High school hazing — pervading groups from athletic teams to the yearbook staff and debate team — is as widespread as ever despite efforts over the last two decades to eradicate the practice.

Like college students, high school students are susceptible to peer pressure and intimidation within group activities, engaging in conduct normally thought unacceptable.

Often, parents are shocked when the truth is revealed. Hazing particularly plagues high school athletics throughout the country, while also growing more brutal, a new study has found.

Researchers have discovered that 47 percent of college students reported having been hazed while still in high school. The study found hazing included activities from silly stunts to drinking games, with 8 percent of the students drinking to the point of sickness or passing out.

Earlier this year, a high school wrestling team in Monroe, Michigan was investigated by local law enforcement when parents reported that some of the youngest members of the wrestling team had been urinated on in the showers and held down and sexually assaulted by upperclassmen on the team.

A similar incident victimized the son of an assistant coach of the wrestling team in a Nevada high school. The Nevada students admitted that during a tournament trip, they taped the victim’s eyes, mouth and arms, pulled off his pants, taped him to a coffee table and spanked him with a spatula before locking him outside the hotel room. Then, when he was let back in, he was spanked again and urinated on in the shower.

More common, and much more troubling, is the conduct of football team members involved in a hazing incident at a New Mexico high school last season. Three team members were charged with criminal sexual penetration in the second degree, criminal sexual contact of a minor in the second degree, two counts of conspiracy to commit criminal sexual penetration in the second degree and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

But, according to incident reports, two possible victims of sexual hazing “revealed that they did not feel that they were victims of abuse, battery or sexual assault.”

The victims each described being grabbed, held, groped and punched, but “they advised that the incidents occurred in the locker room after practice and described the actions as being more ‘joking around’ than being a victim of a crime.”

Younger team members proved to be very reluctant witnesses. This attitude demonstrates both a desensitizing to unacceptable physical molestation and the growing sexual nature of many hazing activities.

There is a wide spectrum of behaviorthat is correctly characterized as hazing. But any activity that produces mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment or ridicule is hazing. Any initiation practice that is physically abusive, hazardous and/or sexually violating, involving domination of group members by other group members should be considered hazing. The specific behaviors or activities within these categories may vary widely among participants, groups and settings, but all have a common intent.

A pivotal study on student hazing, “The Alfred University Hazing Study” (1999), defines hazing as “any activity expected of someone joining a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses or endangers, regardless of the person’s willingness to participate.”

Most high school students do not perceive even the most dangerous initiation activities as hazing. Only 15 percent ofthe students who answered a recent survey said they thought they were hazed in high school, but twice as many reported abusing substances or committing dangerous acts as part of their initiation.

Even though high school students’ self-report of hazing is substantially lower than the actual behaviors reported, a total of 29 percent said they had been hazed, witnessed hazing and/or left a group because of hazing.

When one considers that 67 percent of high school students are involved in athletics, and 35 percent of those surveyed reported being subjected to some form of hazing, then approximately 800,000 high school athletes per year are being subjected to hazing.

Hazing is different from conventional bullying. Bullies do not want the victim to be part of their group, and their goal is to humiliate, ostracize and degrade the victim, promoting feelings of superiority.

But hazing involves a group dynamic and coercion. Hazing continues to be a widespread problem in high school. These students to the practice of hazing, suffering the immediate humiliation and physical pain and often long-term consequences of the abuse. Students must be convinced that hazing harms others, weakens rather than builds a team and should never be tolerated.

Is Someone You Know Being Hazed? What to Look For…

• Cutting, branding, labeling or shaving parts of the body
• Required carrying of certain items
• Loss of voice due to having to yell
• Required attendance at late-night work sessions, resulting in sleep deprivation
• Not coming home for days or weeks at a time
• Not being able to sit down or soreness from paddling
• Appearance of mental exhaustion or withdrawal from normal lifestyle; change in personality
• Appearance of sadness or expressions of inferiority
• Withdrawal from normal activities or friends
• Being dropped off and made to find the way back
• Photos of hazing activities are commonly found on a public Web space

— Linda Chalat is an attorney with Chalat,Hatten & Koupel PC in Denver, Colorado.