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I am the new Activities Director at Litigation High School. After reading and reviewing the LHS Risk Management Plan, I noticed there is no mention of hazing. Hazing is defined as any activity expected of someone joining a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses, or endangers, regardless of persons willingness to participate. I understand the risks that can come from hazing, so I am implanting hazing into our risk management plan.
The first step in the risk management plan is risk identification . Often times, students have trouble understand exactly what hazing is. Along with this, if they know hazing is happening, they lack the information on the steps they should take to report it. The University of Rochester has a great quote on hazing, it states Being able to identify hazing is an important step in eliminating it . Their website goes on to say that hazing can fall into three different sections. Those sections are power differential hazing, harassment hazing, and violent hazing. Power differential hazing, often falsely viewed as harmless, is usually more mental than physical. In most cases, it occurs with new members and existing members of a group. It compromises respect between people and leads to ridicule, embarrassment, and humiliation of new members. Harassment hazing leads to emotional and physical stress. Most of the time, it is unwanted verbal abuse when someone makes fun of someone for things like race, color, religion, sex, origin, age, or disabilities. The last type of hazing, violent hazing, is engaging in activities that cause physical, emotional, or psychological harm to new members. This Is often times through initiation activities for members attempting to join a new group.
The next step in the risk management process is risk assessment. As we learned in lecture, risk assessment is the process of determining the probability that particular risks will result in claims during a specified period and the magnitude of the potential liability arising from such claims . Now that we know what the types of hazing are, we are going to look into the risks of hazing. According to Babson College, 71% of people who are hazed suffer from negative consequences. Some of those consequences are physical, emotional, or mental instability, sleep problems, loss of control and empowerment, decline in grades and coursework, relationship issues, post-traumatic stress syndrome, loss of respect and interest in an organization, trust issues with group members, illness/hospitalization, and in some cases death. The risks the person doing the hazing are being faced with legal actions, disciplinary actions, membership sanctions, and personal impact. On top of this, school districts and the school itself can also be faced with these sanctions as well if they do not take the proper steps to eliminate or control the hazing. Quoting the website Inside Hazing, in high school 1.5 million high school students receive some form of hazing every year. 91% of high school students belong to a group, and 48% of them report being subjected to hazing activities. This website also goes on to say that 92% of high school students will not report a hazing. 59% know of hazing activities and 21% admit to being involved in hazing. With that information, we can conclude that the risk of having a claim can be extremely high since so many kids receive hazing each year. Looking at the history however, we can determine that a majority of kids do not report hazing. It is always beneficial to stay on the safe side, so our priorities will include a no tolerance policy for hazing at Litigation High School.
The next step in the risk management process is risk evaluation. The mission statement of Litigation High School is to continue our tradition of excellence in an opportunity filled world. We encourage kids to obtain knowledge in a safe environment with a tight core of high-quality educators to prepare our students to achieve excellence in their desired field of study. We honor success and encourage students to promote pride in themselves and in our community. We strive to help our students develop character both inside and outside of the classroom to enable students to be able to operate at the highest level of their ability. With that being said, we can evaluate the risks of hazing in conjunction with our mission statement. We encourage kids to be involved in groups, athletics, and to be involved in the community. We understand that hazing can be involved in an initiation process for students to be involved in groups or athletics. Since we have a zero-tolerance policy for hazing, we need to develop strategies to eliminate hazing activities to occur. The Indiana University of Pennsylvania has a great 7 step process of eliminating hazing. Their handbook lists the steps as follows:
- Recognize the existence of hazing
- Interpret the practices as a problem
- Believe that they have a responsibility to do something
- Know what to do
- Acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to act
- Overcome fear of potential negative consequences
- Take Action
We will start by digging to the first step Recognize the existence of hazing . At Litigation High School, we will sit down with the students and explain to them what hazing is. We will go into depth about power differential hazing, harassment hazing, and violent hazing. The next step, Interpret the practices as a problem , we will explain to the kids that if they are aware of hazing, they need to understand that it is problematic and that something needs to be done. The third step, Believe they have a responsibility to do something , means that after they interpret the hazing practices they observe as problematic; they need to understand that they have a responsibility to take action. The best way to get this point across is to put themselves in the shoes as the person that is being hazed. By doing this, they will understand that getting hazed is not fair and can be very detrimental to their health. They will then understand that they need to take action. In order to take action, they will need to understand the fourth step Know what to do . We will explain to them that they can encourage the person to leave the group to avoid the hazing, report the hazing to a faculty member (anonymously if they wish), or encourage the group to modify their practices. The fifth step, acquire the knowledge and skills to act , would be giving students the information on what to say and how to say it to the person they are reporting the hazing to. Whether that means they are reporting it to the person receiving the hazing, a faculty member, or the group member doing the hazing, the student will understand the proper terms and skills to report the hazing. Step number six, Overcome fear of potential negative consequences , means giving the students the confidence to report the hazing. We understand students may not report hazing because they are scared of receiving negative consequences such as retaliation or anger/hate from the person doing the hazing. At Litigation High School, we will do everything we can to provide students with the confidence to report hazing and explain they their actions could save a person life or make their life a lot easier and more enjoyable. The final step, Take Action , means the student has provided the necessary information to a respondent and the hazing has be deceased.
The next step in our risk management plan in develop a preventive law plan. The four clauses of a preventive law plan are risk elimination, risk retention, risk transfer, and risk control. We mention in our mission statement that we encourage kids to obtain knowledge in a SAFE environment, so we want to make sure our students are able to operate without worrying or being fearful of hazing. Since we have a zero-tolerance policy, we also highly advise groups and sports teams to avoid hazing newcomers. Looking into the first aspect of the preventive law plan, we want to eliminate risks as best we can. We do not want to take the easy way out and shut down groups or athletic teams for the rest of the year if hazing occurs. However, if we do get reports of hazing, we will pull the people doing the hazing from the activity and will not allow them to participate until the issue is resolved. The next part of our preventive law plan is risk control, which means having a plan in place to have a reduction of risk for our program. As mentioned earlier, we will follow the 7 steps to inform kids of what hazing is and how to prevent and report it.
The final step in our risk management plan is implementing our preventive law plan. By starting off, we will make sure that our prevention plan is an agreement with our core values and our mission statement. We will also use it as a management tool by making sure teachers, students, and faculty members have access to our plan at all times. Whether that means having in online or in a handbook, anyone can access our plan anytime. We will also hold a meeting with our teachers and faculty and make sure that they understand in the importance of our plan and know how to spread the word and remind their students about our preventative plan.
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