To most people unfamiliar with the world of American collegiate life, the word “haze” conjures a kind of softness: a low, gentle mist dissolving over a meadow. For a college student, it conjures a different kind of fog, born not of nature’s beauty, but of cheap vodka, sleep deprivation, and the intermingling of anxiety and Dior Sauvage.
Hazing may seem like a recent phenomenon, but its roots predate America itself. At Plato’s Academy in 387 B.C., first-year students endured what was called pennalism: rituals of humiliation meant to prove obedience before they could “taste the sweets of student life.” Faculty, too, were subjected to similar rites before being recognized as worthy scholars. By the seventeenth century, pennalism had been codified into European university law, evolving from a secret ritual to an institutional expectation. When those scholars eventually crossed the Atlantic to help found America’s founding colleges, they embedded within them the belief that worth must be earned through endurance.
Today, hazing rituals may look different, but this belief has stayed largely intact. With hazing-related fatalities on the rise and the recent passage of the Stop Campus Hazing Act, universities have scrambled to respond. At Penn, the Office of Fraternity and Student Life has imposed strict attendance caps on social events, pulled fire alarms at capacity parties, and issued public transparency reports on hazing infractions.
And yet, ask any student, and they will tell you that little has changed. Hazing continues to linger in dimly lit corners, part of first-year folklore and whispered midnight stories like invisible footprints on a student Marauder’s map. The university’s reports, which cite scavenger hunts and strange costumes, only skim the surface of experiences far more serious than those reflected on paper.
While both the federal ban and the University’s attempt to tackle it are well-intentioned, they fall into the trap of trying to fix a leaky pipe with a drugstore bandage. Hazing, as an act, was not born from rebellion but from historic ritual. More specifically, it emerged from the intellectually elite: scholars who for centuries believed that enduring hardship proved intellect, and that belonging had to be earned through shared trial. That logic became part of how American universities understood growth itself. To imagine it can now be undone through policy alone is to overlook the centuries of tradition and instinct rooted in campus culture.
Beyond just a drunken aberration, modern-day hazing has evolved into something far messier than an initiation rite. In a post-pandemic world with adolescent loneliness at record highs, it has become a means to feel seen, to belong — and, as one student frankly told me, to be “worth testing.” Students are drawn to the intense bonding created through shared hardship, a dynamic consistently reflected in psychological research. The cost of suffering to find community, then, can often feel worth the tribulations at a school like Penn where social GPA is prized more than the academic counterpart.
I do not offer this explanation as an attempt to excuse hazing but rather to explain why speeches and sanctions fall short — and why self-report measures will always, ultimately fail. Asking students who have been rewarded for endurance their entire lives to suddenly stop seeking validation through it is futile — unless the institution begins to question the narrative that built that instinct. When community-building scavenger hunts are reprimanded alongside cases of alcohol overdose, it flattens nuance and blurs intention. Worse still, it drives social organizations further underground, making them more secretive, more exclusive, and in Penn-lingo more “SABS”-worthy than ever.
If Penn truly hopes to end its own “pennalism,” it must confront the ways its own systems reward exhaustion and confuse hard work with self-erasure. It must design new ways to build belonging, recognizing the patterns of trauma-bonding that students are predisposed to, and shaping a first-year experience that doesn’t make them fall into the trap of seeking it.
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The process is long and grueling. It requires pulling off the bandage and staring at the intricate, ugly wiring underneath. But eventually, it will create new ways for students to find connection and peace in a version of themselves that doesn’t have to prove its worth just to exist.
Until then, the campus will keep spinning in that same familiar fog: part vodka, part ambition, and a desperate ache to feel seen.
DIYA CHOKSEY is a College sophomore studying Cognitive Science from Mumbai, India. Her email address is dchoksey@sas.upenn.edu.
