Hazing.

Hazing can be categorized in three increasingly serious ways: subtle hazing, harassment hazing, and bodily harm hazing. Typically, hazing takes the form of an initiation ritual in which members of an outgroup attempt to become members of an ingroup through secretive and often legally questionable behavior. Hazing's history in Western culture can be traced back at least to the Greeks, and its influence is still felt in colleges, universities, high schools, and middle schools in the twenty-first century. Though hazing was once hailed as obsolete in American education, forty-four states had varying degrees of laws against it as of 2023; however, it continues to occur even as it has been driven deeper underground (StopHazing, 2023). Experts agree that hazing is often the result of a dangerous mixture of peer pressure, a need for revenge from former hazed students, the desire to be part of a group, and a code of silence that protects perpetrators. Most psychologists believe that hazing can only be eliminated through the creation of school cultures that respect inclusion and teamwork and value the unique contributions to be made by all students.