The trees once went out to anoint a king over themselves. So, they said to the olive tree, “Reign over us.” The olive tree answered them, “Shall I stop producing my rich oil by which gods and mortals are honoured, and go to sway over the trees?” Then the trees said to the fig tree, “You come and reign over us.” But the fig tree answered them, “Shall I stop producing my sweetness and my delicious fruit, and go to sway over the trees?”
Then the trees said to the vine, “You come and reign over us.” But the vine said to them, “Shall I stop producing my wine that cheers gods and mortals, and go to sway over the trees?” So, all the trees said to the bramble, “You come and reign over us.” And the bramble said to the trees, “If in good faith you are anointing me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.” Judges 9:8-15
The good side of hazing
Leaving secondary school and entering university is a milestone in the lives of today's young people. In a way, hazing is like a rite of passage from adolescence to youth and adulthood, from high school to university. It is also the celebration of a victory, the achievement of getting into college, and the culmination of many years of effort to achieve the required grade point average. Many try but not all succeed, so wearing the black outfit of a university has its own flair and is a badge of success.
Hazing helps integration, it creates an identification with the university, and with colleagues; it also creates bonds of friendship and creates a community. Hazing can transform the shapeless mass of a crowd of students at a university into the familiarity of an academic home that the students had become accustomed to in their secondary school.
Hazing consists of ridiculous and silly games or rituals that make you, the hazing committee and the large audience laugh following someone as if you were his or her shadow; fetching things with your mouth from a jar full of flour; making a declaration of love, kill an ant with a shout, cutting the grass with a nail clipper, etc...
This being the case, and if this were always the case, hazing would be positive because it would act as icebreakers, dynamics of knowledge, communication, affirmation, confidence, cooperation to intimidate the more timid to come out of their shells and integrate into the group. All this wrapped in an atmosphere of celebration, laughter, comedy and partying.
Institutionalization of bullying
For some years now, the practice of hazing, supposedly still complying with the tradition and reason for which it was created, has been going downhill. In many cases, it is no longer innocent fun, but a joke in bad taste, an attack on the dignity, decency, and moral and physical integrity of the young people who are made to undergo it. It is easy to resort to humiliation, insults, violence, alcohol and sex. Students have been traumatized, physically and psychologically, with lifelong problems and even some deaths have occurred, so we can no longer consider hazing anything but crimes.
One freshman recounted being insulted for hours, covered in excrement and forced to stay that way until the excrement dried up; another freshman was suspended by his feet upside down from the top of a bridge; others were forced to drink alcohol going from bar to bar until they fell over drunk.
Faced with the prospect of hazing that awaited her, a highly intelligent freshman with a very high-grade point average, had a panic attack the day before she entered university; her parents had to travel a very long distance to come and calm her down, and her boyfriend had to beg the hazing committee to be lenient with her.
A completely reckless, arbitrary, and unbalanced activity, which is not limited to a space or a time, nor regulated by certain rules, practiced by the worst university students on young people who are vulnerable because they are young and want to fit in, can only lead to problems.
There are several elements that have led to this deviation, and it would be good for the Ministry of Education, deans and teachers to take them into account so that hazing can return to what it once was and stop being what it has become: unlimited limit
- They are rarely practiced on campus during the day, but often at night and off campus. Deans and professors may see this as an advantage, but the lack of any supervision can only lead to abuse.
- It is no longer just on the first day of classes, but goes on all week, for several weeks, every year and often every year of the course and has even happened after the course.
- The peer pressure, and the fear of being ostracized, is such that young freshmen are willing to submit to anything in order to fit in well; this puts them in a very vulnerable position, susceptible to being abused.
- The secrecy and silence surrounding these practices is mafia-like, and where there is mafia there is impunity.
- It is incomprehensible how a rite of passage into adulthood can consist of uncritical submission to an authority of weak moral character, the Dux (The leader of the committee that enforces hazing).
- If hazing is the welcome to university, it would be logical for the brightest student to oversee this activity, but the reality is that the opposite is true; the one who oversees hazing, the Dux, is the most idiotic, the one with the worst student.
- The one who has existentially settled at the university; the one who wants forever to be a student, as the fado says; a Peter Pan who does not want to grow up so he can continue to live parasitically off the sweat of his parents and the taxpayers. This is how failure, laziness and irresponsibility are rewarded. A former university Dux said in an interview with TVI that he was always invited to all the university’s public events, to all the parties and sprees, and was even better known and more popular than the Dean.
- The absence of any rules or standards makes these practices dependent on the discretion and arbitrariness of the Dux and other members of the hazing committee. The lack of character and psychological maturity can lead these gentlemen to project their resentment of their academic and existential failure onto hopeful freshmen in the form of revenge, by hardening the hazing. "If you want to know a villain, put a stick in his hand" The Dux, or Duce as the dictator Mussolini was called, is the least suitable person to do hazing.
Conclusion - Hazing helps the integration and identification of the new students with the university; it can transform the shapeless mass of a crowd of students at a university into the familiarity of an academic home. It consists of ridiculous and silly games or rituals that make you, the hazing committee and the large audience laugh. The negative side of it is that it can become bullying if not supervised.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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