Comments Off on Taking action for SDGs: lessons from my six week exchange
For my last summer break at uni, I was committed to make it count by spending it on something meaningful for myself. I had planned to do an internship of some sort to build my resume. Things took a sharp turn when I sat down and did a personal SWOT analysis – I realised I had little to no clue of who I was, who I wanted to be and where I wanted to go in life.
I asked myself whether I needed that internship or whether I needed to place myself in an uncomfortable position outside Australia. Having lived in the same country for most of my life, I had a simple yet straightforward plan for myself. Finish uni, get a grad job in Australia, work a nine to five, retire and die. I thought to myself, is that all there is to life? Am I content with just living life, checking off to-dos lists that someone else wrote for teens with no directions to follow? Those thoughts didn’t sit well with me. I wanted to make the most of the life I was blessed with. The only problem was, I didn’t know where to begin.
All I knew was that I needed to get out of my comfort zone, to get lost to find myself (as cheesy as that sounds). Thus began my journey to go on an overseas exchange through AIESEC, focusing on youth leadership through the exchange.
How I took action to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)
AIESEC’s Global Volunteer Projects are all SDG aligned. I wanted to take practical steps towards SDGs rather than just advocate or raise awareness. This was one of the key factors, which motivated me to take on a Global Volunteer program. The project I applied for was designed to contribute towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 4.7:
‘By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.’
The project was to ‘Educate Slovakia,’ it aimed to improve ‘intercultural understanding and global mindset of Slovak youth to support their development in leadership skills.’
3 Lessons from my teaching project
To seek to understand before judging someone in according to my values
I use to think that there are universal truths or values that everyone abides by. I lived my first two to three weeks trying to align people to what I thought was ‘common sense’ for everyone. Needless to say, it was exhausting for the people around me and myself. Since then, I’ve taken steps to learn to let that go. I’ve felt more liberated day by day as I accepted the differences in thoughts and peoples’ way of life.
Let go of certainty to learn: to live with the change and uncertainty in this world
I love planning my day and vacations. It eliminates most of the uncertainties that could ever throw me off-guard. At the same time, my over preparation for the ‘adventures’ I wanted to have defeated the original goals I set for my exchange. I was visiting places that I spent hours researching and reading about. I followed routes I had saved on the google maps, downloaded for offline access. I dined at restaurants and cafes I searched up on three different food review apps.
I found myself chasing time. I had my eyes almost glued to my phone to make sure that we were staying on schedule: in the right place at the right time. I only spent around 20 per cent of my time enjoying the things I planned. I realised that my obsession with finding certainty was eating away at the rare opportunity to immerse myself in these amazing European cultures. Ultimately, I decided to spend the last two weekends enjoying myself in Budapest and Bratislava, only allowing myself to list three things to accomplish for the day. It was definitely worth the change!
Cross-cultural understanding comes from a place of curiosity.
I went on exchange thinking that I was going to educate Slovak youth. Instead, these students have inspired me to do more with the privilege I have. Although the knowledge they had of Australia didn’t extend beyond ‘kangaroos’ and ‘koalas’, they were inquisitive enough to ask many questions about our flag that bears the union jack, the stolen generation and why I went to Slovakia.
All these questions showed the relentless curiosity they had about the world and other people. It made me think about all the times I had taken knowledge for granted, to accept ‘facts’ the way they are. I realised that I had numbed my curious mind in response to the large flow of information that I shove into my brain every single day. Hands down, this was the most confronting lesson for me on my exchange.
‘Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.’
– Jordan Belfort.
My six weeks in Slovakia were the perfect opportunity for me to take action, develop myself and make a difference in this world. I would like to thank everyone who made this experience possible!
Maggie Chen is currently president of AIESEC, which is a global youth-led organisation striving to achieve peace and fulfilment of humankind’s potential. Find out more about AIESEC and the exchange programs via anu@aiesecaustralia.org
Comments Off on The Truth About the Chinese Students and Scholars Association
Almost exactly a year ago we were followed and intimidated by members of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at its annual Chinese National Day gala. While we had tickets, they surrounded us and tried to kick us out under the direction of CSSA executives, including Vice President Jack Wang.
