Hazing in Madrid: sordid and disgusting

Here is the link to El Pais story and video

Excerpt:

Madrid’s Complutense University has launched its annual anti-hazing campaign this September together with the local police and city authorities. Other universities are trying alternative methods in a bid to phase out the practice. Salamanca University, for example, has opened an anti-hazing meeting point for the first time, where established students help the newcomers. “They feel more comfortable with one another,” says the vice-rector Ana Belén Ríos. “That’s the key.”

Extremadura University, meanwhile, has launched its first campaign with a focus on sexual harassment and food waste, in a nod to rituals involving coating newcomers in products such as flour.

“The phrase ‘the freshman is not a snitch’ still carries weight,” says Loreto González-Dopeso who insists that a lack of reported incidents doesn’t mean they are not happening.

For example, José (not his real name), the father of a former student in Madrid who moved after a year of being shunned by his classmates, says that he would have liked to have reported what was happening to his son but refrained for fear of making his life even worse.

Meanwhile, Lucas (also an assumed name), who used to live at the Covarrubias student residence, says that although he was humiliated, he was never the one making others suffer. “They were the typical macho guys who enjoy bullying the weakest,” he says. “The worst they did was make me eat my own vomit mixed with soup. If you have never been through it, it’s hard to understand why we don’t say no. It seems easy from the outside, but when you are part of it, you feel you have no choice.”