StopHazing.org letter

I am a student that currently attends Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. As both a college student and an athlete I have both witnessed and research the act of hazing. I have seen how it can humiliate not only a child, but an adult as well. I have visited your website and I believe it can change many communities. One of the main reasons why hazing exists today revolves around the fact that most people are not educated in the topic, and they do not realize just how serious it can be.

I am writing to you today in support for your cause. I have researched many hazing cases that are located on your website, and the information I found was unbelievable. It was hard to believe that Dr. Susan Lipkins found that somewhere around 250,000 college athletes have experience some sort of hazing when trying to join a team. Another astonishing fact that was found in a survey conducted by Alfred University is that ten percent of their participants were hazed before the age of nine. It still remains obvious that the “word” is not being spread.

Eckerd College is a Division II liberal arts school. It does not have a Greek Life like most colleges, so we are very different. Naturally, I never thought that hazing would be a problem on our campus because there were no fraternities or sororities. I took it upon myself to investigate if there were any hazing acts that occurred on our campus. It turns out that hazing has been committed everywhere you look. My neighbor provided an interview for me, which was incorporated into my research paper, of her account of the night in which she was initiation onto a team. At the time, she thought it was all fun and games, but when she looks back at that night, she realized how humiliating it actually was. Your website allowed me to provide her with information about the preventions and the laws against hazing.

After doing this assignment for my school, I now realize how wide spread hazing is. When I came across your website I found it to be very useful and beneficial for informing the public and creating an awareness of the problem. Thank you for trying to get the information across to everyone. Thank you for encouraging the people to get involved in preventing hazing along with trying to pass hazing laws in the last six states, because in your words, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem”.