We attracted the CSSA’s ire that night for two reasons. While living in China, one of us tweeted about the Chinese democracy movement and was subsequently tortured and jailed, and now studies at the ANU as a refugee. The other investigated the CSSA’s connections to the Chinese government and its oppressive ideology.
But you wouldn’t know that from Woroni’s recent interview with Wang, who claims ignorance of the CSSA’s connections to the Chinese communist state and its role in intelligence gathering.
We hope to set the record straight.
The CSSA currently calls itself ‘The only Chinese student organisation in Canberra officially approved by the Chinese government.’ Last year a Woroni investigation revealed that CSSA executives from across the country are flown to Canberra each year for meetings with embassy officials. It found that two years ago the ANU pharmacy inspired the CSSA’s rage for stocking copies of the Epoch Times, the only Chinese newspaper in Canberra that dares publish content critical of the Chinese government. CSSA President Tao Pinru intimidated staff at the pharmacy until he was allowed to throw out all copies of the newspaper.
Perhaps this is what Jack Wang meant when he said, ‘We do have freedom of speech, but not in the Australian way’.
This year the embassy used the CSSA to drown out protestors when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Canberra. Ahead of the event, embassy officials arrived at the ANU to train hundreds of CSSA members. Students at these training sessions were divided into ‘security squads’ and told: ‘Male comrades must protect female comrades.’ They were instructed to watch out for the ‘five poisons’ – meaning activists for Tibetan independence, Xinjiang independence, Taiwanese independence, the human rights of Falun Gong practitioners and democracy.
When the president of the Tibetan government-in-exile spoke at the ANU in August, a dozen CSSA members including Jack Wang and President Guo Xiaohang came to observe the event. Half the seats at the event had been booked out under fake names, including ‘Chinese family’, and were left empty in an apparent attempt to prevent people from attending.
An ABC–Fairfax Media joint investigation of Chinese influence in Australia included University of Canberra CSSA President Lupin Lu admitting that she would inform the embassy if dissident Chinese students were organising a human rights protest. It also revealed that the parents of Tony Chang, a Chinese student in Australia, were questioned after he became involved in pro-democracy and Tibetan independence groups.
Here at the ANU, Forbes quoted a lecturer expressing concern that some of her Chinese students fear speaking up in class ‘because they fear their compatriots will report on them’.
Whatever the extent of such surveillance at the ANU, Chinese students fear it, and many are reluctant to associate with dissident students.
In fact, in this area, we agree with Wang, who said that the CSSA has ‘More interesting things to do than spy on Australian students.’ CSSAs are indeed uninterested in spying on Australian students, preferring to devote their efforts to informing on Chinese students. In 2014 this was confirmed to Fairfax Media by Chinese intelligence officials.
The CSSA is not, as claimed by Wang, just a ‘brotherhood or sisterhood’, but a government-supervised institution that is hostile to freedom. It is part of a global network of Chinese student associations supervised and used by the Chinese government. In one case, a former Canadian CSSA leader had his permanent residency application rejected because he acted as a Chinese spy, providing the embassy with intelligence on pro-democracy students.
While Chinese student groups have a legitimate role on our campus, groups like the CSSA that stand for China’s government more than its people have none. We disrespect Chinese students by treating the CSSA as their legitimate representative. The Chinese student community is more diverse than the CSSA acknowledges, and it does not always stand for the best interests of Chinese students.
The issues faced by Chinese students are great — the language barrier, isolation from the rest of the university, and cultural differences. Yet the CSSA’s hostile mentality and the insular attitude that comes with it leads Chinese students to live in their own bubble at the ANU, one in which they find themselves with almost no non-Chinese friends and having little interaction with Australian culture and ideas.
The CSSA’s actions speak far louder than its words.
Alex Joske is an ANU student and a China researcher at Charles Sturt University. Alex is also a former News Editor and News Correspondent at Woroni. Wu Lebao is an ANU student and Chinese political refugee.
The previous Woroni article which mentions Tao Pinru can be found here.
Comments Off on Why Voting ‘Yes’ Is The Most Liberal Thing You Could Do
The High Court of Australia has confirmed that the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey is valid. As a result, there are going to be some incredibly tough moments for many of our LGBTQIA* friends. I can’t even begin to understand what it feels like to be attacked so personally by ads and brochures that assume everything from your parental ability to living arrangements based solely on one’s sexuality.
