Editorial - Stop all hazing now

The death of Marvin Reglos, a first year law student at San Beda, in initiation rites or hazing, seems to have provoked investigations only into who were responsible for his death. No attempt seems to have been made to determine the culpability of the school to which he belonged.

Hazing has long been outlawed as a matter of policy by the government. But as every Filipino student knows, hazing, and the fraternities that conduct them, continues to be as much a part of school life as are ballpens and notebooks.

In fact, with the sea change in the nature of fraternities — from being honor societies to just being short of gangs of hoods — the application of hazing as an instrument to exact loyalty from prospective members has become even more imperative.

Loyalty often translates into security in an environment marked by jealous and often violent rivalries. This is even more so in the streets where the non-scholastic frats carve out their territories in blood rather than in medals.

It has become very alarming that street gangs masquerading under the false nobility of Greek letter nomenclatures now make the news with increasing regularity for criminal involvement rather than academic achievement.

The violent nature of the activities of these groups makes them very high profile, thus underscoring the impossibility of their passing unnoticed by either school or law enforcement authorities.

This means that the problem has not been given the importance and attention it deserves by all the concerned authorities. This in turn explains why all investigations pertaining to the death of Reglos never went beyond determining who those physically involved were.

But lest the authorities declare the case closed with the arrest of those involved in the hazing, they must take a look into the reasons why hazing continues to take place within school campuses. And if sanctions need to be slapped on schools, then they should be slapped silly.

There is a particular painfulness regarding hazing deaths. And that is because they involve students, for whose future and dreams their parents made every imaginable sacrifice just to fulfill and realize. Nothing is more wasted than the life of a student lost to hazing.