Kate Hawkesby: How is hazing happening in 2023?

I’m just not sure how —in this day and age— we’re still doing hazing rituals at Uni initiations.   I know it’s huge in America, but like all the US’s bad habits, why’s it come here? It seems particularly prevalent in Otago. So far this week we’ve heard of horrific initiations, one involving biting the legs off a live duck, I mean I can’t even believe we’re saying that in a sentence it’s so barbaric.   The other one being where two students allegedly got told to strip down to their underwear only to be called “piggies”. It was reported they were told “to strip to their underwear and stand in the centre of the room while 30 men and women watched on.” The second-year students who’d asked them to do this, then ‘used marker pens to circle parts of the young women’s bodies deemed to be “fat” and called them “the piggies” during the evening.’   I mean how is this happening in 2023? How is this possible that women could do this to other women? The idea was to humiliate them, which was very effective. It’s disgusting. Other initiation incidents apparently include ‘a group of women who were made to chain smoke inside wheelie bins, which then filled with carbon monoxide, causing one of them to pass out.’   I mean shame on the people demanding other students do this kind of thing, but also shame on the participants for doing it. How is this a thing? The duck leg thing was horrific enough, the students who allegedly ‘were forced to bite the legs off a live duck as part of a “sick and twisted” flat initiation, along with binge drinking games that involved eating their own vomit.’   I mean when it’s that sick and twisted, why are you participating? And whose overseeing all this? Who at the initiation end of the Otago Uni experience is not warning newcomers about these sick grotesque rituals and letting them know they don’t have to do it? Where’s the heads up? Where’s the duty of care to these students? Stuff like this could scar you for life. It’s an impressionable age, kids just want to fit it in, they obviously believe they’ve got to do it.. so why is the University not more on top of this stuff? Embarrassing people as a means to have them secure a place in a flat by making them do horrific things may seem outside of the University’s remit, but it’s not. This is their students, in their student town, being forced to indulge in dumb student rituals that can have dangerous and lasting consequences.   The Otago Student’s Association claims these are ‘pretty isolated incidents’ and not part of the culture there. But the people who were humiliated of them claim it is part of the culture. So whose right? Otago Uni for its part had sent the proctor ‘to ‘flats identified as likely to host events and providing face-to-face information, followed by specific targeted email advice’ in a bid to crack down on initiations apparently, but that clearly didn’t work, the message did not get through. Their warnings were ignored.   I just think emails and warnings and claiming its ‘pretty isolated’ actually has zero effect on the perpetrators. There needs to be a zero-tolerance approach to students who want to behave like barbarians. I’m not sure how Otago Uni gets that message through, but they need to work a bit harder at it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.