In a Georgia high school in that time frame, there was no generalized hazing of freshmen; however, several school organizations had days set aside to haze freshmen members. (No paddling, though; just petty humiliations.)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High* was a pretty accurate depiction of my 80s high school experience, but I can’t say much about Dazed and Confused. That movie was set about ten years before my high school days.
Yes, it did happen. I knew some of the people who had to go through hazing (it was called “freshman initiation”) in the mid- to late-'70s. It had pretty much died out by the time I got to high school 10 years later.
Some of the hazing was extremely dangerous, like finding a muddy ground and chasing freshmen around in circles through the mud. The chasees would be on foot. The chasers would be driving cars (preferably jeeps).
Yep. My example is from a Junior High School ( 7th and 8th graders ) in suburban Michigan. The incoming class of 7th grade males were liable for one “get” by any 8th grade male ( or group of them ). Usually this took the form of a hard punch or three, sometimes something a little more exotic like a “swirlie” ( head held in a toilet, which is then flushed ).
Strangely the one-time-only nature of this hazing was usually observed fairly stringently. I vividly remember one eager young fellow going down a line of 7th graders in the hall, querying them as to whether they had been “gotten” yet - he was quite frustrated when everybody said they had and complained bitterly that he had missed out on “getting” anybody. I remember that so well, because I was one of those guys and I lied my ass off :D. I was never gotten. I relied on a combination of sharp-eyed caution, lieing and on one occasion getting my would be tormentors to laugh, which caused them to good-naturedly leave me alone and go chasing after another target.
Not that I recall, but then I never got detention. Fines ($5 was a lot of money for a high-schooler back then), and a warning for a fight – sounds tame, but two warnings meant suspension :eek: – but not detention.
Monetary fines? That’s a new one for me. We had regular detentions and Saturday detentions (which were like three hours or something). I’ve technically gotten two jugs and a Saturday, but never ended up having to serve any of them.
The small town where I grew up in Southeast Missouri still had it going on as of 1999 or so at least (I’m not sure if it’s still happening). It was called initiation, and the girls would have a group thing (very similar to Dazed and Confused) and the guys would be gotten individually when they caught them, but not paddling as far as I heard it. My family moved just before I became a freshman so I didn’t actually go through it, but I heard they would have the guys do stuff like swim in a pond naked or other such.
+1 through and through, except it was the Bay Area for me. I thought they had attached a camera to my glasses or something. I was also the over-talky guy who desperately wanted to be cool but failed (in the movie, he was played by the guy who was in Saving Private Ryan as the Jewish soldier who wrestles over the knife with the Nazi :()
I love *Dazed and Confused. *I watch it every chance it comes on TV. The music ROCKS, regardless if it is accurate for the time period or not.
I grew up in Texas and entered HS in 1982. Our school was grades 10-12. Our area was filled with military brats, so we were all used to moving around every few years. Being accepted as part of a group was nice, but not without its price. I never questioned it, but it did lead to some good friendships, like brothers in arms.
There was some hazing, but not to such a degree as in the movie. It was usually broken down by whichever group you were going to “fit in with”, whether that choice was yours or the group’s choice. (Stoners, jocks, geeks, whatever.) It was neat - usually, the group that “broke you in” became your new circle of friends for the next three years. If you survived, that is. 
The football players would obviously screw with the JV and new kids, and it was usually limited to locker room antics (like shoving naked teammates out of the showers or into the girls’ locker room). I wasn’t a football player so I heard about this from my friend who was. There was some stuff on the field, but it usually didn’t get too bad and the coaches usually turned their attention elsewhere (I hear).
If you weren’t part of a group, your torture was usually led by either an older sibling or somebody you knew (a friend’s brother, neighbor or whatever) who was older. This sort of made sure that it didn’t get too dangerous or harmful, but it still sucked. Some kids got thrown into and locked (temporarily) in dumpsters. One of my buddies got locked in a storage closet for a whole class hour (so he said; I didn’t believe it, as he was a whiny bitch and probably screamed his head off the entire time). Some were forced to eat “leftover lunches” (usually some pile of older kids’ lunches all mixed into one gross burger or something, but no spit or evilness included, just gross food). One of my friends (who was black*) fought back when they tried to “feed” him, and it started to get ugly, but the teachers broke it up before it got too far beyond the just shoving stage. Good for him, as he set up his school cred as the “don’t fuck with me” guy. The upper classmen automatically promoted him to “cool” status and it was like he was a made man until graduation. I’m glad he was on my side.
