*** Welcome to piglix ***

Hazing


Hazing (referred to as ragging in South Asia) is the practice of rituals, challenges, and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group including a new fraternity, sorority, team, or club.

Hazing is seen in many different types of social groups, including gangs, sports teams, schools, military units, and fraternities and sororities. The initiation rites can range from relatively benign pranks, to protracted patterns of behavior that rise to the level of abuse or criminal misconduct. Hazing is often prohibited by law or prohibited by institutions such as colleges and universities because they may comprise either physical or psychological abuse. It may also include nudity or sexual assault.

In Australian English, hazing is called .

In some languages, terms with a christening theme or etymology are preferred (e.g. "" in Belgian French, "doop" in Belgian Dutch) or variations on a theme of naïveté and the rite of passage such as a derivation from a term for freshman (e.g. "" in French French, "ontgroening" (de-) in Netherlandic Dutch), "novatada" in Spanish, from "novato," meaning newcomer or rookie) or a combination of both, such as in the Finnish "mopokaste" (literally "moped baptism", "moped" being the nickname for newcomers, stemming from the concept that they would be forced to drive a child's bicycle or tri-cycle). In Latvian, the word "iesvētības", which literally means "in-blessings," is used, also standing for religious rites of passage, especially confirmation. In Swedish, the term used is "nollning", literally "zeroing." In Portugal, the term "praxe", which literally means "practice" or "habit," is used for initiation. In Brazil, it's called "trote" and is usually practiced at universities by older students ("doutores" and "veteranos") against newcomers ("caloiros") in the first week of their first semester. In the Italian military, instead, the term used was "nonnismo", from "nonno" (literally "grandfather"), a jargon term used for the soldiers who had already served for most of their draft period. A similar equivalent term exists in the Russian military, where a hazing phenomenon knowing as Dedovshchina exists, meaning roughly "grandfather" or the slang term "gramps" (referring to the senior corps of soldiers in their final year of conscription). At education establishments in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, this practice involves existing students baiting new students and is called ragging. In Polish schools, hazing is known as "kocenie" (literally catting, coming from the noun "kot" - "cat". It often features cat-related activities, like competitive milk drinking. Other popular tasks include measuring a long distance (i.e. hallways) with matches.


...
Wikipedia

...