But what I do understand is that these assumptions are wrong. I don’t doubt that most of my LGBTQIA* friends would make much better parents than me. I can’t even look after a parsley plant, let alone a child (RIP Marion Parslé). So why should I be considered more fit to parent based solely on my sexuality?
With the rhetoric from ‘the no vote’ gauging attention, it’s becoming clear that the ‘Yes’ campaign needs to mobilise and inspire voters beyond the choir it currently preaches to.
This is a rare thing for campaigners in Australia, because of our wonderful institution of compulsory voting. It’s now incumbent on the ‘Yes’ campaign to not only persuade people to vote in the affirmative but to encourage Australians to vote at all.
And, currently, I’m not convinced the ‘Yes’ campaign is succeeding at doing this.
Because marriage equality is not a politically partisan issue. It’s not a Labor thing or a Greens thing. It’s got nothing to do with free markets, or coal or housing affordability. It’s about allowing two consenting adults the right to marry.
So we’ve got until 7 November to convince every Australian currently sitting on the survey fence to vote ‘Yes’. And to those who are young (say, younger than 60), a little Liberal and a little Conservative, here’s why voting yes is the most Menzie thing you could ever do.
Firstly, it respects freedom.
It is the ultimate hypocrisy to say that you value freedom, particularly free speech, but by the same stroke deny two consenting adults the right to say ‘I do’ at the altar. Of course, freedom of speech is also tolerance to the ‘No’ campaign’s opinions, but it does not provide an argument in their favour. It’s plain and simple – disallowing marriage equality silences a sizeable portion of our society from freely exercising their ability to marry.
Secondly, religious freedoms will be upheld.
In the Private Member’s Bill released by Senator Dean Smith, protection for religious celebrants not wanting to marry same-sex couples was included, as per the recommendations by the Senate Select Committee on this issue. With committee membership from every side of the political spectrum, it’s safe to say that no party wants to, or can, infringe upon the right of Australians to exercise their own religion.
Thirdly, societal progress is not just ok, but normal.
The great western capitalist states of the UK, the US and New Zealand have already legalised marriage equality. And, if you’re worried about changing the ‘family unit’ in the same way, I’m afraid that every state and territory already allows same-sex couples to adopt children. And, trust me, they’ve been raising their own biological offspring for much longer.
The status quo argument also fails, when you consider that the Marriage Act has been changed 20 times since its inception in the 1960s. This included changing the marriageable age of women from 16 to 18 –when it was always 18 for men. Progress happens, and what we are proposing here is once again well overdue.
Finally, a ‘Yes’ vote will only contribute to the marriage institution.
The truth is, my male-identifying gay friends can already get married. To me. I neither love them in that way nor do I ever plan on having children with them. I can also annul the marriage, make a mockery of it, or use it to get more likes on insta (#married #yolo). If you want to reinstate the sanctity of marriage, I think you should start with condemning the heterosexuals who have already been a blight on the institution (hello Kim, hello Brittany).
Allowing more couples the right to marry will only strengthen its tradition. Marrying means commitment, responsibility and, above all, family. That doesn’t change if LGBTQIA* couples marry, it just means that the same values bind these couples.
I think marriage is important, and I think that it should be respected. If you love someone sincerely and truly, and you want to spend your life with them, then entering into a marriage is honouring the institution in its highest form.
And I think that’s the ultimate reason why Liberals and Conservatives should vote ‘Yes’. As the party who saw the first ever woman, Dame Enid Lyons, elected into the House of Representatives, and the first Indigenous man, the Hon. Ken Wyatt, appointed to the Executive, history once again knocks on our door. In the spirit of liberalism, it’s once again time to modernise.
If you’re on the fence, deciding whether or not you want to allow your friends (or maybe even yourself!) to marry, let me leave you with words from the Great Man Himself.
‘More good things in life are lost by indifference than ever were lost by active hostility’.
Robert Menzies definitely wasn’t talking about marriage, but let us take heed. The Yes vote could well and truly lose, not necessarily because of the ‘No campaign’, but because people like us are indifferent to it.
