Reprinted with permission from our partners at StopHazing.
Back-to-school time means a return to familiar debates about where to draw the line between bonding, traditions, and hazing for college students joining teams, clubs, or Greek-letter organizations.
A recent National Review article written by a fraternity industry insider paints a cartoonish portrait of spiteful campus professionals on high alert for any activity that might cause a student discomfort, ready to pounce at the first chance to shut down fraternities and sororities for the tiniest infraction. The article claims that the definition of college hazing has become so overly broad that it could lead to prohibiting required study sessions and professional dress codes.
University administrators with “an unchecked instinct to control” single out fraternities and sororities for micromanagement while ignoring hazing in other groups, argues the author, an executive at a fraternity insurance firm and a national fraternity advisor whose biography notes that she is married to the executive director of Kappa Alpha Order fraternity.
How college students are challenged to grow and develop — how they acquire a sense of belonging — is a vital conversation happening right now among students, staff, and faculty on our college campuses. It is a discussion that I believe is worth having thoughtfully.
Advocating for a narrow definition of hazing misses the point. We need to move beyond compliance toward intentional culture-building. The goal is not to eliminate meaningful traditions. It is to ensure those traditions reflect the type of community we aspire to build.
The question is how students should be challenged as they join new groups, not whether they should be challenged. Meaningful joining experiences and effective hazing prevention are not competing goals. In fact, they depend upon one another.
Public conversations about hazing sometimes rely on false dichotomies, as if we must choose between tradition and safety, challenge and protection, belonging and prevention.
Researchers have studied college student development, what fosters a sense of belonging among students, how traditions develop, and how campus culture and climate shape student experiences.
That research reveals a different way to frame the issue. Instead of asking whether groups should have expectations, traditions, or initiation experiences, we should ask this:
What kinds of experiences support student well-being, and what kinds rely on coercion, degradation, humiliation, or unnecessary risk?
Understanding that distinction is key. Not every challenge is developmental, and not every uncomfortable experience is harmful. Context matters. Purpose matters. Power matters. And outcomes matter.
All types of groups and organizations establish expectations for their members. Athletic teams expect commitment and attendance at practice. Musical ensembles rehearse for hours. Academic honor societies maintain GPA requirements. Faith-based organizations invite participation in shared practices.
These expectations communicate shared values and reinforce commitment.
Research on ritual, identity, and group cohesion helps explain why these experiences can be so powerful. Shared challenges, symbols, and traditions can strengthen social bonds, reinforce purpose, and create lasting memories.
Building these kinds of valuable group connections does not require coercion, secrecy, humiliation, abuse of power, or physical or psychological harm.
The question is not whether initiation has value. It is whether a particular initiation activity or practice achieves that value in ways consistent with the group’s mission and the dignity of its members.
Groups can foster commitment without demanding submission. They can create a sense of belonging without degrading newcomers. They can preserve tradition while also abandoning practices that undermine the very values they hope to instill.
The difficulty of defining hazing is not evidence that universities have lost their way. It reflects the reality that hazing is fundamentally complex and contextual.
The same activity may be entirely appropriate in one setting and deeply problematic in another. A team dinner may simply be a celebration, or it may become an occasion for targeted humiliation. An attire requirement may reinforce professionalism, or it may become a way to single out newcomers for ridicule. A service activity may build community or exploit unequal power.
Evaluating the activity on its own misses the mark. The meaning of a group experience depends on how it is imposed, who is impacted, whether participation is genuinely voluntary, how power is exercised, and whether the experience creates an unacceptable risk of injury or death.
These are not always easy judgments. Our StopHazing team spends thousands of hours each year training campus professionals nationwide in how to recognize and prevent campus hazing. The most common forms of hazing are the most normalized and the hardest to recognize — behaviors like assigning demerits, the use of demeaning nicknames, or socially isolating new members.
Hazing cases reported by colleges and universities in the past year cover the spectrum between humiliation and violence, according to reporting by our partners at HazingInfo.org. For example, last fall, Kappa Alpha Order pledges were humiliated, isolated, harassed, and forced to chug unknown liquids (Georgia College & State University).
Prospective new members of Lambda Theta Nu sorority were required to dress exactly alike and say the word “Excuses” when they failed to recite information correctly (Metropolitan State University of Denver).
A scavenger hunt led by a women’s soccer team required some members to be photographed and recorded partially or fully nude (Middlebury College, Vermont).
Narrowing the definition of hazing to only the most egregious examples of harm only serves those who want us to look the other way when their rituals and traditions leave behind scars that can’t be seen.
Belonging matters profoundly. Students who experience meaningful connection to peers, groups, faculty, and their institutions are more likely to persist, thrive academically, and experience an enhanced sense of well-being.
Students deserve organizations that challenge them to grow, expect them to contribute, and invite them into a community. Healthy groups and organizations cultivate belonging through trust, shared purpose, mentorship, accountability, mutual respect, and opportunities to contribute. New members come to feel they matter because they are welcomed into a community that invests in their growth.
Too often, discussions of hazing prevention assume that colleges and universities must choose between preserving meaningful traditions or protecting students from harm.
That is a false choice.
The real opportunity for universities, athletic teams, fraternities and sororities, and their alumni, coaches, and advisors, is to intentionally design experiences that foster growth, strengthen relationships, and cultivate belonging.
Across college campuses, many groups have successfully redesigned their welcoming rituals to preserve challenge, commitment, symbolism, and shared identity while eliminating practices rooted in coercion, humiliation, and harm.
They have discovered that new members do not need to suffer to develop loyalty and cohesion. They do not need to fear one another to build trust and respect. They do not need to endure degradation to experience belonging.
We can preserve and strengthen traditions that reflect the mission and values of higher education while letting go of those that do not serve our students or communities.
This is not the abandonment of tradition. It is the thoughtful evolution of tradition.