It always starts with good intentions. However juvenile, it may help to build relationships within the team. But it isn’t the only way.

Many clubs around FHN have a form of initiation that helps build a bond among players, a form of initiation that helps create a line of respect- dressing new recruits up in obnoxious costumes or shaving their heads. But in the community and across the country, it’s being looked at differently than it used to: less of a harmless activity and more a dangerous form of team bonding.

While here at North the forms of hazing don’t reach the physical extremes that have drawn national attention, things aren’t, in any sense of the word, good. In recent years, the victims of hazing at North have expressed feelings of fear, self-deprivation and temporary animosity towards those whom have hazed them. The team bond that ensues these events develops out of a general respect that is rooted in fear and remorse. Not necessarily the most fruitful of soils.

The district’s new zero-tolerance policy has been created to address the discrepancies about when an activity is hazing and whether that is legal in high school, an area that is currently omitted from any Missouri statutes regarding hazing at the high school or college level. The new policy dictates that any form of physical or psychological initiation that forces a new team member to do something that they would not ordinarily do is wrong and will be forbidden in all school sponsored programs. This is a tremendous step forward for the district. If there is one place that a student should be able to feel safe, it is school. The atmosphere created by hazing fosters a general fear that can be, in even small and infantile forms, harmful and distracting.

Hazing is harmful, and the type of bond that it creates is only superficial. Where is it written that only Neanderthalic practices are the way that we can build a bridge of team bondage? Aren’t there more sophisticated and effective ways to create that team closeness that sports so desperately need? Couldn’t teammates try letting time work its course and let the bond develop that way? We need a less dangerous way to show our brother- and sister-hood. Team social gatherings outside of practice; the whole team pitching in to help put together food packages for children in Haiti; taking time out of practice to get to know about each other a little more- these are practical options. These are all things that can build sturdier friendships and inseparable teams. If we come up with ways to bond with each other as people that aren’t so dangerous, our relationships will grow stronger, as well as our character.

On behalf of the editorial staff