Authors of an ambitious survey of hazing in colleges and universities have discovered that many freshmen arrive on campus with experience—with 47 percent reporting having been hazed in high school.
Professors Elizabeth Allan and Mary Madden of the University of Maine’s College of Education and Human Development previously reported on college hazing using a survey of 11,480 students at 53 colleges and universities.
This time, the researchers tapped the same pool of participants to explore what had happened to them before their arrival on college campuses. They found the highest rates of hazing among members of sports teams (47 percent), ROTC (46 percent), and bands and performing arts organizations (34 percent). The average for other school organizations was 20 percent, the authors reported.
Hazing-related activities included being required to associate only with the peer group (28 percent), singing or chanting in public (21 percent), verbal abuse (19 percent), sleep deprivation (12 percent), and getting a tattoo or piercing (12 percent).
Twelve percent of the survey’s respondents had participated in a drinking game, and 8 percent had drunk until getting sick or losing consciousness, according to the study.
