Jackalope

I graduated from high school in 1986. I never heard of any instances of hazing in either boys or girls. On the other hand, there were plenty of fights. The girls tended to be vicious, fighting to injure not for status like the boys did. They also followed the same pattern the boys would in ganging up on one person and tormenting them. That seemed to be a status thing, or at least a group-membership thing. The only way to stop that sort of harassment was to fight back hard enough that your tormentors were afraid they'd actually get hurt if they bothered you again. I was harassed a fair amount, but only got in one fight in 8th grade. The harassment stopped after that, as I was angry enough to not care if I hurt the other girl that time.

Girl fights generally involved headlocks, hair-pulling, scratching, slamming someone against the wall repeatedly, hitting with textbooks or heavy backpacks/purses, and kicking. Which was especially nasty since during the rainy season we all tended to wear heavy wooden clogs.

One of our coaches in high school told us that the women's league was much, much more vicious than what he saw in the men's league. Girls did things like palm heavy rings, then put them back on before the game started, intentionally kick, stomp on, or slide into players on the other team, "accidentally" knock other players flat, and actually make plans to take out especially good players on the other team. I got pulled off the field one game with a cleat print in the middle of my back. Someone had run over me after I was knocked down.

Oh yeah, girls fight. Especially if they're not socialized to be prim and demure.

Klug

I graduated also from high school in 1986. My high school was a half semi-rural, half surburban high school. I'm a pacifist and haven't fought anyone since 4th grade but fights occured from time to time where I went to school.

Apparently the seniors would dunk the freshman in "Freshman pond" which was a trough of water in between the campus buildings. My class stopped the practice but there some fights here and there.

As a member of a Frat in college, I had to endure some mild hazing but nothing too bad. I heard some horror stories of what some the other frats did. (rumors mind you) One frat got its charter revoked for some hazing they pulled.
(Its not exactly a PG-13 rated story but I'll relate if your curious)

My sister got in a fight with an ex-friend of hers who was harrassing/tormenting her.
Basically she threw one overhand right and gave the other girl a black eye. My sister, who was unharmed, got a slap on the wrist (a couple days supervised detention if memory serves) and a lot of good notierity from that. The other kids sang the rocky theme when she came back.

HaysooChreesto!

I've seen some wicked girl fights (two in particular) that freaked me out. One in high school where these two girls beat up another girl and put her in the hospital and the other when I was working on a job in La Puente about 12 years ago where this one chola literally beat the piss of another chola.
For the most part, guys just want to get the fight over with and get the hell out while it seems that women take it as more of a fight to the death. I have no delusions that women can't be every bit as mean and vicious as men.

Hazing? Don't get it, never will. A friend of mine went through hazing rituals in college to get into a fraternity. When he'd tell me the stories I'd just shake my head.

brighid

I was pretty disgusted by the whole event as well. It appears it went overboard because a few of the senior girls wanted to exact revenge on those they were hazing because of stolen boyfriends or some such nonsense.

I think the behaviors and the criminal violations need to be addressed appropriately. What I am having a problem with in this whole thing is the expectation that the school discipline these girls for activities done off of school grounds, nor on the school hour. The school has no legal basis to suspend these girls even if they deserve some harsh punishment.

I also hope the parents are punished in someway as well, especially the idiots supplying them beer. Although I have indulged in my fair share of underage drinking I find it repugnant that a parent would supply it when it wasn�t a supervised event and it appears plenty of children were driving home.

I can�t say that I am surprised by this in the least bit. I am disturbed, but not surprised.

Females can be just as vicious as men, but I agree that we can be more so. I know that when I am pushed I am going to go for the �kill� so to speak and not dick around. I think part of it is defensive because females are targeted as prey by predatory people and in those situations you need to make your dominance quite clear � or at least to any lurking predators that are always around. A little scare tactic goes a long way to saving your ass � but I guess that really doesn�t relate to this situation.

I think it was a bunch of foolish, teenage stupidity gone too far by adding the mix of revenge and combining it with alcohol � never a good combination in my experience. I hope the kids involved in this case get the punishment coming to them, but my guess is the kids perpetrating these crimes probably don�t have the kind of parents that will properly address this situation.

Brighid

Deadbeat

I've seen or heard of plenty of instances where teenage girls not only behave "like boys" (in a stereotypically violent and aggressive sense), but there was a recent case here of this kind of behavior getting out of hand. Not exactly hazing, but the same sort of "outsider" phenomenon:

Reena Virk

Josie M

I'm in high school and I've never heard of, much less been a part of, any hazing here. Maybe it's because my high school is fairly liberal. I don't know.

