Growing up, we are told repeatedly that bullying is wrong and that there is more to bullying than meets the eye. It can come in many forms, from many different people for many different reasons. Whether it's physical, emotional, or verbal, it's just as wrong to allow college students to ridicule others as it is to allow middle schoolers to do so. The difference? In college, one of the most well-known forms of bullying is hazing. Now let me just get this out there: not all colleges haze. The act of hazing in terms of college is mostly associated with the process of joining a college fraternity or sorority, not all fraternities and sororities take part in hazing, and many schools do in fact have a ban on hazing. However, even with a ban, many do. Hazing is first, broadly defined as:

1: the action of hazing; especially: an initiation process involving harassment

and then as:

2. : the practice of playing unpleasant tricks on someone or forcing someone to do unpleasant things (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hazing)

These tricks and things can be abusive, scarring, embarrassing, and ridiculous, both emotionally and physically; some are even deadly. It blows my mind that there are colleges that don't have a ban toward these acts of violence. A ban on such acts shows a promise to protect students. I'm not sure which is sadder, though: the fact that these bans need to exist, or that students are the reason that the bans exist in the first place. Students can be ruthless when it comes to planning the tests for their pledges to endure.

So what is the point? What good comes from proving your loyalty by allowing your brothers to set you on fire after making you run across campus fully nude? Or from making you withstand a concoction of pepper spray and Old Bay mixed into boiling water being poured down your back? How about making you drink urine, sewer water, or other cringe-worthy substances? Or being kicked and clobbered by objects such as sacks of flour, baseball bats, and hockey sticks until rendered unconscious? (http://www.ranker.com/list/the-14-most-brutal-coll...)

Nothing. Nothing good comes from this. Even after your trials are done and you become a brother/sister, you still have to deal with hazing. You'll have to hear about how future pledges endured these acts of abuse and torture; you may even have to be the one serving the hate. What good does their pain bring to you? Do their silent screams and tears make you feel good? Would you do any of these things to your blood brother or sister?

Even as a student who is uninvolved in Greek life, I get it: it's something bigger, more than any outsider would ever be able to comprehend.

What I honestly think is incomprehensible, along with all of the above, is the fact that students keep quiet about their experiences because they're afraid of losing the respect that they have earned by doing heinous things, or because they don't want to be ridiculed or harassed any further.

So instead of loosing respect, they loose their life.

What is it worth to lose a life to something so juvenile and distasteful? Ask the family of the late FAMU drum major Robert Champion how it feels to loose your 26-year-old son to a hazing act. Ask Keon Hollis, Champion's former roommate why Robert went through the hazing process, and he'll tell you "to earn respect." Even after signing numerous anti-hazing contracts, Champion climbed onto a bus in a hotel parking lot where the band was staying to take the plunge into "Crossing Bus C", a ritual where hazees must plow through a group of band members while being punched, kicked, and beaten upon with percussion mallets and an orange traffic cone. Champion suffered from soft-tissue bleeding, which caused his death. The band was suspended, the director and then-president of the university were fired, and the students involved were punished. (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/famu-hazing-ba...)

You could also ask the family and friends of Timothy Piazza, a 19-year-old Penn State student who passed away in February after drinking large amounts of alcohol and then falling down stairs, onto an iron railing, and hitting his head on the floor. Surrounded by fraternity members of Beta Theta Pi, Piazza was left injured for 12 hours on the floor with no help from any of them. There were Internet searches on member's cell phones for things as heart-wrenching as "what to do when an intoxicated person's limbs grow cold". His girlfriend revealed to the New York Times that Piazza's reason to join Beta Theta Pi was not for the partying, but because he craved camaraderie, and the fraternity life seemed to promise that. "He really wanted that brotherhood." (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/21/nyregion/timoth...)

While many pledges have opened up about their hazing experiences, few of them are reported during the actual hazing season, or even while still enrolled in college. Hazing-related deaths are, of course, always going to be covered by news teams and dealt with to the fullest extent by the university in question. But when is enough enough? When will these acts of cruelty seize? And again: what is the purpose? It's sickening to believe that the only reason for this intense bullying is to prove your loyalty, show your commitment, and gain respect from fellow members.

One thing I do know the purpose of is this article. I want students to know:

There is nothing wrong about speaking against something that is wrong.

Hazing. Is. Wrong.

Of course there is never an intention to kill someone. But when it happens, it happens. Nothing can be done to reverse it or bring them back. But if you were in the room, if you had planned their action, if you had insisted, you could have helped them. You could have opened your mouth and said something right in a wrong situation. Imagine the guilt that you'd feel if you knew you could have done something, said something, to stop what was happening. What if you were the one with scars on your back or a broken leg or a ruined liver. Imagine if you were the one who lost your son or daughter; that may be hard to picture if you're just a young adult. What about losing your best friend or your boyfriend/girlfriend to something as irresponsible and juvenile as slamming someone's head against a brick wall just because they moved an inch in a test to stand still. You could prevent someone's death. You could prevent a fraternity being shut down, a sorority being suspended, a flood of heart ache and anger from all different sides... if you just open your mouth and say something. Do not live in fear of being glared at or harassed because you potentially saved someone's life. Don't be ashamed of being the person to say something so someone isn't silenced forever.

If you're a parent, be sure your kid knows what is wrong and right. You can't hover over them at college, but assuring that they're safe and know what is right and wrong can make a difference. Don't just rule out Greek Life altogether, either. I have friends who have had the best time being a sister or a brother, without any hazing tactics in sight. Greek Life can be amazing, as long as you know your boundaries.

In short, when it comes to hazing, there is no good; only the bad and the ugly. You can end up publicly humiliated, hospitalized, or worse. Never let someone try to influence you to put yourself in an uncomfortable position because you want to be respected or "part of something bigger". If they can't respect your morals and body, they're not worth your time.