College students’ relationships with friends, professional staff members, faculty and other members of their campus community are an important factor in their willingness to report hazing to their institutions, according to a new study from University of Maine researchers.
Shared during National Hazing Awareness Week, which runs through Sept. 26, the study describes how the connections that students make with others help determine whether they choose to speak out when they or one of their peers experiences hazing.
Devin Franklin, a Ph.D. student in higher education and the study’s lead author, said hazing prevention occurs at three levels. There’s primary prevention, which is trying to shift attitudes before hazing behaviors occur, as well as secondary and tertiary prevention, which are more reactive and used to respond to incidents as they happen or after they happen.
“The goal is to have most of the prevention happen at the primary stage, but the reality on college campuses — and in the interpersonal violence space — is that hazing does happen. So it’s really important that we understand what leads students to report hazing and what factors deter them from doing so,” Franklin said.
Franklin said it’s important to note that relationships can both prevent and deter reporting. Some students who participated in the study described fear of social isolation if they were revealed to be the person who filed a report, describing a “culture of silence” on their campuses.
For participants who described relationships as an enabling factor for reporting, having multiple connections between students, staff, faculty and other community members where students might feel more comfortable reaching out was important. One student told the researchers that if a member of their club or group experienced a hazing incident, “ideally they would take that to me first and then I would take it to one of my advisors and she would deal with it from there.”
Franklin said the study highlights the important role of student support professionals on college campuses.
“When you have even one trusted staff member or advisor, a student is going to be more likely to go to them when they have an issue,” she said.
The study also found that institutional contexts, such as the way campus leaders or leaders of specific groups or organizations respond to incidents, are weighed when it comes to reporting hazing. Students’ understanding of what hazing is was also a key factor.
UMaine professor of higher education Elizabeth Allan, who is Franklin’s doctoral advisor and co-author of the study, said there’s a spectrum of hazing behaviors that includes intimidation, harassment and violence.
“Lack of recognition is certainly a deterrent when it comes to reporting,” said Allan, who led a landmark national study of college student hazing published in 2008 that she is currently working to update.
“While there’s a recognition of physically violent incidents as hazing, intimidation and harassment behaviors have more of a tendency to be normalized and accepted,” Allan said. “That just highlights why primary prevention through education about the spectrum of behaviors is so important to getting a full picture of the extent of hazing.”
The Hazing Prevention Consortium: From Research to Practice
The study was published in the Journal of American College Health.
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