About a week ago I stumbled across NBC News’ “Hazing in America”. I’ve been trying to decide what I could add to the subject and made a stab at it earlier tonight, which I deleted. It’s difficult to talk about in any substantial way without exposing others to scrutiny.

And now I have my first point; hazing is surrounded by a culture of silence. Typically, no one in a given organization (and I include sports teams in “organization”) is innocent, with the exception of the haze-ees. All group members participate in hazing so the guilt is shared. If a student reports that a rival group hazes new members, he or she risks exposing their own group. Administrations that turn a blind eye don’t want their university’s reputation besmirched.

Hazees, of course, are incentivized to not report because they want to be a group member. Women pledging my local sorority were told they could opt-out of any activity and we’d come up with an alternative they were comfortable with. In reality, pledges were cajoled into going along with the program. Substitutions were never made. Not maliciously, mind you. There was a genuine desire to use such moments to help the pledge grow or get over a fear while pushing group unity. But in effect, speaking up was almost useless. This happened across the board.

Even when a new member got the courage to go to the administration about hazing, the ultimate effect was to destroy the pledge. Hazing continued in the reported organization as usual. This became a powerful object lesson for others about the futility and consequences of reporting hazing.

Even if campuses properly incentivized student organizations to report hazing, many have a confused understanding of what hazing is. For the most part the state laws that address hazing only take into account actions that cause, or could reasonably cause, physical injury. When I got to know members of national Greek organizations (think Pi Beta Phi, with chapters at multiple schools, as opposed to a local, which only exists at one school), I learned that hazing includes anything that demeans, degrades, or harasses new members. Under this definition calling new members “babies” or requiring them to dress up in diapers are both hazing. Because the local Greek organizations at my alma mater think hazing is only stuff like making pledges drink until they puke, they truly believe that they don’t haze and aren’t legally liable. Except they do and they should be.

So reform starts with aligning all players’ definitions of hazing with the definition above. Next, organizations should be required to treat new members as full members as soon as a bid to pledge or join the team is accepted. Students must be educated about what hazing is and alternate means of bonding and ensuring group unity. Schools must figure out how to incentivize students to report hazing and appropriately punish complicity, including complicity by staff. And schools and organizations must work together to create alternate, healthy traditions and rites of passage for their students.