6 NATIONAL NEws

The Cadre

¢ 6 April 1999

Hazing in collegiate sports isn’t going anywhere, sociologist says

By JO-ANN CHIU

VANCOUVER (CUP) — Exposing rookie initiations in the media will not stop haz- ing among varsity athletes, says University of Calgary sports sociologist Jamie Bryshun. If anything, it will drive the rituals underground.

Bryshun, who co- authored a chapter in the soon-to-be-released book Sport and Gender in Canada, says the traditions often run too deep, and nothing any coach or university adminis- trator says or does can end them.

“Just because we don’t see it anymore doesn’t mean it’s not going on,” he said in an interview this week.

“It's too drastic of a step for administrators and coaches to think people will stop hazing.”

Bryshun and colleague Kevin Young have docu- mented a range of hazing ac- tivities. Some are designed for public humiliation, such as women’s teams forcing rookies to wear unfashion- able clothes and bad makeup in public. Others are just downright gross, as when rookies are forced to insert food items into various parts of the anatomy.

In their chapter, they describe the “Rookie Olym- pics” held by one men’s soc- cer team, in which rookies had to place Twinkies under their armpits while running relay races. Losers had to col- lect all the Twinkies and take a bite out of them.

The women’s soccer team featured the “Pickle Race,” where rookies raced against one another down a hallway with pickles inserted into their clothed buttocks.

The loser of the race had to eat her own pickle.

Although the chapter describes less humiliating forms of initiations — one team, for example, only re- quired their rookies to guz- zle lots of beer — there are also more severe cases cited,

In 1994, four male hockey players in Ontario reported that they were forced to masturbate pub- licly. As a result, 13 people were charged with over 100 sexual offences.

This school year, the University of British Colum- bia student paper, Ubyssey, has documented the initiation rituals of two varsity teams. Last fall, rookies from the men’s volleyball team were photographed naked outside the student union building.

Earlier this month, veterans on the men’s swim team told rookies that they had ejaculated in their spa- ghetti dinner, later insisting it was just a verbal joke.

In both cases, coaches said they had taken measures to end these activities.

But Bryshun says there is little that can be done to stop initiations. “A coach or administrator may say haz- i" has st when, in fact, all of it has gone under- ground.”

After punishments have been dealt and coaches and administrators have im- plemented a no-hazing policy, athletes will likel take on “codes of silence, Bryshun says. Hazing will be moved from a public venue to a private one. Instead of a prominent spot on cam the rituals will more likely take place in a teammate’s basement.

It’s a vicious cycle that is difficult to stop.

“This year’s rookies will not be pleased if they are told next year not to do to others what has been done to them. One of the joys you look forward to is being able to initiate rookies the next ‘hoyt explains Bryshun, who

ad to eat a live goldfish for his high school football team’s initiation in Saskatoon.

“When the vets are older and physically larger, and you want them to like you, you don’t think about it, you just do it,” he says.

When both the veter- ans and rookies are willing participants, hazing becomes even more difficult to regu-

late.

Bryshun says although the public views hazing as punishment, for athletes ini- tiations are “just another day, an accepted part of life.”

Hazing, he explains, is about issues of power and hierarchy within a sports team. Rookie initiations al- low veteran players to assert their power and position in a social setting, and for the rookies, it is the opportunity to become an accepted mem- ber and to be ascribed an identity.

For the rookies who decline to participate, the consequences are sometimes grim. “Accepted members will ostracize them right off the team,” says Bryshun.

Since no previous data was available when Bryshun began preparing his 1997 master’s thesis on sports-re- lated hazing, he spent a year gathering information and conducting in-depth inter- views with 30 varsity athletes from across Canada.

Bryshun says some

coaches turn a blind eye to hazing. “A lot of coaches are ex-athletes and probably know more than they care to.”

According to Bryshun, initiation into male teams of- ten includes nudity and physical violence. In con- trast, female teams frequently involve public humiliation. Binge drinking, defined as five drinks or more, is a haz- ing practice common to teams of both genders.

Bryshun says that sometimes it takes a hazing incident gone wrong, such as alcohol pues or hospi- talization, to finally force of- ficials to address the issues.

And when they do at- tempt to stop hazing, will the intervention work?

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