Deadly Initiations for Students Without Self-Esteem

Written by Rolf

Officially, initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. Its function is to reveal the deep meaning of existence to the new generations and to help them assume the responsibility of being truly men and hence of participating in culture.

Say-wiki-what? I always thought (student) initiations (also called hazing) were solely designed to humiliate the initiates as much as inhumanly possible. I also never understood that the 1st-year students would actually voluntarily undergo these torments, just to be part of the student society. What, you need to drink 'till you puke and then eat your own vomit? Wow really, sounds like an awesome society that I'd want to be part of and the initiations must be definitely worth it!

Personally, I don't see why initiations need to be more humiliating than, for instance, 100 meter skinny dipping, playing twister in a fat-suit or beer-monopoly. And if one student thinks he can't handle it, he can just refuse. Of course there should be some incentive to participate, like free beer at the end of the initiation week. Or something harmless like that. But some societies take it much further and I get the impression that students don't realize they can simply refuse.

In Holland, for example, was an initiation that included forcibly making love to a chicken. And no, it wasn't a rubber one. The local Peta, who are usually overreacting in my opinion, farm animals are bred to serve humans after all, were furious and rightfully so. I doubt Amnesty Intl made any comments, apparently the well-being of animals outweighs that of persons. Another creative initiation that they wouldn't have liked either, was the drinking of a glass of water with a live goldfish. The goldfish was to be swallowed whole and would then die a slow death in the student's stomach.

Hardcore fraternity students will defend themselves, saying they also had to undergo these rituals and that apparently justifies everything. But not only animals get hurt or die during initiations. Students have actually died.

In various initiations, students drank themselves to death. One other, in the US, died during a game of capture the flag after hitting his head. Yet another student died during a secretive voodoo-type ritual in Sierra Leone. In Thailand, one student drowned because it turned out he couldn't swim when thrown into a pool. In the UK, a student fell to his death down some stairs. In Indonesia, students simply got beaten to death.

This list goes on and on and in most cases, copious amounts of alcohol were involved. I suppose the initial intoxication is voluntarily and harmless, but as everyone knows, alcohol distorts your judgment and the students are less inclined to refuse a task. I'm not against alcohol at all, but the combination with stupid initiation rites can be degrading and painful at best, lethal at worst. Nor am I in favour of overseeing these activities by a university official or police officer, that'd just be silly. But apparently Common Sense™ is all too often lost.

More background information and popular rituals on this Wikipedia page.