<p>One behavior that did not exist when I was an undergrad in the seventies is the pre-gaming that often begins a night of partying at our local U. Because underage drinkers are not always sure what the availability of alcohol will be when they go out on a weekend night, they will often get loaded before they even leave for a party or the bars. When the drinking age was eighteen we didn’t feel the need to suck down whatever liquor was available because getting more was never a problem.</p>
<p>If you want my opinion, hazing has grown because of the entitlement issues we discuss here all the time. Kids today grow up with a “I am superior” attitude and they will do what they want, when they want. They lie on college applications, they drink too much, they drive too fast, they can’t believe THEY didn’t get into an Ivy when that “dumb” baseball player did, etc, etc. They have people take their SATs, they hire people to write their resumes, cover letters and essays. THEY are entitled to an IVY league education and for free.</p>
<p>I don’t where the root of this problem lies, but hazing on the college level started way before the kids walked through the arches of the universities.</p>
<p>“The question of definition has a lot to do with many of these statistics.”</p>
<p>No it doesn’t. The definitions have been quite fixed, and for a very long time. The students are asked exactly the same questions over time. Monitoring the Future goes back to 1976.</p>
<p>What I think you mean is that the questions asked are not sensitive to mega-binging. Which is true.</p>
<p>Okay, so the technical concerns are two-fold - and these MAY have changed over time. It has to do with what is called “experimental data”. One study (out of Duke) shows that, when asked to pour a standard drink, students on average pour a drink that is 1.8X the standard. So someone who says they had 5 drinks in reality, on average, had 9, and half had more. A second study, which actually videotaped students on a binge night found that students who had four drinks tended to underestimate the number of drinks they had by one. So the 4-drink non-binge drinker on average had 5 (and hence is a binge drinker.)</p>
<p>So what does that mean? Mom calls daughter on Sunday. Daughter says she drank, but says she only had two drinks. Of course, the daughter knows she is lying, and thinks she had four. Actually, she had five. But each was 1.8X the standard drink. So she had NINE drinks (or more) in reality, and can’t figure out why she has a headache, or threw up three times last night.</p>
<p>This MAY have changed over time. It’s not a definitional matter, but a lack of data.</p>
<p>“If hazing was a “non-issue” at Williams, why go to the trouble?”</p>
<p>I’m making no defense of Williams. Only reporting that you can be expelled for membership in an off-campus fraternity. Why go to the trouble? The same reason you’d enforce alcohol laws. If you want to address potential difficulties, you take steps to do so. I would think this to be a plus, and something for which they should be applauded.</p>
<p>Hazing = a form Bullying, often with Substances, done by “Adults” to “Adults”
Make it ILLEGAL, a FEDERAL OFFENSE, grounds for LAW SUITS</p>
<p>SUE AWAY, EVERYONE!</p>
<p>^^^I do not understand the point of this post. Enlighten me, performersmom, if I am misreading what you wrote, but are you suggesting that people are making too big a deal out of this? I know I don’t have the answer, but I don’t have to see more than one story about a college student dying as a consequence of hazing to consider this a problem worthy of discussion.</p>
<p>I think she’s suggesting the reverse: taking it seriously and suing the organizations that do it.</p>
<p>I think what might be different today is that kids are drinking way more straight alcohol. Have you been in a liquor store lately. Cupcake flavored vodka among a hundred other flavored vodkas, rums etc. Mixing shots of these to make up new drinks etc. Kids are just drinking shots like crazy.They see nothing wrong with it. They just don’t get it. Some of these college girls weigh 100 lbs. How much can they drink before they black out.</p>
<p>We used to drink beer. You threw up if you drank too much.</p>
<p>Is there evidence that hazing has increased?</p>
<p>Collegeshopping’s post seems to assume that it has, but are there data?</p>
<p>I apparently do not know how to read. Thanks, Consolation.</p>
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<p>It would be easier just to get rid of the whole pledging process rather than to trust the judgement of 20-21 year-old guys. </p>
<p>There are many forms of hazing. Drinking rituals are the most dangerous other than actual physical abuse, but hazing can also take the form of giving the pledges pointless tasks to do to become worthy.</p>
