Dear Students,
I hope you had a restful and restorative spring break and that you’re excited for spring quarter! One of our campus’ great strengths is how our students care so much for each other. This is evident by community members’ dedication to preventing harm as they advocate for survivors of sexual violence and harassment, encourage healthy choices regarding alcohol and other substances, and as they look out for each other in everyday moments across campus.
This month I would like to highlight another approach to cultivating healthy leadership. Many of our students are very engaged in various campus organizations and teams, and most have overwhelmingly positive experiences. About 30% of UCSB students, however, report either experiencing or knowing about others experiencing hazing. Hazing is any activity expected of someone joining or maintaining membership in an organization that could be humiliating, degrading, or harmful, regardless of a person’s willingness to participate.
Most students recognize severe hazing when they see it covered on the news or depicted in the media. Violent hazing, however, is comparatively quite rare. More moderate hazing can be harder to identify and may seem less harmful, but research tells us that less severe forms of hazing are statistically likely to escalate to more harmful hazing. Behaviors like controlling what new members wear or who they talk to can easily morph into far more dangerous activities such as drinking to excess and food challenges.
I know that the vast majority of our students don’t want to harm each other. Hazing frequently happens as a result of a lack of critical thinking about established practices in an organization and does not usually have malicious intent. It is my sincere belief that with more education about hazing and how to prevent it, our campus will be a safer and healthier place.
We would always rather work with an organization to eliminate hazing behaviors before harm is committed. If you have concerns about an organization you’re involved with, please reach out to Dr. Emma Parker in the Dean of Students Office, who leads our hazing prevention initiatives. She would be happy to meet with you to discuss ways to make changes to your practices to improve your organization’s culture.
If you have experienced hazing or would like to report concerns about behavior you have heard about or witnessed, please make a report online here by selecting “student organizational misconduct” from the dropdown menu. Although you can report anonymously, anonymous reports frequently do not include enough information to be actionable, so I strongly recommend providing at least one way for staff to respond to you. We prioritize maintaining the confidentiality of reporting parties as much as possible.
You can learn more about our campus’ hazing prevention initiatives by visiting our website at www.hazing.sa.ucsb.edu.
Finally, if you’re interested in helping to improve the culture of hazing on our campus, we would love to welcome you to our Hazing Prevention Coalition, which meets monthly on the second Thursday at 10:00 am on Zoom. If you are interested, please contact Dr. Emma Parker at emmaparker@ucsb.edu.
Eliminating a culture of hazing is not the responsibility of any one individual or organization, it is a community responsibility that we must all share. I know that all of you stand with us in wanting to make our campus as safe as possible.
