What!? Where do you work?
Heh, where do you work? I’ve been working on a proposal for several weeks, and some of the managers at the highest levels are engaged in a pissing contest. This past week we got a “stop work” order on the proposal for about six hours, which was reversed the next morning. However, I had to scramble to start reassigning people to other activities that day, and then had to gather them up and get them back on it the next day. The manager who did this is now dead to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up having to pay for it in a thousand little ways: attrition of the good workers, higher costs and strange little emergencies that send people into panics. (I’m just guessing here).
In addition to the many good theories suggested here, I also think that college lacks one of the subtle elements of classical bullying: total social social ostracism. Not all victims of bullying are ostracized by everyone, but for those that are, I think it is one of the most soul-draining parts of the experience–its not just that a handful of kids are being tremendous assholes, it’s that everyone else treats you like an untouchable. In college, this simply doesn’t happen. There’s no cohesive community understanding of who is on the “untouchable” list, so it’s not like you go to the cafeteria and everyone knows not to sit by you. You may not have friends, but at least you can be anonymous.
Political drama is incompetent and petty, sure, but how is any of that bullying?
There have been a lot of good answers posted above, but I’ll add one in that nobody has mentioned yet, I think.
Physical maturity. Unless you jump directly into the college without even a summer break, It is usually something like another third to half a year before you get there. A lot of the the physically behind kids have continued to grow and have caught up quite a bit. particularly so if they took jobs that require physical labor. The physical differences are no so pronounced, and the bullies know that. It is easy to pick on the kid who is half a foot shorter than everyone else and weighs 100 lbs. It isn’t so easy to pick on that same kid who has grown several inches and gained considerable weight over the summer/ year off. Everyone is much closer in size and physical maturity.
To use myself as an example, I met up with a friend of mine from high school at my college in my softmore year. While she hadn’t changed a bit, but she was stunned to see that in the intervening time, I had gone from a skinny 5’2, 100 lbs to 5’7, 150lbs of muscle. At first she had a hard time believing it was really me. I imagine a lot of the bullies wouldn’t have bothered if I had matured earlier. By college I was just another guy on the short end of average height, and weight. For a lot of people that makes all the difference in the world.
I think it might be a lack of a general social hierarchy. High school lasts for long enough and is generally small enough that you know most people, at least in your year, by sight or reputation, and it’s reputation that’s the important part. A bully knows, when they do what they do, what the reaction of others will be to them and to the bullied person - if it’s going to be laughing along with and throwing scorn and the victim, it’s safe. If it’s anger and reproachment, it isn’t. When you get to college, you’re no longer so certain about what people are like and who is held in esteem by who - punch someone and you might be disliked for it.
Of course this can work the other way too, sadly. Personal experience of moving from a high school to a sixth form in another high school elsewhere (my borough didn’t have sixth forms, at the time) leaving you with about 5 or so random people you don’t know too well attempting to join a social structure that’s had years to develop isn’t massive fun.
The difference between 14 year old high school freshmen and 18 year old high school seniors is enormous. The difference between 18 year old college freshmen and 22 year old college seniors is much smaller.
Bolding mine.
We can sit here all day and talk about what it’s supposed to be, but the fact that it often manifests as this:
is what is making it seem to you that people are ‘not grasping’ the difference.
Even if a hazing is fully intended to be the sort of bonding experience and test you describe, the bond is created via intimidation and humiliation and its future dynamics will echo that (i.e: the bond will not be between equals) and the test is just a test of how much bullying you will endure for the privilege of ‘earning’ a likely submissive relationship to a bully or group thereof. It’s bullying with a purpose, sure. It’s still bullying.
The bond is between you and your fellow hazees with whom you are sharing the experience. It’s usually not a solitary experience.
That said, there’s also the understanding that the hazers were once the hazees, and that you’ll get your chance to be the hazer later on.
Still, a lot of hazers simply take advantage of the opportunity to have fun brutalizing others. But it’s limited; once it’s over, it’s over. Having passed through the fire, you’ve earned the right to be accepted as part of the group.
First I want to define the term “hazing”. For the purpose of this discussion, I mean “hazing” to be any activity associated with the pledging processes. Some people use the term only to mean abusive bullying behavior so I just want to set that straight.
If you join a sports team and your coach makes you run laps, is that bullying? What about if you start a new job and you have to do all the shit work for the first year? There is a concept of “paying your dues”. You just don’t get to walk into a group and enjoy the highest benefits of the group.
Here’s an example of the difference. Hazing would be the standard practice of making the pledges clean the house and perform other chores (especially after parties). Bullying would be to intentionally fuck up the house in order to make their job that much more miserable.
My fraternity has seen an increase in the bullying sort of hazing and we do not condone it. The bullying you describe is counterproductive to the idea of brotherhood. Not only does it create rifts between each class, it creates problems for alumni as well as returning alumni feel entitled to fuck with the current members of the house again.
Also, I don’t like the term “bullied”. It implies a certain powerlessness of person on the receiving end. A person doesn’t “bully” me. They pick a fight. I then choose how I wish to respond to it. Bullying, IMHO, conjures up images of some goon pushing around some weakling they know can’t or won’t do anything.
My high school had about 1200 students. Bullying was common. My university had something over 10 times that many. Just one guy I knew in the dorm the single semester I lived there tried to have a go at high school style bullying. It didn’t work out for him quite as he had hoped.