Hazing Must Be Stop!

Is hazing good or bad?

Hazing as defined by the Republic Act No. 8049, which serves as an act regulating

hazing and other forms of initiation rites in organizations and setting penalties, is an initiation

rite or practice as a prerequisite for admission into membership in a fraternity, sorority or

organization by placing the recruit, neophyte or applicant in some embarrassing or humiliating

situations such as forcing him/her to do menial, silly, foolish and similar tasks or activities or

otherwise subjecting him/her to physical or psychological suffering or injury. For many years

now, students are getting killed due to fraternity hazing. This issue has been talk to our society

right now like the death issue in Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Cadet 4th Class Darwin

Dormitorio brought in to the limelight of hazing once more.

According to Sara Moose, hazing is only allowed for the military clubs or organizations

such as Armed forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police, Philippine Military

Academy or any form of army training in the Philippines that were approved by the agency head.

I understand that hazing can seem like a form of bonding, brotherhood and camaraderie and

through this they can prove ones endurance and thus achieves loyalty to the group but for me I

am disagree against hazing because hazing is dangerous and can have unseen, long term

consequences.

In joining activities where hazing is happening, there are disadvantages that individual

suffer from, like sleep problems including insomnia, difficulty forming relationships or trusting

others, decreased self-esteem and self-efficacy, depression, anxiety, self-harming, loss of sense

control and empowerment, feeling more like a victim than they did before hazing, lower grades
and poorer performance in class, problems in relationships with friends, significant others, and

family, post-traumatic stress syndrome (including symptoms of re-experiencing the traumatic

event, nightmares, flashbacks, avoidance of reminders of the event, anxiety), loss of interest in

being part of organizations, illness or hospitalizations because of psychological or physical

illness/injury, psychological symptoms may merge immediately after the hazing events, or

symptoms may appear later. Those who have a history of trauma may be even more at risk for

negative psychological reactions to hazing.

Researchers shows that as hazing is happening, individuals may want it to stop but they

fail to ask for help for fear their organization may get in trouble. Others are afraid because most

of them think the persons will get back or initiate revenge against them and their family.

The only way to stop hazing is to simply break the tradition and educate the members

who are responsible for hazing to move on with their lives and focus more on academics, make

students to become moral citizens that will help rid our society of the negative consequences of

hazing.

Hazing is a dangerous activity and it can cause death. So we need to continue the policies

and actions of anti-hazing to eliminate death caused by hazing. As youth, we need to avoid

joining fraternity/sorority because it has many disadvantages. Even though it has advantages but

we need to avoid it for the betterment of our future. God gave us lives and we are meant to take

good care of this. Our bodies are used for His glory not for bad works and created us with his

likeness.