• Verbal Abuse: Being yelled at, threatened, or intimidated
• Personal Servitude: Getting someone’s meals, serving as their driver
• Social Isolation: Not being allowed to spend time with other people/groups
• Embarrassing Activities: Wearing an article of clothing against their choice, having someone ask another person uncomfortable questions
• Power Imbalance: Older individual(s) with more power asking others to complete pointless tasks
• Sleep Deprivation: Attending meetings at obscure hours, driving people around late at night
• Pointless Tasks: Completing tasks that have nothing to do with the organization’s purpose
• Forced or Coerced Alcohol: Drinking games, rapid or mass consumption of alcohol
• Physical Requirements: Pushups, running, forced exercise outside of the organization’s mission

• Sudden change in behavior or attitude after joining the organization
• Wanting to leave the organization with no real explanation
• Sudden decrease in communication with friends and family
• Physical or psychological exhaustion
• Unexplained weight loss
• Unexplained injuries or illness
• Change in sleeping or eating habits
• Withdrawal from normal activities
• Expressed feeling of sadness or feeling of worthlessness
• Increase in secrecy and unwillingness to share details

If the answer is “yes” to any of these questions, the activity is probably hazing.

• Would I feel uncomfortable participating in this activity if my family, a university administrator, or the media were watching?
• Would active/older members of the group refuse to participate?
• Would I get in trouble if a university administrator walked by or saw us?
• Am I being asked to keep these activities a secret?
• Am I doing anything illegal?
• Does this activity violate my values/my organization’s values?
• Do members defend this as “tradition”?
• Is this activity pointless/adding no value to the organization?
• Is this activity causing emotional and/or physical distress to myself/others?

FACT: Traditions are created by groups, and groups hold the power to change or eliminate them. It only takes one year to break a hazing tradition. Remember that the founding members of organizations were not hazed.

FACT: People will behave how you treat them. Hazing motivates people out of fear and anxiety.

FACT: There does not need to be malicious intent for hazing to occur. Hazing often takes place when the hazers did not intend any harm.

FFACT: Hazing isolates each member from the established group. It does not promote organizational unity.

FACT: Respect and pride are earned, not demanded or taught. When respect is earned, there is also trust.

FACT: Even a little hazing is still hazing, and typically becomes more serious over time.

FACT: People want and need to be challenged, but in the right way.

FACT: Hazing occurs regardless of a person’s willingness to participate. Human beings want to belong; the desire to “fit in” is as essential to our emotional and physical well being as food and safety.

FACT: Verbal and emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse.

FACT: Hazing can occur in any group. Greek Life, Academic Clubs, Athletics, Performing Arts, Sports Clubs, Student Government. No group is immune from hazing behavior.