High School Hazing: Pervasive, Cruel

When Lizzie Murtie was 14, she was "hazed" as a freshman member of her high school gymnastics team in Vermont.

Her mother, Linda, recounts that Lizzie's ordeal started out foolishly, but innocently enough.

"The younger girls were driven by the older girls and taken to a busy street in the center of town and then told that they had to dress up in these silly clothes and sing 'I'm A Little Teapot' while the people were walking by and the other students were laughing and clapping."

The trouble occurred later, Linda says. "What they did not know was that when they arrived at the parking lot, there were other students…and they encircled the four freshman girls. There were 30 students in six motor vehicles and they told them they had to put their hands behind their bare back and eat a banana protruding from a boy's pants."

Lizzie felt forced to go along with it.

"I didn't have any time to think, and I didn't even know what was going through my mind, but I was scared and I just said, 'What if they're going to beat me up, make me do something worse?'"

Afterwards Lizzie said she felt "really humiliated and just what they did was degrading towards me and the other girls."

A study by Alfred University finds that nearly 2 million teens are being hazed each year –- before they even get to college.

Nearly half of high school students joining clubs or teams are subjected to hazing, the researchers find.

The study finds no group of students are safe from humiliating or dangerous initiation rites. For example, 1 in 4 students involved in church groups were hazed.

Most of the students said they participated in humiliating, dangerous or potentially illegal activities because those activities are "fun and exciting."

Forty-eight percent of students said they participated in activities that are defined as hazing, and 29 percent said they did things that are potentially illegal in order to join a group. However, only 14 percent said they were hazed.

Some 71 percent of students subjected to hazing reported negative consequences, such as getting into fights, being injured, fighting with parents, doing poorly in school, hurting other people, having difficulty eating, sleeping, or concentrating, or feeling angry, confused, embarrassed or guilty, the study finds.

A quarter of those who reported being hazed were first hazed before the age of 13.

Dr. Norman Pollard, who co-authored the hazing survey, Initiation Rites in American High Schools, said that the extent of the dangerous and illegal hazing activities was incredible to him. He said it could involved beating, kidnapping, high-speed car chases and jumping off of high bridges.

Pollard explained why many adolescents go along with hazing.

"They want to be part of a group and feel by joining a club, team or organization, that they are somehow connected. And if they're not in a group, they feel alienated, separated and alon. And for a teenager, that's a horrible feeling for them to have."

The study finds adults must share the responsibility when hazing occurs. It finds students were most likely to be hazed if they knew an adult who was hazed. And 36 percent of the students said that they would not report hazing primarily because "there's no one to tell," or "adults won't handle it right."

The researchers recommend adults send a clear anti-hazing message with new policies, meetings with student groups and discipline.

They also recommend that adults help train high school group leaders in community building initiation activities that teens crave – but note it is a tough task.

One of the adults the researchers spoke to said, "No wonder kids get into trouble when they try (to devise initiation activities). It's really hard."