Did Your High School Have Hazings?

Hazing became pretty much illegal sometime during the late 70s/early 80s, and people stopped doing it (at least stopped the way they did it in this movie). I was born in the 90s, I never experienced it and probably most of us never did (I say we should consider ourselves lucky).

Class of '77 here (same as Pink, Bennie, Jodie, etc.). Our HS in western PA had hazings (we called it "initiation"), but they were administered by the various clubs. If you weren't in a club or in Band you stayed under the radar. I don't remember any group using paddles, but the FFA (Future Farmers of America) club was especially demented; one classmate got axle grease in his hair (he looked like a '50s greaser the next day, even though he told us he'd used a bottle of shampoo and two bars of soap trying to get the glop out); the following year ('78) a kid got Nair put down his shorts, possibly making him one of the earliest known "metrosexuals".

"Randy lay there like a slug! It was his only defense." - Jean Shepherd (A Christmas Story)

Shaving freshmen's heads...but I only remember one actual case, and he was popular already b/c he was a pop warner football player and his sister was a junior at the high school.

That was in 1983 btw.

I started High school in the early 90's and will there was some hazing (initiation we called it), it was starting to be phased out

My HS didn't (80's) and that paddle *beep* would have resulted in the paddlers getting the crap kicked out of them lol

My understanding is the type of hazing shown in the movie would have been unusual at the time, but potentially accepted in some places like in the movie. I think it was included to demonstrate the difference between the movie and present time, when it would have been considered unacceptable.

I went to high school in the early to mid 90's and some clubs had "hazing" for new members, it was mostly just them getting woken up early one day and having to dress all stupid and have a bunch of makeup applied all day at school. They may have had to recite a canned answer to an upperclassman during school when prompted, but nothing too damaging as far as I was aware of. It was a large enough school with enough clubs that did it that it wasn't too embarrassing because of how often it happened. In other words it was expected, so people didn't think twice about seeing someone dressed up like that. It was more of an initiation than an actual hazing. However, I didn't have to participate in either end of it, so I'm just going by what I observed.

Graduated from what was known as jr high in 1978, and this movie pretty much sums up what happened on the last day of school in my neck of the woods. We had a strong jr high/high school connection, so that could be part of it. I've always said if you could take this movie & Fast Times at Ridgemont High and mash them together you would have a perfect representation of my high school!

I started high school in 2001. Fortunately, there were no hazings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utpQeDOIm0Q