Comments Off on The Lottery: Hazing at Go8 University Colleges
Blindfolded
St. John’s College, University of Sydney, 2012-2013*
He helped blindfold the four fresher girls and made them kneel in the middle of the Senior Common Room to serve punishment for their crime. The 33 seniors encircled them. One fresher kept dragging her heels and asking them not to make her do it. Dumb bitch. She’d do it. He fetched the mixture they’d prepared earlier from his bar fridge. He held the jug at crotch-level so they could drink while kneeling. The rest of the seniors started clapping and stamping in time with the chant.
Later that night the mixture of alcohol, Tabasco sauce, sour milk, shampoo and dog food was pumped out of the reluctant girl’s stomach as her parents waited outside the hospital room. She had a rare and potentially fatal condition that caused severe stomach bleeding if she vomited.
The Justice Group seniors printed T-shirts after her near-death and the ensuing police investigation. He still had one lying at the bottom of the wardrobe drawer full of his college merch. It pictured the eagle mascot, blindfolded and vomiting, with ‘Year of Justice’ emblazoned below it. The next semester Justice Group members were elected to seven of the nine student council positions, including the top positions of President, Secretary and Treasurer, in time to welcome next February’s fresher intake.
Speechless
St. Paul’s College, University of Sydney, 2016*
It was hard to wave him off. Last September he’d given a speech at the Star Casino about the dangerous culture of alcoholism in Australia, part of their new Foundation campaign. None of the family had realised that his support of the lockout laws would spark death threats and online venom. She was so proud of him… and also worried.
It was late. His voice shook over the phone. He wouldn’t say what happened. He made them promise to pick him up the next morning. ‘Early please.’ He sobbed on the back seat the whole way home. The hazing rituals at St Paul’s are notorious. They found information online. He must have been victimised for his support of the lockout laws. That unspeakable night had changed him, broken him. In July he killed himself on Mona Vale beach.
Dead possum
St. John’s XXIII College, ANU, 2014-2017**
She was chosen as a candidate for the First Year Girl’s Club (FYGC). That night the second-year ex-Club girls marched them to clearing near CSIRO, made them drink and perform dares, and threw flour on them. They all vomited a lot, then were taken back, showered and put to bed. The next day 12 of them were in and the rest were ostracised. She was lucky. The next year she marched the freshers to the clearing and decided who was cool. Hazing happened about 10 times a year if you counted each night as a separate event. It was a way for FYGC members to prove that they were cool, make friends, and later prove that they’d stayed cool.
The male hazing happened much more often. The second and third year guys would pick a mix of freshers. The cool ones were initiated and bonded with and the not-so-cool ones were singled out and bullied. The seniors told them to climb a big tree with bottles of straight liquor and goon bags and sit on branches at different heights. They kept drinking and would start to piss and vomit on each other. One fresher would eventually fall from the tree. The ‘dead possum’ was kicked, beaten and abused. The hazing never really stopped unless you were cool and were destined to become a hazer.
The two years before she arrived had been out of control so the college governance tried to tighten things up in 2014 and 2015, banning the O-Week tradition of freshers wearing bibs and being given nicknames, but she still saw a lot of drugs, bullying and hazing. It got stricter after she moved out. The free STI testing was removed to try to control the culture. Fucking stupid idea. She cut ties with the college and with almost everyone she’d met there. A kind-of college friend she met for coffee last semester mentioned that some hazing had happened the night before. Probably the same hazing, or something not much different.
The Institutions
University of Adelaide. The Australian National University. University of Melbourne. Monash. UNSW. UQ. USyd. UWA. Hazing at Australian Go8 residential colleges is a topic that I cannot begin to do justice to. As the Dead Possum student remarked, every bad experience screams twenty times louder than a good experience, and for every bad word on a college there will be five good words, together forming the full spectrum of college life.
There has still been plenty of screaming, even when muted by secrecy and fear, predominantly documented at Sydney’s residential colleges.
Sarah Ng’s 2014 article cites a St John’s College O-Week tradition that strands blindfolded, near-naked first-years in Sydney’s west with a couch to carry back to college. This is reminiscent of the ANU’s early form of Inward Bound in the late seventies and early eighties, where students were left blindfolded in remote locations with no proper equipment, food or water. My mum, a student at the time, remarked that it was a wonder that no one died. The key difference lies in the fear students that often feel about revealing hazing practices. A friend of one couch-carrying student, scared to incriminate people involved, refused to give Ng details. Investigation reports reveal dangerous and decades-long traditions, faeces often found in the common areas and bedrooms of first-years, and widespread vandalism. However, when Ng visited John’s College she observed a sense of kinship with residents greeting each other warmly and doors left ajar. One third-year insisted that hazing was never dangerous and was strictly voluntary: ‘It’s like a family; it’s your brother and sister that you’re having fun with’.
