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Hazing Quotes

Browse 16 quotes about Hazing.

Hazing Quotes

“I was not really sure what my father did in the army. His job seemed mainly to involve two activities: One was rushing to his station to signal an alert drill daily at 9:00 p.m...The other activity was catching runaway soldiers...I could not get the adults to explain why anyone wanted to run away. Where were they going? There were soldiers everywhere. They were used as a general workforce, sweeping the streets, driving cars, hauling stuff around. Others were always marching somewhere. Often they would waylay schoolkids near a store and ask them to go in to buy something. They were afraid to go in themselves because they might be spotted by a patrol on the lookout for soldiers absent from their unit without leave. The soldiers didn't look particularly happy, but neither did they seem so unhappy they might be thinking of running off into the forest. As I found out later, they were running away because of dedovshchina ("bullying"). Bullying of raw recruits by older soldiers reached such a level that in 1982 the minister of defense had to issue a secret order, "On Combating Nonregulation Relations," thereby recognizing it as a widespread practice. Hazing became a self-replicating system. You joined the army, got beaten up, your money was taken from you, and you were forced to scrub floors and do the laundry of the "older" soldiers, who joined the army just a year and a half before you. After all these humiliations, you just waited for your turn to beat up the rookies, because that was just the way it was, a necessary part of army life, something that transformed a civilian wimp into a real man. The system was often tacitly endorsed by officers, who saw it as a self-regulating system of training and discipline. For example, some rural idiot joins the army, fails to understand elementary commands, looks scruffy, and is generally hopeless. So then the staff sergeant punches him a couple of times in the middle of the chest ("in the soul"), which really huts (you cannot punch him in the face, because the marks would show), and he immediately comes to his senses and starts behaving like a seasoned soldier. Needless to say, such an idiotic practice did nothing to improve discipline, and fundamentally undermined respect for the army. Soldiers returning home after two years of national service luridly described the bullying to those yet to be conscripted. It closely resembled the revelations of people returning from prison. Mothers listened in horror and then had no wish to send their sons off to the army. Periodically, after yet another unfortunate young man, unable any longer to bear the hazing, committed suicide or shot his abusers, the army would launch another anti-bullying campaign, which never did any good. The practice is institutionalized and can only be combated by changing the institution, primarily by creating an army in which professional servicemen and servicewomen are paid a salary to defend the county. What is not needed is an army that depends on hapless youths taken from their families (for two years in the U.S.S.R., and nowadays for one) who are forced to spend their time in an institution that is a bizarre form of survival school. Curiously, the army takes a certain pride in this constant imbecility, as I began to notice as I grew older. It was regularly remarked that our soldiers and officers were so inured to carrying out ridiculous orders-for example, with my own eyes I saw soldiers painting grass green before inspection-that, under fire, they would perform miracles of discipline. Because they lived in such poverty and were so used to hardship, there could be no doubt that in the event of war the pampered Americans, with their luxurious barracks and individual apartments for officers, would be defeated.”

“God told us to love everyone. However, when you don’t like someone then you need to walk away and focus not on him or her, but the hatred you’re harboring. Otherwise, you will allow your piety to take over. Before you know it, you’re using the gospel as a sword to slice other religious people apart, which have offended you. From your point of helplessness, it will be is easy to recruit people that will mistake your kindness as righteousness, when in reality it is a hidden agenda to humiliate through the words of Christ. This game is so often used by women in the Christian faith, that it is the number one reason why many people become inactive. It is a silent, unspoken hypocrisy that is inconsistent with the teachings of the gospel. If you choose not to like someone, then avoid them. If you wish to love them, the only way to overcome your frustrations is through empathy, prayer, forgiveness and allowing yourself time to heal through distance. Try focusing on what you share as sisters in the gospel, rather than the negative aspects you dislike about that person.”

“Why do so many young people literally die to belong to fraternities, sororities, and other college social organizations? The answer is complicated, but here is a starting point: Ever since the medieval universities were founded, young people have done whatever it takes to gain acceptance, to break with their past lives, to achieve a sense of power, to carve out a society of their own that isn't quite what their tutors and teachers had in mind. In the United States, hazing and drinking have been endemic since colonial days.”

“This is part of what it means to become holy, to be refined by fire. Difficulties and sufferings are God's form of hazing. Sometimes it gets so hard, we think Him cruel. But He's only looking for men and women who will keep their cool when things go horribly wrong, a people prepared to dash into burning rooms to rescue those about to be engulfed in flames.”

“My dad was in a fraternity back in the 1950s, and they sound really fun back then. Nowadays they sound like they can get a little heavy-duty in terms of the hazing and the drinking. Im not so much into the idea of being made to do a bunch of insane stuff just so I can have the privilege of hanging around certain people... Thats probably why I was never in a fraternity.”