Bloomington North (Ind.) HS Hazing Interview with Hank Nuwer

Thanks to interviewer Sophie. She asked great questions.

By Sophie Harris

SH: More and more kids are being bul­lied at North. Could these behav­iors trans­late into more dan­ger­ous things along the road, like hazing?

HN: The idea of high school behav­iors being repli­cated in col­lege wor­ries me. In high school, actions are not always pun­ished and admin­is­tra­tors try and take things into their own hands. In one of my books, “The Haz­ing Reader,” a vic­tim of a haz­ing crime who almost died came from Bloom­ing­ton North. He was at the Uni­ver­sity of North Carolina.

SH: How many books have you writ­ten? What are they about?

HN:  I’ve writ­ten 25 books, and four are about haz­ing. I have a fifth book com­ing out in a few months. I started writ­ing about haz­ing for the Human Behav­ior mag­a­zine, a national mag­a­zine study­ing behav­ior and psy­chol­ogy. When writ­ing about it, I won­dered why the bystanders just walked by. I did inter­views with lots of experts, and it seemed that haz­ers never did their haz­ing rit­u­als one-on-one. Now it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, with cyber­bul­ly­ing. Cyber­bul­ly­ing is tech­ni­cally one-on-one, through phones and face­book, but it’s got the group men­tal­ity of haz­ing because peo­ple share it with their friends.

SH: Why is it so impor­tant that we put a stop to bul­ly­ing, both in high school and college?

HN:  Hazing’s main dan­ger is alco­hol. 82% of hazing-related deaths are caused by alco­hol. Cyber­bul­ly­ing can be very dan­ger­ous because its main goal is to exclude. Preda­tors want to find your weak­ness, your inse­cu­rity, and harp on your ori­en­ta­tion or ‘lack of cool­ness,’ and ham­mer that home. There was a haz­ing case where the haz­ers wanted a pledge to drink from a bot­tle and put a gun to his head. But what they didn’t know what that this boy’s father killed him­self that way.

SH: How can bul­ly­ing in high school lead to haz­ing in college?

HN:  Bul­ly­ing in high school makes a per­son jaded. Bul­ly­ing is haz­ing. If they’ve got­ten away with bul­ly­ing in high school, it makes them think they can get away with it in col­lege. It gets out of hand. At the high school level, haz­ing is worse than ever. Haz­ing began in about the 1980’s. At the col­lege level there is much more aware­ness, and col­leges are crack­ing down on it. For the first time since 1970, in 2010 there were no haz­ing related deaths in America.

SH: What is the best advice you could give to some­one being bul­lied or hazed?

HN:  Find peo­ple that object to it, just as you do. Band together with them. Find an admin­is­tra­tor that will lis­ten, and inform your par­ents, no mat­ter how embar­rass­ing the sit­u­a­tion is. Speak out! Take notes by the hour. By the minute. Don’t exag­ger­ate, don’t make any­thing up, and don’t break the law your­self. Some peo­ple fell that they can’t step in on haz­ing if it’s not in their group. That’s not true. You can. Things can get so out of con­trol. Adults can act in a stu­pid way, and they can be really bad exam­ples for high school stu­dents. Some­times, in high school, prin­ci­pals and admin­is­tra­tors are really bad at try­ing to con­tain it.

SH: How can you see bul­ly­ing and haz­ing stop­ping, or at least lessening?

HN:  It must be taught in a no-nonsense way from kinder­garten, or even ear­lier, on. Par­ents must get involved. Adults need to act like adults. It’s some kind of soci­etal prob­lem when adults don’t take respon­si­bil­ity and obey the law. There was once a case at an Indi­ana high school near Shel­byville. There was a sit­u­a­tion, but the school admin­is­tra­tors never let it go to the police. The police never fol­lowed up on the facts. If the facts are cor­rect, kids could end up with felonies on their records. When noth­ing hap­pens, it is uncon­scionable. School admin­is­tra­tors are not the police. They should not act like police. They need to call the police, and if noth­ing hap­pens then, par­ents should band together and demand justice.

SH: Is it hard to write about hazing?

HN:  Yes, it’s still not easy, talk­ing about the loss of a human life. I can’t tell you how many girl­friends and par­ents I’ve talked to after deaths. I can’t tell you how many 911 tapes I’ve heard. For most haz­ers, a death is either a wake up call, or they whine and blame it on the victim.