During the fall of 1993, the Cordova Times published a letter from a concerned parent of a Cordova High School ninth grader.
The mother said she wanted an end to the “degrading” practice of hazing — or “freshman initiation” — as “the tradition” euphemistically was labeled by students and school officials alike.
“Not only are we promoting activities that have definite sexual overtones, we are also promoting peer pressure,” stated the parent who signed her name to the latter.
“There’s got to be boundaries or you end up with mayhem,” she concluded.
The Cordova school principal and superintendent poohpoohed the complaint, saying the complaint about initiations was the first he received in a decade. Initiations at Cordova High School went back about 20 years at that point.
He acknowledged that the initiation was approved by himself and school advisers, according to the Daily Sitka Sentinel on Oct. 12, 1993.
The initiation resembled longtime customs of servitude present in British schools and, in America’s schools, since colonial times.
The “traditional” task of the sophomores was to invent “stunts” for their charges to perform.
The superintendent said events “deemed inappropriate are banned,” contradicting the parent who found the events degrading.
In other words, to be an act rising to the level of hazing, it had to rise to an offense in the administrator’s view.
A second Cordova parent whose ninth grade daughter skipped the initiation in ’93 told the Daily Sitka Sentinel that freshman girls might have to parade around in bikinis.
Boys either that year or in preceding years did simulate belly dancing or flex their muscles, according to news reports.
“I would call that sexual harassment,” that second parent argued about commands to undress.
Not so, said the 1993 school board president.
“If it stays to the degree it has been, I approve of it,” the school board president announced.
The 1993 initiation also included sophomores dumping condiments and whipped cream on the ninth graders.
Up to this point, many Alaska newspapers looked upon hazing as “a time-honored tradition.”
“Monroe’s Freshman Initiation week . . . was apparently a success, both for Freshman slaves and Senior Masters,” noted the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in 1969.
It described first year student duties at Fairbanks High School such as a Kangaroo Kourt, pushing pennies down a hallways, acts of servitude, and commands for freshman to don ragtag costumes that included ballet tights, long johns, and women’s clothing for boys. Another year, seniors hit newcomers with raw eggs and daubed them with butch wax lipstick and molasses.
“To top off the day, the slaves [in weird garments] were loaded into trucks and dumped off, in all their glory, in the heart of beautiful downtown Fairbanks,” wrote the News-Miner reporter.
The Nome Nugget once praised a freshmen initiation conducted in the dark lighted only by candles:
“After floggings were administered to chastise [new students] for disobedience to their better, and other minor hardships were inflicted upon them, they were admitted as full fledged members of the High School.”
But not before the freshmen were paraded in ridiculous attire down Nome’s Front Street.
The Kodiak Mirror in 1962 relished the sight “of poor frosh (with) inside out jeans, unmatched footwear, straggly hair, and no makeup” attending an assembly to punish freshman rules violators “to the amusement of all.”
My research revealed a list of Alaska hazing infractions from 1942 to the present day.
Here is a small sampling:
Anchorage High School
August 1942
One youth served one day in jail, and another had his driving license revoked, after “a long list of dirty tricks” connected to hazing was reported by irate parents, according to the Fairbanks Daily News Miner of Aug. 18, 1942.
Dimond High School
Anchorage
1990
Nine members of the school’s hockey team pinned down a freshman and shaved his pubic hair. Published on Dec. 21, 1990, local police told the Anchorage Times: “The hazing went further than it should have gone. But I don’t think it would rise to the level of a criminal prosecution.” Nine players were suspended for three games and assistant coach Chris Barnett (who was present but failed to interfere) resigned under pressure.
Service High School
Anchorage
1999
Two serious hazing incidents were reported involving the Service football squad. Twelve players were suspended after duct taping a rookie. The coach declined a reporter’s request for more details. The Anchorage Police Department belatedly investigated a second incident on a team trip to Hawaii to see if the acts constituted sexual assault. Five players received a nine-game suspension.
West Anchorage High School
Anchorage
2005
Nine upper-class students served suspension after paddling freshmen and making them eat raw eggs or wieners.
Juneau School District
2014
Superintendent Mark Miller punished seven seniors for paddling first-year students.
Dimond High School
Anchorage
2018
Dimond High School football players were accused of an initiation that authorities described as amounting to sexual assault during a game trip to Fairbanks.
West Valley Wolfpack football
Fairbanks
2019
Three students who could not swim were ordered into the pool by the then head coach. The coach prohibited a lifeguard and assistant coaches from taking action. The lives of the three were saved by CPR. This act of hazing occurred at the University of Alaska Fairbanks pool. The three were transported to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital for overnight observation. One student had turned purple before he received CPR.
Fast forward to 2024. Nationwide, freshman initiations have dwindled, and at many schools, halted altogether. Any high school administrator who approved students belly dancing or parading in scantly clothing would soon face the wrath of a Title IX legal challenge.
High school athletic hazing in boys’ sports (and occasionally among female cheerleaders), however, has spiraled out of control nationwide. These include acts better left undescribed in a family newspaper, but the charges include rape, sexual assault, and penetration with unseemly, dangerous objects.
Nationwide, and in Canada, hazing in hockey often involves abhorrent acts.
Elsewhere in the nation, hazing reform is well in evidence.
A bipartisan Stop Campus Hazing Act to protect students passed in 2024 in the U.S. House of Representatives and is now up for consideration in the U.S. Senate. (It is my hope that Alaska’s senators will support the bill).
State by state, the U.S, now has 44 states with hazing laws, around 15 allowing for felony charges in the case of death or other consequential harm. At the college level, many of the hazing deaths involve coerced alcohol drinking.
Alaska is one of the six states without a hazing law.
Alaska’s legislature considered hazing legislation in 2005 and again in 2013, but both times they died in committee.
In my opinion, the time is right for Alaska’s legislators to push through a hazing law long in need of passage.
Other states have passed laws only after a well-publicized death of a student.
I would like to argue our state can do the right thing and pass a state hazing law without a tragic death occurring. The law could prevent a future death.
It took a lot of courage for those two Cordova mothers in 1993 to tell the public and school administrators that hazing, no matter how much a tradition, was wrong.
Today, we all should show similar courage.
Hank Nuwer’s latest book is called “Hazing: Destroying Young Lives.” His research and database have uncovered one or more hazing deaths every year from 1959 to 2021. He also contributes his Cordova Times column, Last Frontier Days, weekly.