Putney Swope

I love it when girls fight. Geez, it gets me hot.

I'l spread the plastic, someone run get a shitload of mud. It'll be fun. We can charge admission.

sullster

I am finding it fascinating that female posters have stated how visciously girls fight eachother. I will state again, that during the time I was a teenager it was unheard of that girls would physically fight. Then, again I was that age during the peace-love days and attitudes were far different than today. Groovy.

I have read that many schools are concerned about female violence against other females. The massive effort is always to stop male on male fights and the females are being overlooked. Another thing I read, was that many teenaged females are treated so badly by their fellow females, that they can't function in school. Once, again, the plight of such females is not addressed as the emphasis is on male anti-social behaviours.

One last point. Why do girls want to "fight to the death"?

Shake

Our high school had a "Freshman Friday" where upperclassmen would torture innocent freshmen (not real torture mind you). I witnessed only a few minor acts of harrassment, and certainly nothing even approaching the acts of these girls. I was not personally hazed ... that Friday came and went much like any other for me. I did not act out any aggressions in subsequent years on the new freshmen. Didn't really feel the need. I believe the school has done away with it now ... especially in the wake of events like Columbine. IIRC, my former HS has taken pro-active steps to turn the day around to be something more positive.

I realize that teachers and parents can't be everywhere, but they are the ones responsible to ensure that nothing such as this happens. At least not on school grounds. Parents need to instill in children that these acts are silly and as we've recently seen, can become dangerous.

If you ask them why they did it, I'm sure some will answer that things were done to them in previous years, and it's become some sort of tradition. Hopefully, both the school and the parents will deal with this quickly and forcefully. I'm gonna be really upset if I hear of a bunch of lawsuits coming out of this. Sure, a lawsuit could be warranted in a very few, select cases. But the way things are now, it could also get way out of hand. Perhaps the parents of the attackers should be prosecuted since their children are presumably all minors. This would remind those parents of their responsibilities of being parents, and could then pass this idea of responsibility on to their kids!

IMHO, this is a HUGE problem today. Parents are unwilling to accept responsibility for the actions of their (minor) children. They are far too anxious to shift the blame onto schools and teachers, and file lawsuits (too many of which have been allowed to go against the schools). The parents have learned that if something bad happens to their child they should sue someone! IPU forbid they look at their own parenting and perhaps try to change something! :banghead:

Oh well. Before this gets too much into a rant ... or am I already there? Anyways, it's ridiculous that something like this hazing could go on today.

brighid

Shake,

The �hazing� incident that happened at Glenbard North High school has been traditionally a powder puff football game between the senior and junior girls. It has been going for at least 10 years, but I believe it started in the early 80�s. In all those years nothing of this sort has happened. There use to be a powder puff football game sanctioned by the school, but for one reason or another the school stopped sponsoring it and the students simply kept up the tradition and have always done it off school grounds. The school has always been aware of it, but I do believe in past years has taken action to stop it. I am not sure why that is exactly.

In the past, if I understand correctly, there was some very mild hazing done in fun � such as dousing the junior girls with baby powder. This year got out of hand for mostly unknown reasons, but one of the reasons given by those involved is that some senior girls wanted to punish some junior girls for �stealing their boyfriends� and the usually camaraderie and hazing got way out of hand because of personal vendettas. This is no excuse for this behavior, but it should be noted that many, many previous classes were able to handle this event without incident and certainly without deliberate injury to any involved.

I agree that parents should be taking responsibility, as well as the students involved. I am very interested to know the actual legal basis for the school suspending and expelling students who commit acts off of school grounds. Although I find their behavior very disturbing and criminally punishable I have a problem with the school taking the leadership role in punishing students for acts unrelated to school, and not on their property. According to the schools attorneys they do have legal grounds to do so, but those legal grounds have not been delineated in the news.

I do not think the teachers have any responsibility in what their students do outside the classroom, and as long as none of the teachers participated in this event I see no reason to place any blame with the teachers.

The parents of these students and more so, the actual students are entirely responsible for the heinous actions of a few and the inaction of the crowd. I am not entirely shocked because teenagers, more so then any other social group tend to engage in the �group/clique� mentality that is responsible for this monstrosity.

All the juniors and many of the senior girls had no idea what was to take place. They thought it would be just like all the previous years and it would be nothing more then harmless fun. I also think credit is due to the girls that did their best to stop the event (some seniors) when it started getting violent. I saw an interview with the girl who required stitches in her head and she recalled two girls who help shield her from the punches, who helped carry her away, took her home, gave her clean clothes, and a shower.

Brighid