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I recently stumbled across an interesting study of hazing in American colleges and universities, released earlier this year. I haven’t had the chance to fully digest it yet, but I thought I’d pass it along.
A few highlights of the executive summary:
55% of college students involved in clubs, teams, and organizations experience hazing.
Hazing occurs in, but extends beyond, varsity athletics and Greek-letter organizations and includes behaviors that are abusive, dangerous, and potentially illegal.
Alcohol consumption, humiliation, isolation, sleep- deprivation, and sex acts are hazing practices common across types of student groups.
In more than half of the hazing incidents, a member of the offending group posts pictures on a public web space.
More students perceive positive rather than negative outcomes of hazing.
In 95% of the cases where students identified their experience as hazing, they did not report the events to campus officials.
Nine out of ten students who have experienced hazing behavior in college do not consider themselves to have been hazed.
The study defines “hazing” quite broadly, and I’m not sure I buy all of its premises, but it’s certainly worth a peek.
An IT administrator at Amherst College has posted a Harper’s Index style list of facts about the incoming class. Some fascinating stuff there with relevance for student organizing.
The relationship of college students to the internet has been transformed in the last few years. In 2003, 33% of Amherst applicants applied online. This year, 89% did. Of 438 first-year students this fall, just 14 brought desktop computers with them, and only 5 have landline phone service. (That’s five students, not five percent.)
On the other hand, the class of 2012 Facebook group has 432 members.
Tennessee State University has become the first public college in the United States to prevent students from accessing the anonymous gossip site JuicyCampus.com, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
TSU officials say this is the first time they have blocked access to any website from the campus network.
At least one private institution, Georgia’s Hampton University, has also blocked JuicyCampus. Both Hampton and TSU are historically black universities.
Joseph Frederick, who was suspended from high school for two weeks in 2002 for displaying a sign reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus,” has settled his lawsuit against the school for $45,000.
Frederick displayed the sign while gathered with fellow students to watch the passing of the Olympic torch. The event took place during school hours but off school property, and his lawsuit reached the Supreme Court in 2007.
In a splintered 6-3 decision, the Court rejected the proposition that Frederick’s sign was protected by the First Amendment, but Frederick’s lawsuit continued in Alaska state court.
Under the terms of the settlement, Frederick’s suspension will be expunged from his school records, and the school district will host a forum on student speech and the constitution.
Many American college campuses are ghost towns in June, July, and August, as administrators well know. As a result, summer tends to be a busy time for the implementation of decisions that would likely meet with student protest if announced during the school year.
So officials at the University of Washington must have been surprised when more than a dozen banner-toting students appeared in the university president’s office last Thursday to protest UW’s just-concluded deal to extend its contract with Nike to provide the school’s athletic equipment and uniforms.
“President Emmert has a clear choice,” UW senior Ashley Edens, a spokeswoman for the protesters, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “He can repudiate his commitment to workers rights and sign a contract with Nike that would guarantee that UW apparel is produced in sweatshop conditions of the next 10 years. Or he can listen to concerned students and their allies, and recommit to a comprehensive set of labor stands that would ensure that UW’s Nike apparel would be produced under fair conditions.”
Students expect the contract to be presented to the UW Board of Regents next month, and we’ll be following this story as it develops.
(Thanks to Rod Palmquist of United Students Against Sweatshops for the heads-up.)
studentactivism.net 
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