Former St Paul’s College students have reported newcomers being beaten with thongs while on all fours and told to push flaming mattresses up hills amid violent scuffles that sometimes broke bones. Another ‘Inward Bound’ practice allegedly left a student tied to train tracks. A student asking to remain anonymous found the hazing so brutal that he later attempted suicide. The Vice-Chancellor has also censured the college’s ‘deep contempt for women’. A pro-rape Facebook page was discovered in 2009, and recent student texts described sex with fat girls as ‘harpooning a whale’.
St Andrew’s College also made headlines when a ‘Rackweb’ of student sexual relations was found in its 2014 student-published journal and corresponding public humiliation rituals were exposed.
A former University of Queensland student gave me some examples of hazing at its colleges. A fairly atypical haze at Cromwell College pressured students to find a date to the annual ball from within the cohort. For every day they didn’t find a date they had to wear one fewer clothing item on college grounds until they were down to their underwear. More benign hazes at UQ colleges included first-years wearing silly costumes, running around the university during O-Week and doing chants and public dances. These were also fixtures of my O-Week at a Melbourne college, and, as the former student said, while these are far less embarrassing when done as a group they can still be uncomfortable.
In the all-male King’s College, the O-Week rituals are hierarchical and drinking based, designed to place new students in the top, middle and bottom social tiers. First years had to do physically demanding tasks such as running about six kilometres right after dinner, with the last one back forced to run naked to the athletics track and back. In another ritual small groups of first-years raced to finish a 24-litre container of Yukka (a distilled vodka, lemon and sugar mixture). The losing group had to run naked past the four other colleges to the Women’s College, who were told when they were coming, and then back. The students would quickly become intoxicated and were encouraged to binge to the point of vomiting or passing out.
Heavy drinking is admittedly part of a wider problem throughout universities and around Australia. The ex-boyfriend of a Monash college senior resident said that what she dealt with ‘sounded pretty intense’, but the closest thing to hazing he’d seen as an off-campus student were the heavy drinking rituals at Arts and Law camps.
#Collegelyf
Queen’s College, University of Melbourne, 2012-2013.
When I tried to explain college hazing to a German friend, citing the Blindfolded incident, he paused, baffled. ‘But that is a kindergarten. That is kindergarten behaviour… if they tried to make me drink I would just not do it.’ I experienced minimal hazing during my college years but felt I knew exactly why the St John’s student drank the concoction. When you’ve barely left school, you’re thrown into a foreign environment with a bunch of strangers and initiated into a strict social hierarchy by those on top the range of choices you have are often socially restricted to just one – participate – which you’re told to do above all else. Non-participation might mean you don’t make as many friends, attract the disapproval of your new ‘family’, experience isolation and even bullying.
Queen’s College O-Week was a nonstop initiation of nightly parties, barely any sleep and blaring microphones at dawn. We wore garbage bags and were given nicknames. First-year guys were lined up and told to crawl to their favourite first-year girl as a way of forming two-person teams. O-Week leaders encouraged the college-wide ‘policy’ of keeping our doors open unless we were changing or sleeping, insisting that college would be the best years of our lives provided we were ‘keen’ and respected them. As the disturbingly cultish rituals continued, first-years began to perpetuate the social pressure to participate, joining in on the derision of students who fell short of the rigorous expectations to ‘skull and score (goals and fellow students)’, attend events and sporting matches, and exhibit constant friendliness and enthusiasm.
Male students felt more pressure to drink a lot. I remember Queener guys skulling jugs of beer, sometimes until vomiting, while surrounded by chanting students. There were strange rituals involving male students skulling beer then writhing around on the quadrangle as part of some tradition after a ‘Turn’, the name of in-college parties. After the first Turn faeces were found on the president’s bedroom chair and in the neighbouring bathroom. My corridor had a Rum Club. Previous male students made my neighbour drink lots of rum and then dumped him semi-conscious in his room. Girls on the corridor stayed with him to ensure that he didn’t vomit in his sleep. Sometimes a group of guys slunk off to something called ‘Matchbox’, returning very drunk hours later. Girls weren’t supposed to know about it. I never found out what it was. More innocuous rituals included wearing tweed to dinner on Mondays and the Seven Wonders, seven places to have sex on the college grounds, including on the Master’s doorstep, the chapel and the library, that would unlock some intranet profile features.
