Science on hazing

Philippine Military Academy Cadet 4th Class Darwin Dormitorio was laid to rest by family and friends on Wednesday, his case adding to a number of fatal incidents arising from the culture of hazing.

The issue is not about to be buried with the cadet anytime soon, as there is an upcoming congressional inquiry into his death, and new details have emerged about how he and several others were tortured by upperclassmen.

The country already has an anti-hazing law in place, Republic Act 11053 or the Anti-Hazing Act of 2018. But the recent incident at the country’s premier military school shows that this practice of hazing is not going to be gone anytime soon.

Historian Alfred McCoy had written that the ritual called “hazing” had started since the birth of the PMA in 1936 – with 40 upperclassmen who were transferees from the superseded Constabulary Academy inflicting the trauma on 120 fresh cadets.

But veiled justifications about the practice of hazing in close-knit groups and military academies, like that made by two PMA alumni, Senator Bato dela Rosa and Philippine National Police chief Oscar Albayalde, show the tacit acceptance of hazing that still prevails today within their circles.

Authorities and well-placed individuals like Dela Rosa and Albayalde may try to provide anecdotal evidence of how the violent ritual helped shape them into what they have become today – hardened warriors in the battlefield of work and life. But beyond the anecdotes and self-proclaimed quips of wisdom of those who survived the trauma, what does the body of scientific evidence really say about hazing?

Much of the science about hazing that I read point toward the need to reject this age-old practice in this modern age, or at the very least, to recontextualize its meaning and function.

First, we must be clear about what hazing means. Let me adopt the definition stated in anthropologist Aldo Cimino’s 2011 paper on the evolution of hazing published in the Journal of Cognition and Culture. Cimino defined hazing as the cost of being acknowledged as a legitimate member of a group but which “appear unattributable to group-relevant assessments, preparations, or chance.”

In other words, hazing is something totally unrelated to military training and is to be distinguished from the initiations and rituals that cadet recruits have to undergo in order to shed their civilian character, instill moral and physical discipline, and promote cohesion, commitment, and loyalty among the ranks.

For example, the hellish “beast barracks” that cadet neophytes have to undergo during the first few weeks in the academy can be designed to test the physical and psychological limits of the cadets’ abilities. It can be an initial assessment about their prospects to survive four rigorous years in the academy.

In the words of McCoy, the indoctrinated ideology of service to the nation and “the mutual support, shared humiliations and sufferings, and the rigid rhythms of syncopated drills,” solidly knit together a class of professional warriors who follow the chain of command and value their professional integrity.

On the other hand, the unspoken tradition of upperclassmen beating up cadets black and blue, tasing their genitals, and subjecting them to all other kinds of physical and mental torture behind closed doors, do not at all appear relevant to the academy’s mandate to mold its students into hardened professional warriors and technically and morally superior defenders of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the nation.

Theories that justify the practice of hazing – such as it supposedly “generates group solidarity,” “promotes respect for dominant authority”, and “allows for the selection of committed group members” – have been debunked in several studies which largely conclude that hazing merely serves as an “artificial stress sliding toward the slippery slope of unacceptable behavior.”

If at all, according to a post-graduate study done by US Marine Captain Joseph S. Groah at the Naval Postgraduate School in 2005, hazing resulted to a number of adverse medical conditions among cadets and negative feelings about their own personal health. The same study also found that hazing experiences tend to have no impact on the cohesion among the members of the cadet class, precisely because the shared hardships of the military training model have already done that role.

“Midshipmen with greater exposure to hazing reported lower levels of satisfaction and commitment; and higher levels of psychological distress. Hazing did not have a significant impact on either cohesion or self-esteem,” the study concluded.