1. Hazing Prevention Using Public Health Best Practices
A Peer-Facilitated Approach to
Hazing Prevention Using Public Health Best Practices
Rachel Kiliany, MPH, CHES Health Promotion Specialist
Jamie Leonard, MPH, CHES Director, Office of Health Promotion

2. Hazing Prevention: From Theory to Practice
Special Shout Out
Thursday, 10am-11:30am
Hazing Prevention: From Theory to Practice
Dr. Timothy Marchell, PhD, MPH, MDiv (Cornell University)
Today we are going to focus in on a specific program that we created at the University Virginia to address hazing, but I did want to highlight that Dr. Marchell will be speaking tomorrow from a broader perspective about this public health issues.

3. * Definitions of Hazing
* Project Timeline
* Data Review
* Our Peer-Facilitated Program
* Using Your Campus Culture

4. Definitions of Hazing Virginia State Statute (Section 18.2-56)
…“hazing” means to recklessly or intentionally endanger the health or safety of a student or students or to inflict bodily injury on a student or students in connection with or for the purpose of initiation, admission into or affiliation with or as a condition for continued membership in a club, organization, association, fraternity, sorority, or student body regardless of whether the student or students so endangered or injured participated voluntarily in the relevant activity.”

5. Definitions of Hazing University of Virginia Policy
…any activity that is expected or required of someone to join or maintain status within a group that humiliates, degrades, or risks emotional and/or physical harm, REGARDLESS of the person’s willingness to participate.

6. Hazing Spectrum Low Risk Moderate Risk High Risk
First we’re going to start with an activity. We’ll need 10 volunteers! They’ll come to the front and we’ll hand you each a sheet of paper to hold. The 10 volunteers will arrange themselves in order of what behaviors they believe can cause the lowest to highest amount of risk.
Remember there is not a right answer! It’s okay if we don’t all agree. The purpose to get some ideas out there and get some discussion going.
Then ask all participants:
-How do we feel about the order that we have up here?
-Is there anything you might consider switching?
Ask the volunteers:
-What was challenging about this activity?
This is an activity that our peer educators lead in their hazing prevention program. We get a different order every time we do the activity. It’s always so interesting and produces some great discussion even in groups that might be quieter at first. We thought it would be a good way to show how complex this issue is and get our discussion going here today!

7. This is a newer field of public health, and our programming around the issue is also new. That means that we are doing a lot of both process and outcome evaluation and updating the intervention as we go. We’re learning, too!

8. This is the model that we are using to guide the creation and implementation of our intervention. Like any good public health program, we start with assessment. We then move on to capacity which, to be honest, is where we often get stuck. Based on our capacity, we do our planning.
We have been around this circle numerous times for this specific program as we reassess, modify, implement, and re-evaluate.

9. 2008 Reviewed National Data 2013 Collected University Data
2015 Developed Peer-Facilitated Program
Launched!
Piloted, Evaluated, and Revised
2008 national study: Examining and Transforming Campus Hazing Cultures
Maine Hazing Consortium: 53 campuses, 11,482 students
Relay:
There are no cookie cutter best practices with hazing prevention, so this is one giant experiment
Our program isn’t perfect
Our process has been slow
We lack resources to do this really well
A key component is process evaluation
Want to give you confidence to do what you can
Participation in the Maine Hazing Consortium

10. 2008 National Data
FINDING 1: More than half of college students involved in clubs, teams, and organizations experience hazing.
FINDING 2: Hazing occurs across a range of student groups.
FINDING 3: Alcohol consumption, humiliation, isolation, sleep deprivation, and sex acts are hazing practices common across student groups.
FINDING 4: Knowledge of hazing extends beyond the student groups engaging in the behavior.
FINDING 5: More students perceive positive rather than negative outcomes of hazing.
(Allan & Madden, 2008)
National Study of Student Hazing (Allan & Madden, 2008)
Led by StopHazing, Inc.
Goals of the study:
Understand the nature and extent of hazing
Offer research-based prevention strategies
Baseline data

11. National Data (cont.)
FINDING 6: Students are not likely to report hazing to campus officials.
FINDING 7: Students recognize hazing as part of the campus culture.
FINDING 8: Students report limited exposure to prevention efforts that extend beyond a “hazing is not tolerated” approach.
FINDING 9: Students come to college having experienced hazing.
FINDING 10: A gap exists between student experiences of hazing and their willingness to label it as such.

