Photo courtesy of Student Involvement
The Center for Student Involvement hosted a panel discussion Sept. 24 to educate students about hazing and how to prevent it.
Frank Leal, the program coordinator for the Center for Student Involvement, organized the event. Leal said the panel discussed behaviors associated with hazing.
“One of the big things is just seeing, identifying what those behaviors are, so one thing that the Students Rights and Responsibilities coordinator kinda discussed [is] that hazing is dependent on some of the behaviors and what the person … feels regarding hazing,” he said.
Leal said the Hazing Prevention Panel provided examples of hazing, such as excessive drinking and forcing someone to do physical activities.
“But some of the smaller examples [the coordinator] referred to is having a student hold a binder to join an organization,” he said. “There’s not necessarily something educational behind that, but something as small as that can be identified as hazing if the student feels like an unnecessary burden placed on them,”
He explained the process to report hazing starts with searching for “Vaqueros Report It” on the utrgv.edu website.
“Then you’ll go to … the student conduct form and there you’ll be able to fill out your information and then also share what activities or behaviors you’ve seen that either a person or organization is displaying as hazing,” Leal said.
After the form is submitted, Students Rights and Responsibilities will then contact the person who submitted the form to start an investigation to see what additional information they can gather.
“But the thing about Vaqueros Report It is that anybody within the organization or anybody that’s outside of the organization that sees the behaviors can submit [a form] about the hazing behaviors that they’re seeing,” Leal said.
He said some of the more serious consequences of hazing for students that were shared during the presentation and that are more visible in the public eye are deaths.
“You know, like excessive drinking,” Leal said. “Someone can die from that. Being asked to do excessive physical activities, it could lead to someone dying. So, those are some of the extreme examples of what could happen through hazing.”
He said UTRGV has a policy against hazing (Stu-02-100 Student Conduct and Discipline), which is included in its Handbook of Operating Procedures.
“The policy … provides an overview of what the university does regarding hazing, the definition of it and then additional things that can be handed down to the student or students that are found to be conducting hazing on campus,” Leal said.
He said the Center for Student Involvement hosts hazing prevention sessions for advisers and through the panel discussion every year during National Hazing Prevention Week. Hazing prevention sessions also take place in the spring semester.
This is Celeste Cruz for Vaquero Radio.