We had an “open campus” policy. Mostly seniors had permission to go off campus for lunch breaks, as they usually had cars. Sometimes they would take the newbies with them, pretending they were being cool and then leave the kids stranded at McD’s or wherever. “Wherever” was usually about five miles away from campus (on Pat Booker Road, for those in the know) where all the fast food places were, so even if you walked back you would miss a few classes.
I hear the band kids were different - they usually took the new kids under their wings and stood together, warning them about the hazards of upperclassmen (geek solidarity, I guess). I had a girlfriend who was in band during my junior year so she told me that they “took care of their own”.
The cheerleaders had some hazing rituals, but not quite as gross as the condiment baths (although I did see “slaves” being made to carry people’s books to class, leashes, diapers and infant costumes). This was usually overlooked by faculty, as long as it wasn’t disruptive to class or overly humiliating. This behavior was also allowed during the Friday pep rallies. (Football is quite a big deal in TX, and the pep squads participated in earnest.) Sometimes even the 10th grade footballers would be “humiliated” by being made to dress in costume and what not. But nothing really mean.
**The following is not an admission of guilt: I had already established my role as a … (ahem) “stoner”, so I knew a bunch of them already from parties with my two older sisters. My punishment was being “invited” to parties on Fridays and being “forced” to consume many beers and “other recreational materials” to the point of violently tossing my cookies and passing out. I was lucky; they never stranded me anywhere and *usually *drove me home. Or at least dumped me off on my neighbors’ lawn.
All in all, I was lucky. I missed most of the whole “dumpster dumping” process because on my first day of high school, I had an accident and was on crutches for a month. And my school did have elevators (many buildings on campus had more than 2 stories), so I did get an elevator pass. So nyaah to you suckers who had to pay for yours. 
We still had shop class back then. Lots of upper classmen made paddles. And used them. Even the Vice Principle had a paddle. I *heard *that he used it on students, but I think that was a rumor that the faculty never squashed for disciplinary reasons. I never got paddled myself. Well, not at school, anyway. I had an evil stepdad who took care of that.
Man, good times. To be young again.
*=Yeah, Greg was black. I don’t mention that to mean anything specific to this HS example, but he told me of other instances where his skin color had led to problems earlier in life, so he learned not to take shit from people early in life. This was TX, after all. Not everybody was enlightened even in the '80’s.
**=My oldest sister was the cooler one. She tried to tell me what to look out for, but left me on my own to defend myself. My other older sister was the mean one - she usually let her male buddies terrorize me and what not, but once I started “sharing” my “recreational goodies” with them, they laid off right quick and took me in. They even started giving me rides and buying me beer. In exchange for goods, that is. I love free trade.
While there was nothing school-wide, I know all the freshman wrestlers in my high school in central FL got pink-bellies as recently as 2001 (some even drew blood).
Dazed and Confused is the most accurate depiction of high school life as I knew it. It helps that the time frame is an almost exact overlap for when I went to high school. I also went to high school in Georgia (suburban Atlanta). My high school was 8th grade through 12th - I never experience middle school/junior high school. In our school there was a kind of hazing of 8th graders, who were technically called subfreshmen, but called “Subbies”. It was not formalized and pretty inconsistent. More like constant teasing and picking on until the next group of Subbies came in and got the same treatment. We dressed like the kids in that movie, had the same cars, hair, etc. and had similar parties, mostly out in the woods. Don’t forget that the drinking age in most of the country was 18 at the time, so it was a lot easier to get beer, cigarettes, etc. Also, it seemed we had a lot more free rein to run around and with a lot less helicopter parenting.
Yes, around '76-'77 my brother made a “disciplinary” paddle with swoosh holes in shopclass (there is an aerodynamic and integration force calculation with a 24" by 6" paddle made of solid, weighty, hardwood, with aerodynamic swoosh". It was an FFA and Star Wrestler and Football Defense social currency of hazing and “patriarhcal admittance”
I had eggs thrown at me on my first day of High School. I graduated in 2004.
Freshman in 1976 in NorCal. This was probably the tail end of openly tolerated hazing. Usually humiliation type stuff - sing a commercial or get thrown in the pool. Get put in an armlock, some “friendly” nuggies, “friendly” back slapping, drop and do “humpies” (a kiind of humiliating pushup / simulated humping the floor thingy, some melvins, littler kids being hung up on the top shelf lockers, etc.
