Hazing is the practice of rituals and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group. How would you like it if you were forced to strip naked and parade around the school? Or something even more serious, illegal activities. Hazing is a serious problem and needs to be controlled. Many people don’t know about hazing and most kids don’t report it. Hazing is buried deep and needs to be brought to the surface.

To start, hazing can happen at any place at any time. Urban, suburban, rural, nobody is safe. The most popular groups where hazing occurs is on sports teams, sororities, and fraternities. The amount of deaths from hazing is alarmingly high, and the punishment given for hazing is alarmingly low. The people in charge of these groups try to stop hazing but nobody talks. The main rule of hazing is secrecy. That makes it almost impossible for the leaders to control the amount of hazing that goes on. Hazing can happen in high schools, colleges, and even middle schools. 1.5 million High school students are hazed each year; 47% of students went to college already having experienced hazing. 55% of college students involved in clubs, teams and organizations experience hazing. As you can see, hazing is not a fun little prank anymore. It had gone too far and needs to be controlled.

Next, hazing can appear in many different activities. Some may not be that harmless, but that’s where it starts, and after that, it gets worse and worse. Harmless hazing can be as simple as wearing a silly shirt to school, or carrying someone’s books for them. Hazing can also be ugly and cruel. In most hazing related deaths it has to do with large amounts of alcohol that the victim was forced to drink. Some people argue that hazing is nothing more than a harmless tradition. That can be true, but recently it has been going too far. Some of hazing’s ugliest forms are being forced into sexual relations and being hit, kicked, or physically assaulted. That is when it becomes more of a crime and less of a tradition. In one instance, football players at Mepham high school were sodomized with brboomsticks, pinecones, and golf balls. Those items were all covered with a substance similar to Icy-Hot. This is an example on how hazing is a serious problem. One of the kids went to the hospital for medical treatment.

Additionally, hazing needs to be stopped because it has serious effects. Even the most innocent hazing activities have mental and physical repercussions. The more serious the activity, the more serious the effect. Even short-term effects can even change people’s lives. Humiliation, embarrassment, shame, and being picked on, are all things that can haunt people for the rest of their lives. Injuries are also very common when dealing with hazing activities. Anything form broken bones to serious head injuries can be picked up in the process of hazing. At one high school powder-puff football game the older girls physically assaulted the younger girls. 7 girls were unconscious and 11 were hospitalized. Hazing can also have many long-term effects that are very serious. Most people who have been brutally hazed report being depressed or suicidal. Many victims are currently in, or have been through different types of therapy. Hazing causes a great deal of people to seclude themselves from society because of the emotional scars it leaves. These effects show that hazing is no longer just a guiltless tradition; it is a serious problem.

Overall, hazing is not a well-known topic, but a serious one. Awareness needs to be raised about hazing so we can help those who been hazed, and also save future victims of these horrible actions. Hazing can happen anywhere at any time to anyone. Hazing comes in the form of many different activities and can have many different painful effects. Some people may argue that hazing is a harmless tradition. Those people are living in the past. Hazing has gotten so much worse in the past few years, and now is dangerous and serious business.