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Faramir -> Hazing (8/29/2005 1:19:45 PM)
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I despise hazing. As a HS football player and US Marine I often saw it, and later as an NCO and Officer I regularly had to fight an institutional attitude that hazing was ok, even good.
The NFL is the last place I can think of in America where hazing is a commonplace, accepted part of your profession. A recent series of articles in New England papers profiled some fairly low-end hazing (humiliating and eccentric haircuts and head shaving) at the NE Patriot's sumer camp.
I'm just sick of it - as a football fan it bothers me to know that older men ganging up on and bullying younger men is "business as usual." I wrote a letter to Coach Bill Belichick articulating my opposition to hazing. If there are any other football fans out here, please consider writing to your team and urging an end to this practice:
quote:
I’m writing in response to the hazing incidents at the Patriots’ training camp, as reported in the Boston Globe and Herald. As a devoted fan of the New England Patriots, I have an emotional stake in the team and it’s conduct, and so anything that brings discredit to the Patriots or the National Football League concerns me. It’s my hope that you as the Head Coach of the New England Patriots will use your enormous moral stature and credibility to take a leadership role in eliminating hazing as part of the culture of the Patriots and the league as a whole.
A common justification for hazing is that it is a bonding experience. This springs from a truthful observation that “shared privation and hardship” do create bonds – the shared experience of hardship and privation is what makes for such intense bonds between the members of a military small unit, as an example. Hazing may include hardship and privation, but it is not shared across the unit – some members of the unit inflict suffering and humiliation on other members, and while the victims of this bullying may bond within their sub-unit, the overall level of cohesiveness and bonding of the unit is decreased. Juniors may well sublimate the hurt, resentment and disassociation that spring from organized bullying, but it is still there – a stressor and fracture line that weakens unit cohesiveness in the long run.
We universally recognize bullying as an ugly, contemptible practice that evinces cowardice and insecurity on the part of the bully. Hazing is group bullying, often bullying as part of a tradition. It is still bullying though. It is still about someone bigger picking on someone smaller (senior picking on a junior). It was my observation over 15 years in the Marine Corps as a commissioned officer that the most enthusiastic participants in hazing activities are the weakest in a unit. The angriest, least capable, those who want to pay someone back – the worst people in a unit are the ones most drawn to hazing, and the best people are the least drawn to it. The traditional nature of hazing, or its level of organization, cannot be used as an aegis to defend it – it is still bullying.
The United States Marine Corps has stamped out hazing as part of our culture. The genesis of the drive to remove it was negative publicity from egregious hazing, but the moral force behind the success of the drive was our institutional recognition that hazing is wrong. The majority of Marine leaders understood at least intuitively that we lead by example, and through a culture of agape (friendship love if you will), not bullying or humiliation. The institution that may know the most about leadership, the United States Marine Corps, recognizes the wrongful and debilitating effects of hazing and forbids it. There’s a lesson there. The spiritual father of the modern officer corps, John A Lejeune, articulated this model for leadership: “The relationship of a senior to a junior is not that of a master to a slave or an owner to a servant, but rather that of a teacher to a scholar or a father to a son, in the that the senior is responsible for the physical, mental and moral well-being and education of the junior.” What father wants his sons to bully each other in a pecking order based on size or meanness?
There is a practical reason to stop hazing as well. Ultimately if the New England Patriots do not take an active stance against hazing, they will be tacitly approving it – silence is consent on the net. There will come a day when a player is harmed by hazing and will bring a successful suit against the Patriots and possibly the league, bringing discredit upon both institutions, as well as institutional harm.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you will respond in some way, and let me know your thoughts on this subject. I also thank you for providing strong leadership for my home team. In addition to leading my home team to championships after decades of frustration, your leadership has provided us with a team whose conduct on and off the field is professional and commendable in ethics.
Semper Fidelis,
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