Varini Thenuwara
SE students play Kahoot! quiz put on by DASHH for a free T-shirt and cupcake inside SE03 commons area.
SE Campus hosted “Don’t Haze, Trailblaze” on Sept. 24 that allowed students and staff to educate themselves on hazing prevention.
The event was created in light of National Hazing Prevention Week.
The Drugs, Alcohol, Sex, Harassment and Hazing Prevention Squad, supported this event, which included different games and had staff available to educate the importance of preventing hazing.
Hazing is a nationwide issue in schools, and community colleges are often overlooked when the topic of the hazing epidemic is brought up, the event organizers said.
According to a 2008 national study from the University of Maine, researchers found 55% of college students who are in a club or organization endure hazing.
Kecia Baker-Morris, SE Director of Student Conduct and Prevention Education and one of the event organizers, said this event has been going on for a few years and when DASHH started, one of the topics was hazing.
Typically, it is often fraternities and sororities from universities that are tied with the hazing narrative. This usually includes the contestant having to do certain things in order to be accepted.
“A lot of the times, the feedback was ‘Why are we educating students on hazing when we don’t have fraternities and sororities on campus?’ and different things like that,” Morris said. “However, research shows that the most amount of hazing cases come from student organizations.”
Varini Thenuwara, administrative assistant for the Student Conduct and Prevention Education office who joined Baker-Morris as an organizer, said the DASHH prevention squad goes by the slogan “Step up to stop it.”
Hazing is not discussed as much as it should be in the world, so this event provided clarity to what it looks like.
“Hazing is basically making a person or a group of people do something that they’re uncomfortable with,” Thenuwara said.
SE students stopped by the booths set up for this event and played a Kahoot game with different questions about hazing and if a student did not know the answer a student worker was there to give them the information.
“I don’t really see this often at TCC, but hazing is around the world,” student worker Ian Williams said. “You’re in situations where you’re feeling pressure to do stuff, such as in a group setting like if you’re at a party, drinking alcohol or being forced to drink some type of alcohol.”
The event had different prizes such as T-shirts and cupcakes for students after participating in the Kahoot game.
Thenuwara said that the goal of the event is to let students know how to identify hazing.
“And to be able to look out for signs of hazing so that they can step up to stop and prevent it happening to other students, their friends or just anyone in general. That is really our goal,” she said.