12. 2013 Campus Hazing Assessment
University Data
2013 Campus Hazing Assessment
Conducted by University of Maine/Stop Hazing Consortium
Spring Faculty, staff and student interviews
Fall 2013 – student survey
n=709, 27% response rate
Qualitative and quantitative data revealed similar themes
96.1% indicated they had been involved in at least one organization with an average of 2.89 organizations/student

13. 2013 Campus Hazing Assessment only 3.1% indicated that they were hazed
University Data
2013 Campus Hazing Assessment
26% (33.1% male; 20.6% female) indicated experiencing AT LEAST ONE OF 37 hazing behaviors
BUT
only 3.1% indicated that they were hazed
This showed us two things. First, over one quarter of our students were experiencing hazing. Second, the vast majority didn’t even recognize that they were hazed! So we knew we had a problem AND because this was not recognized as a problem by our students, then we needed to start addressing it as if we were in Pre-Contemplation.

14. Positive Organization Expectations (POE)
1-hour peer-led program
Interactive
Data driven
Appeal to the diversity of groups across campus
Evolving
Overview of what POE even is:
1-hour peer-led program (while we have PHEs, we don’t have a specific edu group for hazing prevention, so right now we just have interested students involved)
Strive for 2 facilitators; Often one student and one staff member
Interactive (activities, discussion)
Data driven (Jamie just spoke about data and I’ll dive more into how it’s data driven on the next slide)
Appeal to diversity - our data showed us that hazing was occurring in various groups across campus, so we couldn’t just target Greeks.
Evolving (this program isn’t set in stone forever; we’re having discussions right now about exploring new ways to implement it)

15. Stakeholder Outreach Office of Health Promotion
Office of the Dean of Students
Student Activities
Fraternity and Sorority Life
Athletics
University Police
Housing & Residence Life
Because the issue was embedded across the University, we needed to collaborate in order to reach the various pockets of students. Mention that we wanted to title this “collaborators”
Does it look like anyone is missing?
...STUDENTS!
One of our barriers has been that it’s not easy to make a hazing prevention program appealing to students. So we don’t have a peer educator group that is specific to this topic. Rather we have students who have expressed interest who from all different pockets of the university. That’s one thing we’re working on changing in the future.

16. POE Public Health Framework
Culturally relevant
Social norms data
Applying Stages of Change to a community
Cognitive dissonance
This is how we’re actually applying a public health framework to the POE program
Culturally relevant
We have adapted different examples that we use for different groups (RAs, student volunteers at Madison House, fraternities, sororities, culturally-based groups)
We call it POE (Edgar Alan Poe)
We mentioned being data driven on the last slide: But how??
Social norms data
Not strong at UVA
We use the 2008 national study
Applying Stages of Change
Collectively, as you saw from the data Jamie presented, our students are in precontemplation.
They aren’t yet identifying hazing as a problem (perhaps very egregious things but if their orgs aren’t doing those, then they seem to not recognize that there is a problem)
Cognitive dissonance
Mention where we’re at on the stages of change model (students aren’t even recognizing hazing as hazing)
Using an MI approach, we want to guide them toward that moment where they carry the two conflicting beliefs of “hazing is problematic and harmful” and perhaps “I was hazed/my friend was hazed/my group hazes” hmmm…

17. POE Facilitator Training
Open to all students and staff
Online interest form
4.5 hours
Offered 2-3 times/year

18. POE Facilitator Training Outline
Present the POE program
Review national and UVA data
General facilitation tips
Practice
Each of these take about 1 hour, but we call it a 4.5 hour training so we have time for breaks and questions. We also provide free lunch.

19. A brief look at the highlights of our POE presentation...
The full presentation is an hour. We’re going to show you just a few slides so you can get a feel for our POE program. Remember that this was designed based on our data from the 2013 UVA survey and then we piloted POE and revised it based on evaluation. So as we go through it, be thinking about the culture of your own institution and some of the questions you may need answer to in order to launch a peer-facilitated program like this at your own institution.

20. Why did you join this group?
Why is it important to you?
This is sample slide. We first usually ask them to chat with the folks they are sitting near and think back to when they first thought about joining this organization, and to consider what stood about it.  We give them a minute or two and then have them share out loud. If it’s a Greek org, they sometimes rattle off their values or philanthropy. We’ve also received some really “honest” answers like “We all like to drink together!!” but generally they tend to talk about friendships.
We affirm the positive things they say and try to reframe any not-so-positive things like:
We like to drink together! →You enjoy spending time with each other.
We then ask them to keep these reasons in mind throughout the rest of the program (we revisit them at the end).

21. Tradition
We talk about tradition in POE because it’s a really big part of our culture at UVA in general. This will look different every institution though. You may want to focus on a different aspect of your institution’s culture.
For this slide, we ask the students to first name some common traditions at UVA, and then to name some of the traditions from within their specific organization. This is typically an easy activity that helps break the ice. We then wrap up the quick discussion by saying something along the lines of “There are so many traditions at UVA. Some of them are generally really healthy, while others have the potential to be unhealthy -i.e. 4th year 5th, block party”
1789 Bust of Jefferson by Jean-Antoine Houdon (Jefferson's age at time of sitting: 46) Image credit: Thomas Jefferson Foundation/Edward Owen. Gift of the Gilder Lehrman Collection.

