Hazing

Navy SEAL hopefuls in the surf

I find it interesting how the purposeful shifting of semantics is often used to achieve social and political ends.  There is currently a brewing brouhaha at Dartmouth College about hazing ... spawned, in my opinion, by a vindictive fraternity member who was ratted out by his brothers for his drug use and then, also in my opinion, concocted a bizarre story about his hazing experiences.  He has now gone national with this narrative and, as a consequence, hazing is rapidly becoming a cause célèbre.  The word "hazing" is taking on a relatively new and ominously pejorative tone that is being used not only to bash such previously tacitly accepted practices ... but also to attack fraternities in general.

Let me be clear, initiation rites when practiced with sadistic intentions are wrong, but finding a bright line between cruelty and those ordeals designed to encourage institutional loyalty and unit cohesion is sometimes difficult to define.  May I present some examples to illustrate my point:

- The Navy SEALs undergo extreme and rigorous "training" (see: Navy SEAL Training) in which the drop-out rate is about 90%.   This training is quite successful ... witness the series of dramatic victories this unit has achieved in recent years.  However, this training does include one section that one might classify as somewhat sadistic, viz:

Another important part of basic conditioning is drown-proofing. In this evolution, trainees must learn to swim with both their hands and their feet bound. To pass drown-proofing, trainees enter a 9-foot-deep pool and complete the following steps with their hands and feet tied: bob for 5 minutes, float for 5 minutes, swim 100 meters, bob for 2 minutes, do some forward and backward flips, swim to the bottom of the pool and retrieve an object with their teeth, and then return to the surface and bob five more times

- The Stations of the Cross that Jesus Christ had to endure ... possibly even endorsed by God himself ... have always appeared to be a bit sadistic. Flogging, spearing, a crown of thorns, a vinegar drink, etc. ... as well as the crucifixion itself, may all have been ordeals ordained to create a cohesive empathy among the Christian community.  I think it has worked.

- Discipline aboard British naval sailing ships was quite brutal and often sadistic.  However, it did help propel the English navy to world dominance.  One needs only read some of Patrick O'Brian's books such as Master and Commander to understand how the savage discipline aboard these man-o-wars was required to insure that the crew acted as a well-oiled unit when the bigger tests came ... naval battles when all their lives were on the line.

- Even though it is just mythology, the Twelve Labors of Hercules were ordeals mandated by Hera to test Hercules's strength and make him atone for his crimes. However, being made to clean the Augean stables in one day seems a little over-the-top sadistic to me.

There are numerous other examples of initiation ceremonies ... such as the sometimes weird Neptune frivolities celebrated when crossing the equator aboard ship, "boys will be boys" pranks in English public schools (read a few Harry Potter books), the current exposure of bullying in U.S. High Schools, and even that which is shown in al Qaeda propaganda training films. 

Although a noble objective, the current mania to banish sadism from the human psyche may (hopefully) cause pause among some initiators ... but I seriously doubt that "hazing", under whatever semantic form, will ever disappear entirely from our societies ... because it sometimes does seem to have a meaningful purpose.