Panhellenic took part in a national movement this week to help raise awareness on Baker’s campus about how to prevent hazing in all university organizations. 

Delta Delta Delta sorority began National Hazing Prevention Week Monday evening in the Harter Union lobby by sponsoring an event that provided supplies for people to make anti-hazing buttons to wear all week.

“I think it’s a really good thing,” Chelsey Forge, Delta Delta Delta president, said about raising awareness during the week. “It just makes sure that our organizations are operating with integrity and not hazing.”

Tyrone Brown, graduate assistant in greek life and health education, said he helped plan and coordinate this week’s events, which started Monday and end Saturday, to inform the entire campus, not just members of the greek community.

“Hazing prevention is an important thing for people on campus to know about,” Brown said. “Hazing happens in student groups or sometimes in athletics too, and we just want people to be aware of it.”

Gillian Joy, Zeta Tau Alpha sorority house manager, organized a banner contest to get sororities, fraternities and other organizations involved in displaying their intolerance for hazing.

“I think that it’s something that happens, and people just fluff it off as nothing big, but it is a big issue,” Joy said. “It may not be specifically big here on Baker’s campus because we’re smaller, but it is big in other places; and the more people that are aware of it the more can be done to prevent it.”

According to a national study released in March by HazingStudy.org, 55 percent of college students involved in clubs, teams and organizations extending beyond greek life and varsity athletics experience hazing.

Hazing is considered any activity expected of someone joining or participating in a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses or endangers them regardless of a person’s willingness to participate, according to HazingStudy.org.

However, nine out of 10 students who experience hazing in college do not consider themselves to have been hazed.

Tracy Maxwell, executive director of HazingPrevention.org, said hazing prevention awareness is therefore important for colleges like Baker that may not show signs of hazing problems.

“It is equally important for small and large campuses to get involved,” Maxwell said. “Doing something is better than nothing.”

Maxwell said she often asks students to acknowledge the unknown facts about a person such as his or her past and mental health, which, because they are unknown, could trigger suppressed memories or trauma if they are hazed. 

“When (people are) hazing someone they don’t have any ideas what that person’s background is,” she said.

An open forum was held Thursday in the union to discuss hazing and how it affects areas such as student development, athletics and multiculturalism.

An essay contest open to the campus, which has a $50 Best Buy gift card as first prize, concludes at 5 p.m. Friday with essays due in the greek life office.

“Students will have to turn in a less than two-page paper – an essay on bystander responsibility – which is what the responsibility is of someone who witnesses or suspects hazing,” Brown said.

The week comes to a close Saturday with Interfraternity Council and other members of the Baker community participating in Student Activities Council’s community service project Light the Night Walk in Lawrence. The event raises funds that will go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.