Hazing: A Deadly Game

From the Investigative Reports series, this urgent video missive warns that hazing as practiced at contemporary institutions of higher learning--and even at high schools--can and often does result in serious injury and even death. Long an expected feature of fraternity, sorority and sports team life, hazing is the practice of making new members of an organization undergo embarrassing or distasteful rituals as part of a bonding to said organization. One is conceivably reminded of raccoon-coated ‘20s college boys running gauntlets of fraternity-paddle wielding “scholars,” but as this program makes clear, hazing often goes way beyond bizarre spanking rites. Far more likely are hazing practices that incorporate imbibing dangerous amounts of alcohol and exposure to climatic extremes such as the always popular gambit of having the hazees down mass quantities of liquor and then transporting them in, say, automobile trunks to someplace where they can either be ritually humiliated or made to find their own way home. Grim statistics fairly roll from the sound track, detailing hazings gone horribly wrong, and viewers may well be left to wonder why nominally intelligent young people would even consider going through this kind of mild-to-insane torture simply to be able to live and party with a bunch of smug, snot-nosed undergraduate binge drinkers. A timely, cautionary production, Hazing: A Deadly Game is recommended, overall. Aud: H, C, P. (M. Tribby)