Unity or Death: Hazing in Thailand’s Universities

Image:

Many young male students with their faces blurred out to protect their identities lay face down on the beach as older students yell at them from above. It is not a fun scene.

Publication Date:

October 8, 2020

Unity or Death: Hazing in Thailand's Universities

In the picture, a girl smiles into the camera. This is Phornphiphat Eaddam, nickname “Mint.” She was only a freshman in college, 19 years old, when she died after collapsing during a hazing ritual at her new University. After making eight mistakes in her cheerleading routine earlier in the day, her seniors had assigned her the punishment of running eight laps around the universities campus—she collapsed just after she finished her 6^th lap.

This isn’t an isolated incident. In fact, in Thailand, abuses in hazing seem to cost lives of students every year, from hazing rituals leaving one student in a coma in 2019 to a 2007 incident where a student burned alive after being told to roll around on a fire. In 2016, another student, Pokai Saengrojrat died after being kicked at the beach during a hazing tradition. He was only sixteen years old.

Hazing traditions, called rab nong in Thai, are traditional actions taken by seniors (older students, phi, who have a higher status than the younger students, nong) to initiate and welcome the Freshman to their university. They are associated with the tradition of SOTUS, which stands for Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity, and Spirit. In Thai society, hierarchy can be both very important and very rigid, and this is reinforced with the SOTUS system in Universities. Every event within this initiation is meant to introduce the freshman to their new situation and to bond them with their new classmates and friends. Activities in this vein can run from as innocuous and fun as mass-dances and activities where they interact with their new classmates to much more humiliating and dangerous ones. Students are punished for any mistake they make, whether that is wearing their uniform incorrectly, making a mistake in an activity, or even something as simple as raising their hand or addressing a senior incorrectly.

However, not all is bright with these traditions. Stories of abuse of the system, like those that caused the deaths of so many young students, seem to run rampant. Facebook groups against the SOTUS system have popped up one after another, each displaying their own horrific images of the abuses inflicted upon the freshman by their seniors. Some have testified that they were made to lick the ground or other uncleanly surfaces, eat or drink disgusting things, strip naked and do mortifying activities in the nude, or even been beaten physically for punishment of activities, among other testimonies. Furthermore, some instances of the SOTUS system have, in recent years, begun to appear in high schools as well.

Furthermore, even government officials have gotten involved in the condemnation of harsh abuses of the SOTUS system. In June 2019, Soranit Siltharm, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, stated that he sent out a message to all Universites urging compliance with Ministry guidelines on hazing rituals in Universities. According to one article:

“The guidelines say: all hazing-related activities must be constructive and provide a good image in the eyes of the public; all activities must take into account the rights and liberty of the freshmen and the principle of equality, and no violations of an individual’s rights can take place; all alcohol must be banned; hazing-related activities must not interfere with learning; and all activities must come under the supervision and responsibility of the campus administrators, teaching staff and the senior students. Mr. Soranit said freshmen should join the activities on a voluntary basis and their parents must have the right to observe such activities. Also, senior students in charge of the activities must be screened.” (Boyle).

However, there is a duality to these traditions beyond just the harsh punishments. Initiation activities are designed to bond freshman together through both fun and difficult activities. They reinforce cultural ideas of hierarchy and respect for those older than oneself, both of which are central to Thai society. Furthermore, even the harshest seniors play an important role in the system: it is in their punishments that the students are united against them. These seniors become the common enemy to unite the new freshman.

Moreover, the end of the orientation period, sometimes known as “cheer day” or as the “wrist-tying ceremony” is one that many look back upon nostalgically. After weeks of harsh punishments and working together with your peers against the weight of the senior’s expectations, you have come out on top. Those harsh seniors no longer speak down to you—instead, they explain that they only punished you to promote bonding. At the end of orientation, all of that fear and anger would turn into fun memories with your friends, and the cycle would be perpetuated.

In Thailand, the SOTUS system provides an interesting example of how cultural values of hierarchy and respect for those older than you are reinforced. Furthermore, they also show how these systems, without proper support and restraints, can also perpetuate abuse. For some, what was a heartwarming bonding experience between peers and between nong and phi was a terrifying, abusive situation that some never escaped.

Author:

Emily Brown

Comments

Erik Harms on October 12, 2020:

Emily,

As an anthropologist, I often find myself at a loss for how to consider stories like this, because there is a always an unclear slippage, as you note, between hazing and ritual. In the anthropological study of ritual, much is made of the way they produce bonds of solidarity. But our theories do not quite have a way to account for ritual gone awry, and how it crosses the line into hazing. Your post highlights this difficulty with great care. When reading this, I could not help but think of a brilliant book by Katherine Bowie, called Rituals of National Loyalty, which is about the Thai village scouts movement. It describes rituals that border at times on hazing, and which have the effect of inculcating deep strains of nationalism. This is the other aspect of “bonding”–it can somes time conflate solidarity with groupthink…

Modern Southeast Asia

Unity or Death: Hazing in Thailand’s Universities

Unity or Death: Hazing in Thailand's Universities

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Link to an Anti-SOTUS Facebook Group:

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Unity or Death: Hazing in Thailand’s Universities

Unity or Death: Hazing in Thailand's Universities

Links:

Picture Credits:

Link to an Anti-SOTUS Facebook Group:

Comments

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