hazing 18:21 Feb 10, 2009
de pe answers.com:
Hazing is a ritualistic test and a task involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a gang, club, military organization or other group. The definition can refer to either physical (sometimes violent) or mental (possibly degrading) practices. It may also include nudity or sexually oriented activities. The word "hazing" is most frequently encountered in the United States and Canada. In some continental European languages, terms with a 'christening' theme or etymology are preferred (e.g. baptême in French, doop in Dutch in Flanders) or variations on a theme of naïveté and the rite of passage such as a derivation from a term for freshman (e.g. bizutage in French, ontgroening 'de-green[horn]ing' in Dutch) or a combination of both, such as in the Finnish mopokaste (literally "moped baptism", "moped" being the nickname for freshmen, stemming from the concept that they would be barred from riding a full motorcycle by their age). In Swedish, the term used is "nollning", literally 'zeroing'. In Spain, the term is "novatada" from "novato" meaning newcomer.
Often most or all of the endurance, or at least the more serious ordeal, is concentrated in an orgiastic collective session, which may be called hell night, or prolonged to a hell week and/or retreat or camp, sometimes again at the pledge's birthday (e.g. by birthday spanking), but some traditions keep terrorizing pledges (a common term for the initiation candidates; alternative terms include newbie, rookie, mainly in athletic teams, and freshman) over a long period, resembling fagging. Hazing is often used as a method to promote group loyalty and camaraderie through shared suffering (male bonding in fraternities), either with fellow participants, past participants or both. A tentative explanation from evolutionary psychology is that grave hazing can condition the habituation and internalization of the psychological trait known as Stockholm syndrome in humans.[citation needed] | 
peer agreement (net): +2
