Hazing games at US universities are often dismissed as harmless tradition, but by framing harm as play, responsibility is obscured and participation becomes the easiest option, even if it carries fatal consequences.
On a chilly October night at an American Midwest university, a group of freshers huddle together, blindfolded, waiting for their next instruction.
Laughter erupts as older students hand out dares and pressure the newcomers to chug mysterious concoctions. It looks, on the surface, like a harmless, fun college tradition that is carried out year after year.
Beneath the surface, however, these rituals follow a pattern far more organised than most realise. Hazing rituals in US universities are often described as chaotic and rooted in deep tradition, but across fraternities, sororities, and sports teams, a far more consistent procedure is followed than that description suggests — they are instead organised as forms of play.
Initiations usually revolve around penalties which increase in severity over time, strict rules, and turn-taking, borrowing directly from familiar, more lighthearted formats — drinking games, costume-related tasks, dares, and endurance challenges.
Newer students and members are often referred to as ‘pledges’ or ‘freshers’, and they are expected to participate in these ‘games’ without question, whilst older and more established members of the group take on organisational roles.
The structure is set up from the get-go: some students run the games, others play them, and harm can be avoided if those roles are accepted without objection.
This dynamic is exactly what makes hazing effective, with the games relying on shared understanding of roles and power dynamics. The result is a system in which coercion is embedded in the act of playing rather than imposed from the outside.
The framing of hazing as a game for students does more than make it seem like something informal and inconsequential to be part of; it actively shapes how students experience peer pressure.
When the games and dares are structured around a strong set of rules — drink if you hesitate, accept a forfeit if you refuse to do something — the participants are not being ordered to do anything directly.
Instead, they become involved in a system that produces outcomes. A chain of small decisions forms, with each one appearing voluntary despite being extremely measured.
By borrowing the logic of games, coercion is disguised and evenly distributed. There is no single person who appears responsible for whatever is going on; the momentum lies in the activity, which will continue as long as students respond to it.
The dynamic grows even more confusing when refusal is taken into consideration. Theoretically, participants have every opportunity to opt out, especially before being too far roped into the process.
In practice, however, refusal is rarely a viable option. Students who choose not to complete initiation tasks or games face being socially blackballed by older students, physically harmed or tortured, or otherwise publicly ridiculed.
This is not always necessarily just because the ‘hazers’ want to punish people, but because hazing as a structure demands a response from those victims to it. Continuing becomes a much easier option, and a broader compliance amongst younger students is produced when this is repeated, all shaped by the desire to belong within a group of people.
25-year-old Allison, a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reinforces how conditional these ‘choices’ can be, describing how depending on a large group limits one’s ability to refuse something: “It doesn’t feel like a choice unless you have other social connections.”
In usual circumstances, we have the agency to choose to play. However, in a situation such as this one, where desire to fit in and peer pressure must be measured, playing along feels more like a conditioned response to fear, more so than a personal choice, and refusal becomes a pseudo-choice — technically possible, yes, but very socially costly.
Many of these hazing rituals also rely on gradual escalation, another defining feature of games. These activities usually begin with relatively minor tasks, such as drinking, chanting, or performing inconsequential dares.
These can become more extreme as the games continue, with some games (as described by anonymous Reddit users) becoming as extreme as dropping blindfolded participants in the middle of a dark forest and leaving them to find their own way back, repeatedly being tasered, or being urinated on.
Another anonymous Reddit user describes an experience picked up from ex-military tactics, in which he had a bag placed over his head, and a truck driven up close to his head as he lay on the ground.
As he was asked personal, sensitive questions, the ‘frat brothers’ drove the truck closer and closer to his head until he felt a tyre pressing down on him. Once he had the bag removed, it was clear that the perpetrators were simply using a spare tyre on his head the entire time.
Because the format of slow escalation remains consistent, the shift from the more silly, inconsequential games to the more dangerous, humiliating ones feels gradual rather than abrupt, making it much harder to identify when willing participation crosses over into non-consensual harm.