22. How do you define hazing?
First we let them chat with folks next to them. Then share out loud.
Tell them they don’t need to have the full comprehensive definition. Just think of some of the aspects that you think belong in a definition.

23. Hazing is…
any activity that is expected or required of someone to join or maintain status within a group that humiliates, degrades, or risks emotional and/or physical harm,
REGARDLESS of the person’s willingness to participate.
I usually ask someone in the front to read out loud for the whole group.
Then we ask:
-What stands out to you about this definition?
-What is surprising?
-What is confusing?
People usually point out:
-Being surprised at “maintaining status”
-emotional harm as also hazing
-being confused/surprised at “regardless of the person’s willingness”
Then we do the spectrum activity that you all already did!

24. Team Building Hazing Party Skit night Scavenger hunt
Athletic activities
Costumes
Shared, positive experience
Supports and empowers
Promotes respect
Lifelong memories
Pride and integrity
Creates real teamwork
Humiliates and degrades
Tears down individuals
Creates division
Shame and secrecy
Power trip
Then after the spectrum activity (the one you already did) we talk about this venn diagram. We know from our data that our students seem to understand the really egregious hazing behaviors, but they struggle with some of the other behaviors. We also notice that during the spectrum activity, a common response/question they have is “well it depends the context, how heavy the object, what time of day it is, what type of costume it is, etc. So we talk about this “gray area” in between team building and hazing, in which the activity could really fall on either side of the venn diagram depending on how it’s being set up.
For example: A party could be really fun. Parties certainly aren’t inherently hazing. But is it a party where people genuinely have the option to attend or not? Is it a party where people can choose to practice responsible drinking if they want to? Or to not drink at all? Who is paying for setting up the party? Who is cleaning up after the party?
Then we ask them to select another one of the examples in this “gray area” and discuss with someone sitting near them how it could be hazing or team building depending on context.
Many students in the room (and staff) have experienced some of these things so they are likely going through their own cognitive dissonance

25. How well do we know our members?
Jamie is asking Tim if he will speak at all about hidden harm.
Here we ask them to consider if they’ve ever had a time where they found out something new about someone they considered to be their good friend. There are always things still to learn about someone. Now if we think about the very newest members of our organization, who have probably been trying really hard to fit in and gain acceptance in this group, we realize there are a lot of things we still don't know about them. And it definitely doesn’t even need to be something really hard that they’ve been through. It could be anything: an allergy, a personality trait, or something else. Or it could be more serious, like a history of abuse, or a car accident they were in, they might mean that an activity could really harm them in a way that perhaps the group never anticipated (such as blindfolding new members and driving a short distance to a really wonderful surprise breakfast could be really triggering for someone who was in a car accident). We don’t know these things about our new members. I’m not going up to introduce myself to folks by saying “Hi I’m Rachel and here’s a story of something in my life that was really hard for me”
We call this “hidden harm” and really emphasize that it’s not just about folks who have survived trauma, but that we all just have different life experiences and personalities and that there’s no one predictable way in which we act.

26. Effects of Hazing Feel more like a part of the group
69%
Feel a sense of accomplishment
22%
78%
Feel stronger
18%
82%
This is where we provide some social norms data. As you can see, this is from 2008 national study (not the 2013 UVA study). Unfortunately, our UVA social norms in 2013 weren’t quite positive enough to promote.
If I’m presenting, I usually just tell students this is a 2008 study because that’s the most recent data we have from a study this size. And I point to the fact that concern for hazing as an issue is growing so data is still being collected. (otherwise they’ll call me out for using old data!)
Do better in classes
15%
85%
Source: Hazing in View: College Students at Risk. Initial Findings from the National Study of Student Hazing (2008) Allen & Madden
11,000 students on 53 campuses

27. of UVA students intervene when they notice a problem situation
94%
of UVA students intervene when they notice a problem situation
(2017 Health Survey)
The good news is that many UVA students intervene IN SOME WAY when they notice a problem situation.
So, if you’re concerned and want to intervene, what can you do? (next slide)

28. Why is this group important to you?
We asked UVA students to write in a word or two about why their organization are important to them.
Think back to the first activity in this program. We encourage you to keep these ideals at the center of your discussions about how you welcome new members.
Questions? Want to get involved? Rachel at
(2017 Health Survey)

29. POE Participation POE launched 2016
Data from UVA Office of Health Promotion, 2018.

30. Hazing Reports vs Findings of Responsibility
Reports of hazing have increased.
Fewer reports result in “responsible” findings.
Data from UVA Office of the Dean of Students, 2018.

31. Worksheet

32. Questions?