Most U.S. adults believe hazing is harmful and should be treated as a public health issue, according to a recent study published by Ole Miss psychology professor Carrie Smith and a colleague at Austin Peay State University. Recategorizing hazing as a public health concern could open the doors to new ways of addressing the issue, Smith said. Graphic by Cole Russell/University Marketing and Communications
UM researchers identify groups more likely to tolerate hazing practices
Most American adults oppose hazing and view it as harmful, but those who are more likely to tolerate hazing also tend to minimize sexual violence, a new University of Mississippi study reveals.
Carrie Smith, UM associate professor of psychology, and Caitlin Shaw, assistant professor of psychology at Austin Peay State University, sought out an often-overlooked perspective in the conversation surrounding hazing in high schools and colleges nationwide: that of American adults.
“Adults have often been left out of the conversation because they’re not the ones being hazed, but we need adults to work against hazing,” Smith said. “Adults are the administrators on campuses, the teachers and superintendents. They’re sitting on juries that judge hazing cases. If we want to look at legislation, we’ll need people to lobby and adults in Congress to pay attention.
“We’re bringing adults into this conversation because if adults in the community say hazing isn’t a big deal, then it won’t be, and nothing will change.”
In a survey of 411 adults nationwide published in the journal Public Health, Smith and Shaw found a majority of adults believe hazing is dangerous and can cause physical and emotional harm.
Despite broad disapproval of the practice, hazing still occurs regularly in a wide variety of settings such as athletics teams, Greek life honor societies, club sports and performing arts associations.
More than 125 U.S. students have died due to hazing-related incidents since 2000, according to Hazing Info, a comprehensive database of hazing incidents. Additionally, more than half of college students and 1.5 million high school students experience hazing every year, the Hazing Prevention Network estimates.
In response, 44 states, including Mississippi, have passed legislation that classifies hazing a serious crime, often carrying the weight of a felony. But many schools, universities and people still treat hazing as simply an issue of misconduct, Shaw said.
In the study, most respondents said hazing should instead be treated as a public health issue.
“If we frame hazing as a public health issue, we don’t look at individual intervention, where we are trying to stop one person from engaging in this type of misconduct,” she said. “Instead, it opens the opportunity to look at interventions at the group level.
“We can look at groups that we know are likely to engage in hazing and do targeted intervention to prevent hazing, not just stop it after it’s happened.”
Shaw and Smith found that tolerance for hazing varied across groups. These groups can vary based on whether people have experienced hazing and by gender, parental status and political identity.
“The finding that people who have been hazed before are less likely to disapprove of hazing is interesting,” Smith said. “Previous studies have shown that when people experience hazing and it’s not that bad, they’re more likely to consider hazing as a whole less serious.
“Lots of people get hazed, and not everybody dies, and so it’s possible that they’re understandably using their own experience to say, ‘It isn’t that serious, because it wasn’t that serious for me.’ The issue is, people do die, and it can be very serious.”
Parents were also more likely to tolerate hazing, and a similar reasoning could be at work, Shaw said.
“Parents are often receiving information about this kind of activity through their kids,” she said. “So, if they have kids who have experienced hazing and are receiving messages from their children about how it wasn’t that bad, they are more likely to think it’s not a serious issue, either.”
Those who are more tolerant of hazing are also more likely to minimize sexual assault and endorse rape myths, such as blaming survivors of rape for the way they were dressed or whether they had consumed alcohol.
“Sexual violence research is very prolific, but hazing is a type of violence where research seems to be lacking,” Shaw said. “This study shows that there is a connection, a correlation between these types of violent attitudes.”
Understanding that connection could help prevention and intervention efforts.
“Let’s be clear, the vast majority of people who go to college are not raped, and the vast majority of people who go to college do not die from hazing, right?” Smith said. “But some do, and that’s the problem. And it doesn’t have to be death or serious injury for it to be a lasting trauma.
“We have to understand why that’s happening, where it’s happening and what we can do to prevent it before it happens. We’re not going to fix hazing until we think more creatively and until we understand why they’re doing it.”
By Clara Turnage
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