities, sororities or the military. While specific rituals vary, they tend to intensify feelings of camaraderie, and are probably rooted in our DNA. Left unchecked, however, even well-intentioned traditions can devolve into acts of sheer brutality that can leave lasting physical and emotional scars—and result in senseless tragedy.

“Rites of passage are neither good nor bad; they are just a part of life,” says King. “It is a human impulse to be competitive and, even in the most cooperative societies, you have to have a way to channel that aggression. But there’s a delicate balance between honoring a cultural tradition and violating someone’s civil or human rights.”