Rethinking Hazing, Strength & Leadership
Hazing is a leadership issue
What kind of leadership are we modeling?
During National Hazing Awareness Week, Byron Hurt’s acclaimed documentary HAZING challenges students and educators to confront the deeper cultural forces that allow hazing to persist.
National Hazing Awareness Week (Sept. 21 – Sept. 25) brings students, educators, coaches, fraternity and sorority leaders, and campus administrators together to raise awareness about hazing and strengthen efforts to prevent it.
A crucial part of that work is helping people connect individual incidents to the broader cultural norms that shape ideas about leadership, belonging, strength, and power.
That insight lies at the heart of award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt’s riveting documentary HAZING. The film brings us face to face with what happens when humiliation is mistaken for belonging, cruelty for character, and domination for leadership. It also points toward a different model of strength and leadership rooted in accountability, empathy, and courage.
In addition to his groundbreaking work as a documentary filmmaker, Hurt is a longtime gender violence prevention educator who helped pioneer a leadership-based model of bystander intervention. He brings that perspective to this film, viewing hazing not simply as individual misconduct but as a broader cultural phenomenon shaped by powerful ideas about group identity, masculinity, power, and leadership. Drawing on conversations with members of Black and historically white Greek-letter organizations, athletes, military personnel, survivors, families, and prevention experts, HAZING explores why hazing persists across so many institutions and what it will take to change the conditions that sustain it.
The result is an extraordinary teaching resource for classrooms, orientations, athletic programs, fraternity and sorority education, and campus-wide programming for National Hazing Awareness Week and throughout the academic year.
During National Hazing Awareness Week, let’s do more than ask students to be leaders. Let’s give them the tools to think critically about what leadership really means.
👉 Learn how to access HAZING for classroom, orientation, athletic, or campus-wide use. HAZING is also available as part of our MEF Premium Collection.*
👉 Request a screening quote for your college, university, organization, or community event.
👉 Visit Byron Hurt’s website, home of God Bless the Child Productions.
More Resources for Educators and Campus Leaders
👉 Download the free HAZING Viewing Guide
Co-authored by God Bless the Child Productions and StopHazing, this comprehensive guide helps educators and campus leaders turn a screening into a substantive educational program. It includes:
- An overview of hazing as a form of interpersonal violence
- Foundational concepts and research on hazing prevention
- Guidance for planning screenings and facilitating discussions
- Discussion questions and reflection prompts
- Companion resources on leadership, power dynamics, mental health, and bystander intervention
👉 Download the free Bystander Intervention Guide
Authored by StopHazing, this guide is designed to help students and campus leaders recognize harmful group dynamics, challenge norms that enable hazing, and act before abuse occurs.
👉 Get other resources from StopHazing
* The MEF Premium Collection offers flexible subscription and permanent-access licensing options. To learn more, contact Stephen Belcourt at [email protected].
Praise for the Film
“HAZING is a powerful tool for Greek chapters, teams, and other organizations to frame why hazing cultures must change and how to begin those difficult conversations. Byron Hurt courageously shares his experiences and takes the viewer on a harrowing journey with hazing survivors and grieving families to examine the true cost of these brutal rituals.”
— Susie Bruce | Director, Gordie Center, University of Virginia
“HAZING should be required viewing by every high school and college student in the country. Violence within our fraternities, sororities, bands, and sports teams is not inevitable. But it takes a collective effort from organizations and members to solve the problem, and HAZING is the call to action we’ve needed to progress toward a solution.”
— Lawrence Ross | Author, The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities
“HAZING directly confronts the hypocrisy of Greek-letter organizations that proclaim virtue, yet practice violence. Watch HAZING to understand why one or the other will become either our hallmark or our headstone.”
— Dr. Matthew W. Hughey | Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut and co-author of A Pledge with Purpose: Black Sororities and Fraternities and the Fight for Equality
“Hurt is uniquely empathetic to those who fall victim to groupthink and extends this grace to the viewer. Taking a stark look at the psychological, societal, and historical components of hazing, Hurt sparks a captivating conversation around the anxieties and expectations of belonging—and what will be sacrificed to achieve it.”
— Shakira Refos | Tribeca Festival