Queen’s College is selective, with students sometimes striving to succeed academically, career-wise and on the sporting field simultaneously. Danger came from the intensely social high-pressure environment and negligible pastoral care rather than bad hazing. The 2013 associate-chaplain was woefully unequipped to help struggling students. The Vice-Master simply ignored them. Ziggy, the phantom college counsellor, had been on leave indefinitely. By mid-2013 a first-year attempted suicide and was hospitalised. A month later, another girl had a psychotic breakdown and followed her. One student I saw bullied and partially ostracised dealt with it in silence. It would have taken a lot to break the code of secrecy surrounding coercive rituals and it was clear that help from the college governance would at insubstantial at best.
Reflections
The Australian National University
Dead Possum is the loudest scream to reach me from the ANU. Alexandra Lewis has already exposed last year’s misogynistic circle of boob pics at John’s XXIII, while Emily Jones has described a B&G tradition based on Daddy Cool’s Eagle Rock. Incidentally, Queen’s College had a similar encouraged tradition of girls whipping off their shirts to Eagle Rock at Turns, while guys would drop their pants to Muscle’s Ice Cream. In 2014 a John’s student told me of a first-year driven around for hours by seniors and plied with alcohol, eventually peeing into a bottle, echoing a similar event I was told about two years previously at Queen’s. Hazing rituals seem to bounce across universities and states.
A friend at Burgmann told me that while students being hazed are given the ‘choice’ to not do things they aren’t comfortable with, everybody else is typically participating so they would be left out if they don’t.
A 2014 Bruce ex-resident described a pervasive sex-focused culture and people feeling pressure to drink to fit in. Heavy drinking and being a ‘stud’ were both glorified. He saw this as far more problematic than the tradition of throwing students into the fountain on their birthday.
In late 2015 I overheard an ostensibly voluntary B&G hazing ritual where students would visit ex-student share-houses and conceal their faeces somewhere in the house. The ‘best’ one mentioned was a guy pooing into a scraped-out butter tub and then smoothing the butter back over the top.
A friend at Fenner Hall said she’d neither seen nor experienced traditions or hazing and wished that she had because it would help to bring people together.
Positive social cohesion is the flip-side of hazing practices. For a 2016 St John’s (Sydney) fresher, O-Week initiations were a positive, friendly experience. The fresher T-shirts and nicknames were an easy way to remember names and faces and after a week she knew the names of nearly all her year group. She still calls her St John’s friends by their nicknames. While unwilling to give details on the hazing involved she said that at one point during a big sports night, too drunk to keep drinking, she felt uncomfortable and left. Three third year students immediately messaged her to check how she was and another brought her some food. On transferring universities and moving into John’s XXIII she was bitterly disappointed to find that O-Week headbands and nicknames were considered hazing and had been banned. She believed that it isolated people, leaving limited opportunity for student bonding, meaning that she didn’t feel as close to fellow residents and moved out as soon as possible.
It’s hard to reconcile her experiences with the unspeakable ones of Stuart Kelly. They both attended a Sydney college O-Week last year. One committed suicide six months later, the other remembers the first few weeks as the best in her life. It’s equally hard to decide whether her experience at John’s XXIII can co-exist with those in Dead Possum. Why did she never hear anything of this hazing? Can every college student’s truth be true concurrently?
Hazing brings people together – causing suicide attempts. College is the best years of your life – leaving you shattered. College life is a lottery that can place you on top of the social ladder, give you wild years of partying and lifelong friends, or socially isolate you, scare you and leave you rebuilding your life. Or, in the case of Stuart Kelly, take it away.
If there is secrecy or fear surrounding a hazing practice, chances are that it is distasteful, unpleasant or dangerous. They can indicate that students are in danger of losing the lottery.
*Information gathered from online articles canvassing these hazing incidents.
**Information received from a past student at John’s XXIII College in July, 2017.