Hazing is a Form of Bullying!

StopHazing.org defines “Hazing” as refering to any activity expected of someone joining a group (or to maintain full status in a group) that humiliates, degrades or risks emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of the person's willingness to participate.

The following story sent to PACER's Teens Against Bullying by Meiramia illustrates how devastating the behavior can be.

Hi, My story is...
Basically, I'm in a boarding school which is one of the SBP or Full Residential School in Malaysia. It's my second year and I'm 14 years old and a second former in my school. Most of the schools consists of students from 1st formers to 5th formers. The 1st and 2nd formers are considered 'Juniors' . 4th formers and 5th formers are considered seniors whereas 3rd formers don't get labeled because it's their exam year. This 'labelling' is not given out by the school or teachers but by the seniors themselves.

Basically, I think what I'm writing about would be more about hazing than bullying. I'm a girl. The hazing or bullying is different for girls and boys. For us girls, it's more emotional rather than physical. It starts during orientation week. Since it's boarding school we're in school 24/7 and the '4th formers who act as our College sisters will handle all of our activities. The hazing starts immediately after your parents leave. They gather you at one of the dorms and start introducing "their RULES". We were told that whatever they say goes and that we shouldn't even tell the teachers. It was because they said, "It's for the sake of girl bonding and junior-senior bonding. As it was our first year, we were scared as hell. We were forced to not take baths as they rushed us on everything and they tell us they don't even care if we didn't have our shower but during nightime seniors in our dorms would single us out and scold us for not taking our showers because we stink. We also constantly told to do small things like make a cup of instant noodles for the seniors and if we say NO they'll start to single you out.

For my batchmates, as the year progressed, it got worse for some of us. My classmates had gotten really close that they called themselves Berry Berry. A cute name because all of them loved berries so much. The seniors found out and school became hell for them. Constantly humiliated by seniors and as months passed other juniors too started humilliating them because they were influence by the seniors. I saw tears from those strong girls multiple times. And as the Student leader of 1st formers I was humiliated as well. But I held in my feelings and tears and defended my friends as long as I can.

It got to a point that I was so stressed out that the night before a Mathematics paper, I had fainted on my way to the dorms. When I was concious I was screaming as if I was possessed and my whole body was cramped. I couldn't move. When the teacher asked me why i couln't answer becaused i was surrounded by my seniors. Amazingly rumours spread that I was just acting because my finals results was amazing and I was 2nd in my batch. Academiccally i was good as well as Co-currically, but my health was not good at all.

Also, there is this tradition we have for girls that on the last night of school all the juniors will be gathered and one place and one by one we get singled out and humiliated and shouted at by the seniors. Luckily, I missed out due to injuries I got from a competition. We call it Night of Darkess or NOD. This year we got a pre-NOD but I was lucky again because I had good relationship with the seniors.

A quote from my senior that causes so much anger in me is 'What goes around comes around' I don't want to do this to other people because it's so aweful. I want to send this message to people all around the world.