Allison describes that “a lot of what technically is hazing still stays in the bounds of embarrassing or only slightly painful, so it can be reframed as just a joke,” allowing the heightened risk factors to feel harmless.
This also plays a key part in the normalisation and lack of consequences for instigators: “When you actually encounter something that is dangerous, your boundaries have been chipped away.” Escalation is embedded in the game’s structure, encouraging unwavering participation even when risk levels intensify.
The risks of this structure are visible in some of the most widely reported cases of hazing across the United States. In 2017, Timothy Piazza, who was attending Pennsylvania State University, passed away during a fraternity hazing event involving a long sequence of drinking games.
Pledges were expected to consume substantial amounts of alcohol in noticeably short bursts as part of a structured process, a game usually referred to as ‘the gauntlet’.
Piazza fell in and out of consciousness throughout the night, sustaining fatal injuries, whilst others present refused to seek medical attention for him. The night escalated quickly and made it difficult for pledges to decide anything — including when to stop playing — even when it became fatal.
The University of Virginia and the University of Michigan describe similar patterns in ‘rush events’. These institutions published reports where drawn-out endurance tests involving alcohol and physical activity are used to test newer students, often pressing on despite visible danger.
Since hazing is framed as play, the question of responsibility becomes complicated because participants willingly engage in harmful activities. They walk into events, agree to pledge and join the games, making it difficult to pinpoint where coercion truly begins.
Organisers can point to the willing participation, with no one being physically forced. Participants can point to the rules they were expected and pressured to follow. Allison notes that organisers tend to obscure the seriousness of what has taken place through reactions such as, “it was just a joke, I don’t know why you’re upset.”
In the same sense, participants may rationalise their own enjoyment as part of a collective experience, rather than viewing it as something that was imposed on them.
Responsibility as a result becomes diffused and embedded in a system where no single individual is in complete control; pressure functions without being directly attributed, and authority operates without appearing massively overt.
Universities across the US define hazing very broadly, often labelling any activity that degrades, endangers, or humiliates participants as such, regardless of whether they appear to consent to it.
Guidance from the University of Virginia’s ‘Gordie Center’, a non-profit organisation for substance abuse prevention, explicitly states that “A person cannot consent, or make informed decisions about potential risk, when intoxicated or high.”
“Even if they outwardly say you have a choice, you know hazing is part of it,” Allison confirmed. Hazing rituals are experienced as voluntary because they are structured as a series of individual decisions, depending on the game format of rounds and escalation.
As a result, active participation can be interpreted as permanent consent even when the conditions of the game purposefully prevent refusal, creating a guise of agency whilst constraining it in practice.
Hazing, taking the shape of play, also explains why it persists across different institutions and in different groups. Whilst fraternities are often the main subject of media attention, hazing also occurs in sports teams, societies and clubs, and it is not exclusively male.
Allison suggests that pressure operates through a shared desire for belonging, regardless of different contexts or dynamics. Other anonymous Reddit users described their experiences of hazing as ‘bonding experiences,’ explaining the shared sense of endurance participants develop.
This is often, surprisingly, retrospectively understood as a positive notion, with Allison noting that hazing is often remembered as “just a funny story,” with harm and discomfort being overlooked.
This is made possible by the game-like structure, which encourages students to view their involvement as an active choice rather than as an imposition.
Those who have completed the initiations and successfully pledged may go on to organise it for younger students, reinforcing the system and reproducing the same dynamics over time.
Beginning to understand hazing as a form of play shifts the focus away from an individual decision towards the patterns and dynamics that shape it.
By adopting the logic of games — rules, dares, and escalating forfeits — hazing creates an environment where coercion is enforced by and embedded in the act of playing, with participants appearing to choose each step, even when those choices are very tightly constrained.
The most important question at play is not why students take part in hazing in the first place, but instead how it is designed, through risk of social blackmail and physical punishment, for participation to be the path of least resistance.
Featured Image by Анастасия via Pexels.