Student Activities implements new anonymous hazing form
October 25, 2019
In an email sent to the student body earlier this month, Student Activities introduced a new online form for students to report hazing incidents.
No hazing forms have been submitted yet. The Office of Safety and Security will investigate all reported incidents, whether or not they were submitted anonymously.
The survey encourages students to enter their contact information, but students also have the option to submit the form anonymously. In the past, the only way students could anonymously report hazing was in a sexual misconduct or bias incident form.
Last spring, Director of Student Activities Nate Hintze attended the American College Personnel Association’s conference, where he attended a session led by Elizabeth Allen, a professor at the University of Maine, about the best practices for handling hazing.
“She mentioned one of the best practices was having an anonymous form for people to be able to indicate if they have been a witness to or heard about hazing,” Hintze said. “I hope that students take it seriously. Hazing is not something that I tolerate at all. I want to make sure that we can investigate it and get it to stop.”
Hintze also noted the importance of educating all club leaders about hazing.
“We do a full hazing introduction to what Bowdoin classifies as hazing which goes along with [raising awareness about] Maine state law,” Hintze said. “Bowdoin takes this really seriously because not only is hazing against college policy—it’s against the law. And so [we are] making sure that students are well aware that not only could you get in trouble with the College, you could be arrested.”
If teams, clubs or any other groups want to host initiation events, Hintze urged leaders to meet with him beforehand to hear their plans and ensure that there will be no intentional or unintentional hazing.
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How dreadful. Nobody likes a rat, Nate. Bowdoin should be encouraging its students to be loyal to each other. Anonymous reporting is rather authoritarian. Don’t like getting hazed? Leave.
It’s a bright cold day in October, and the clocks are striking thirteen.