hazin

            According to a national survey entitled Initiation Rites in American High Schools conducted by faculty members at Alfred University in New York, hazing is prevalent among American high school students, and all students who join groups are at risk of being hazed. The survey defines hazing as "any activity expected of someone joining a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses or endangers, regardless of the person's willingness to participate." The survey reports that 48 percent of high school students who belong to groups have been subjected to hazing, and 30 percent have performed potentially illegal acts as part of their group's initiation. .
             Based on a sample of articles and transcripts found largely through a Lexis-Nexis search, the press first covered the occurrence of high school hazing in 1981. Since then, and particularly beginning in 1997, coverage of such events has increased. Experts say hazing can be traced back much further than the eighties event though there was no media coverage prior to 1981 based on that sample of coverage. "While high school initiations have existed in some form in the United States for much of the twentieth century, the practices were usually either too minor to be widely reported or school administrations and parents worked to keep the nasty details from being revealed (Nuwer 19)." What supported the increase of coverage that began in 1997? Let's begin by taking a closer look at the cycle of coverage since high school hazing hit the news in 1981.
             A Lexis-Nexis search of major newspapers on the topic high school hazing returns only 11 stories from January 1, 1980, to December 31,1990, with the majority of them appearing in 1988 through 1990. The first story, a brief incident report, appeared in the New York Times on December 4, 1981 in an article titled "Coaches Ousted Over Hazing Rite". According to the Lexis-Nexis sample, the first television mention of high school hazing occurred on January 1, 1991, on "CBS This Morning".