Hazing commonly involves physically abusive, emotionally degrading and/or sexually violating acts that are used as a way to initiate a person into a group. This program examines the growing surge of hazing incidents at high schools around the country, and distinguishes between different types of hazing practiced by girls and boys alike—brutal social humiliations, tortuous physical endurance ceremonies, online cyberbullying and more. Viewers hear from nationally-prominent authors on the topic as well as real-life victims who share their harrowing stories. Teens may not realize that hazing is not a harmless “rite of passage” but instead can be a degrading, damaging and illegal assault. Program discusses the code of silence that often keeps witnesses and participants from coming forth to stop the abuse. Interviews offer words of support for hazing victims and those who may be drawn into participating.
Includes:
video, plus teacher’s resource book, student handouts and pre/post tests in digital format
DVD includes Spanish subtitles.
Awards
CINE Golden Eagle Award
Reviews
Highly Recommended Extreme Bullying includes many examples of hazing, including reasons for hazing and its connection to gender, sexual assault, bullying, and alcohol. In this program, a very serious topic is successfully addressed with interviews and dramatic reenactments. The video’s strengths are the interviews with hazing researchers and the inclusion of students’ viewpoints on hazing. Interviews with two hazing scholars and a panel of high school and college students form the basis of the program. Reenactments increase the viewer’s ability to understand hazing.
The DVD’s program guide identifies several learning objectives. The video, combined with numerous fact sheets and student activities, achieve all of the stated objectives. For example, one of the objectives is to identify the different roles that individuals play in hazing. An interviewee achieves this goal by explaining the role of the victim and the group members who carry out the act.
Teachers will benefit from using the suggested student activities because most of them involve students in higher-order learning. Example lesson plans include group activities where students think critically about how they define hazing, how to create a local policy statement, acting out hazing scenarios, and guidelines for creating a local hazing policy including researching existing school, county, or state policies. Highly recommended for public and school libraries, as well as academic libraries with K-12 curriculum collections.
- Margie Ruppel, Boise State University
Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)
Recommended This DVD is a valuable resource for students in high school. Several teens share their definition of hazing. Others who have struggled with hazing issues in both high school and college talk about different choices they should have made. Counselors comment on why hazing is an important issue that needs to be addressed since many hazing incidents are not reported. This informative program will help teens understand some basic facts of hazing and harassment, and encourage them to seek help. A resource/teachers’ guide includes the program summary, over fourteen student activities, fact sheets which include hazing FAQs, and handouts. Many of the student activities go along with the handouts. This well documented, up-to-date DVD is a welcome purchase for all high schools.
- Judith M Garner, Media Speicialist, Rock Hill (South Carolina) High School
Library Media Connection
Hazing has evolved from harmless pranks to physical, emotional, and sexual harassment and abuse as a result of the degrading and demeaning activities that have become part of this rite of passage. This program explores why teens would submit to this type of activity and explains why they should walk away and seek help. It also discusses the importance of students standing up for each other and not allowing hazing to take place. The introduction contains a viewer discretion warning because of the non-explicit sexual content. Viewers are introduced to the world of hazing as a necessary beginning to a social society, in high schools as well as college campuses. Viewers are told how to recognize hazing and shown how the intervention of one person can make a difference. In interviews, two students who were hazed explain the circumstances and how it affected their lives. Teaching students to "stand up to the crowd" is often very difficult, and this important program will open the door to discussions on an oftentimes very secret activity.
—Jeana Actkinson, ESC Region XI, Ft. Worth, TX
School Library Journal