I remember the wresting coach who also taught math, told us freshmen to come see him if there were any issues. He certainly didn’t tolerate the wrestlers getting involved. In fact, he channeled some natural competitive testosterone and many of the wrestlers would proactively stop any hazing so they could show off a few moves on the hazer.
some of the other teachers would just say “you’ll get your chance to do the same when you’re a senior.” Lying bastards as by the time I was a senior, overt hazing was no longer tolerated.
I’m 49 and grew up in New York City. I never saw anything resembling “hazing.” There were a handful of silly, mostly harmless pranks played on freshmen (Signs saying “get your swimming pool passes at 3:30 in room 605,” even though our school didn’t have a swimming pool OR a room 605), but no physical abuse of any kind.
The movie was filmed here in Austin, Texas, and the woman I was dating at the time was a native Austinite who went to McCallum High School, just like Richard Linklater. She agreed that NOTHING like the hazing Linklater showed in the movie ever went on in Austin in the Seventies.
However… I’ve met many other people my age who went to high schools in small towns in different parts of Texas and who swear that all kinds of hazing rituals DID go on. One woman told me matter of factly, “Sure, every year, the freshman girls would get pelted with eggs and driven through the car wash in the back of a pickup truck.” A few guys confirmed that they got paddled by seniors. A local disc jockey I used to know casually told me that, in Tyler, seniors at his high school cut off a huge portion of his hair.
Did teachers and principals know about this? Apparently, yes- and they treated it as a time-honored tradition. Kids who turned to them for protection were regarded as crybabies who should just take their abuse quietly, since they’d get THEIR chance to abuse freshmen in a few years.
Medium-sized city with one big high school in Northeastern Wisconsin, Class of '92. The roughness I remember was in the first year of junior high (7th-9th grades) (also a single junior high for the whole city). Getting books knocked out of your hands was a frequent thing. Another thing was dragging a pen or pencil along the brick walls while walking and then “burning” someone on the back of the neck. Worst thing that happened to me was getting a purple nurple in the middle of a study hall out of nowhere, but that wasn’t an upperclassman just a stupid idiot in my own grade. 
Astorian wrote “The movie was filmed here in Austin, Texas, and the woman I was dating at the time was a native Austinite who went to McCallum High School, just like Richard Linklater. She agreed that NOTHING like the hazing Linklater showed in the movie ever went on in Austin in the Seventies.”
Actually your statement should read in the very late Seventies. I graduated in 1978 and grew up in Austin. At Austin High hazing of the guys coming in from O. Henry Jr High was a big deal during the early and mid '70’s. The upcoming Seniors would ‘hunt’ and shave the incoming Freshman’s heads. I was caught after a Babe Ruth baseball game and ended up with a mohawk and some winglets. Shaved the rest off the next day. That was the last year the the majority of incoming freshmen got ‘shaved’. It continued a couple of more years, but was pretty mush finsihed by '78. I don’t know of any guys my Sr year that did any shaving.
It’s odd to think that when D&C was released in 1993 it was set 17 years earlier. Now the movie itself is 20 years old.
When I saw that movie at age 20 in 1993, 1976 seemed like a long ago mythical era. If the equivalent movie were made today it would describe 1996. That just doesn’t feel right.
Initiated by zombies!
When I was in HS (graduated '79, Texas), initiation was the norm. There were no roving bands of assholes with paddles, but freshmen got thrown in a creek, beat with Hot Wheels track, doused with flour, stuff like that. There are even pics in the yearbook of the throwing in the creek part.
On my first day of HS, there was an initiation assembly, which I skipped to get stoned with my sister and her friends. So I show up after the assembly stoned, in an unfamiliar place, and without the important bracelet that was handed out at the assembly - to be greeted by some seniors who noticed the missing bracelet. I told them some other seniors had already rolled me and stole my bracelet and they let me go. That was all the initiation I got, I declined the invite to the creek party.
The drinking age back then was 18, and I turned 18 a couple of months before graduation. You can only imagine. Plus there were designated smoking areas at some of the exits of the HS building. One of the smoking areas was on a set of steps known as “Freak’s Corner”, also noted in the yearbook. It was a different era, and not that far removed from “Dazed and Confused” from my POV.