“Any activity expected of someone joining or participating in a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses, or endangers them regardless of a person’s willingness to participate.”

Hazing. A word so prevalent in today’s society that you hear it whether you’re in a sorority or not.

According to StopHazing.org, 73 percent of social fraternity or sorority members have experienced at least one hazing behavior. Whether your sorority sister “makes” you run across campus singing a super embarrassing song or “forces” you to drink past your tolerance at a party, these scenarios fall under the category of hazing.

The first week that I joined my sorority, we had to attend a mandatory presentation about the dangers of hazing and how to report/prevent it. I remember thinking, “this is stupid” and how I was “wasting my time” because I would never get hazed.

Thankfully, my sorority doesn’t haze new members, so I never felt pressured to do anything that I wasn’t comfortable with.

But after attending the presentation and learning what falls under the hazing category, I realized that I have been hazed in other aspects of my life.

My senior year of high school, I moved to a new city, making me the vulnerable new kid. I met a group of friends who seemed popular and “cool” at the time. When I first started hanging out with them, I always felt pressured to do exactly what they did in regards to drinking and partying, even though I was going against my parents’ expectations of me.

I specifically remember one night where I told my friends that I wouldn’t be drinking because I had SAT prep later that night with my dad. The moment I murmured the word “no,” they started harassing and pressuring me to drink, saying that if I didn’t drink they would never be my friends and that I was a loser.