<p>All of this stuff, including actual physical abuse, occurred at my alma mater MIT. And implicit in these discussions is a kind of conceit that the people complaining about it were too sensitive. I wonder though; how many billions of dollars did MIT and MIT graduates lose because of this policy. Rather than wasting all the spare time of freshman males in the first 6 months of school, what if some of them had instead founded a startup? And even afterwards, I have to believe this had an effect on the culture such that startups were less common.</p>
<p>collegeshopping, I would not read the anti-hazing document student group leaders have to sign at Williams as sign of a problem. It’s standard issue stuff to protect the school from students who might turn around and say they weren’t aware they weren’t allowed to haze. No school or student body is perfect so I’m not going to claim no one at Williams has been hazed but it is not a usual part of the campus culture. There tends to be an open, inclusive atmosphere to binge drinking there, as well as caretaking afterwards. It worries me though that 18-20 year olds are making judgement calls on just how drunk their friend is and whether or not to make the call for help.</p>
<p>Has anyone seen that Stanford psychology study where they trick people into thinking they are administering electric shocks to a subject? An actor plays the subject, and the people administering the shocks of increasing voltage are the real subjects of the study. </p>
<p>This reminds me of what happens in fraternities.</p>
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<p>I don’t think it is a “kids these days” thing. I went to PSU in the '80s and hazing seemed to be plentiful in the Greek system. I was a “little sister” at a fraternity (don’t even want to get into that) and heard stories from the pledges about being made to drink huge quantities of alcohol then dropped off in the woods miles from campus on a freezing cold/snowy night to make their way home. It’s almost surprising that more kids don’t die. There was also the nasty stuff like being made to eat vomit mixed with cigarette ashes, that kind of thing. </p>
<p>The thing that I think is really different now is the prevalence of hard liquor. I only remember drinking beer in college. We did shots of beer before we went out. It’s much easier to kill yourself with hard liquor than with beer.</p>
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<p>The first thing I thought of when I saw that study was the Bill Murray scene in Ghostbusters. :D</p>
<p>Sorry, a little off topic.</p>
<p>No hard liquor in the 80’s at fraternities???</p>
<p>We used plastic trash cans, filled with a concoction we called Rocket Fuel. Everclear, whiskey, any other kind of alchohol available, and fruit punch.</p>
<p>For ‘fancy tropical’ parties, we put it in a wading pool and topped it with fresh fruit slices.</p>
<p>Short memories??..we used to travel to PA to get grain alcohol…and not in the 80’s but earlier…</p>
<p>And we did not have Greek Life…</p>
<p>After reading some replies, maybe hazing isn’t increasing but our “insta-media” culture just makes it more “known.” I do stand behind the fact the entitlement issues can lead to hazing, inside and and outside the greek community.</p>
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<p>I really just remember the kegs. And I don’t recall anyone I knew or knew of ever going to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Any alcohol-related health problems were injuries from doing something idiotic while drunk. My D is a college freshman now and it seems to be a normal, routine thing for kids in her dorm to be taken to the hospital with alcohol poisoning every weekend.</p>
<p>I was being serious, not sarcastic.
I do not envision putting people into jail for hazing, or under-age drinking, or negligence for ignoring or supplying, but maybe that is a better approach…
The system is not working on a on “honor” basis, obviously.
Yes, the penalties are not high enough to deter.</p>
<p>p.s. in my day, passing out was rare enough to be serious, and was considered embarrassing, as was throwing up.</p>
<p>I don’t see entitlement figuring into it - at least when it comes to today’s kids. </p>
<p>IMO - in general - the current generation takes college more seriously than ours did. Admissions are more competitive, tuition is more expensive, and they’re more informed about the world that faces them post-graduation. </p>
<p>Also - when sad incidences occur now, we tend to hear about them. Not so much the case back then. The bad behavior I saw and heard about back in the late 70’s/early 80’s was far more widespread, callous and generally much worse than what I see or hear of now.</p>