I’ve had the whole range, from trivial, minor, ceremonial hazing, all the way to full-on group violence (the shit pounded out of me and thrown into a toilet.)
On the first day of high school, freshmen (boys, anyway) had to turn their pants inside out. Cutesy, pretty harmless, and I went along with it without a qualm. All the other froshes were doing the same thing, so it wasn’t individual hazing. No harm done.
Getting beaten up was, of course, a criminal offense, and should have been prosecuted.
Where, exactly, do you draw the line? I say way, way, WAY over toward the minimalist end of the spectrum. A VERY little amount of teasing, with as little physical contact as possible, and geared to be good-natured: fine.
“Hey, run up to the Shop teacher and ask for a handful of left-handed nails.” Sure.
Holding someone down and cutting their hair? Criminal.
I was bullied constantly, but I suppose I was never “hazed” as such because I never wanted to join any groups. After all the bullying I hated everyone else at school too much to even consider it. Although I suppose I might have been hazed in the sense of “bully everyone in the sixth grade” and never noticed, since there’d be nothing to pick that out from the rest of the bullying.
As for my opinion; I consider it a form of bullying, and a form of manipulation. All sorts of cults, gangs and radical groups use the same techniques to produce group loyalty. Although the outright criminal/fanatic ones naturally more tend towards the brutal and ruthless end of the spectrum.
I see that this is a bit of zombie, but what they heck.
Fraternity in the 80s. Hazing consisted of drinking a cheap, warm beer at random times - including in the middle of night (aka a “rollout”). If you had a midterm, you could substitute for something like Clamato and avoid the alcohol.
Never was scared, never fel abused - just drank a bunch of cheap beer. They had a rule of no hard alcohol in those situations so that nobody would have to go to the hospital to get their stomach pumped or worse.
All of this was still in violation of the University and our National Fraternity hazing policy - but so was drinking, drugs, and having girls sleep over.