What hazing victims face and why boys are drawn to hazing

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

two young men beating up on a teenage boy being bullies

Airdate: Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Three Middletown High School football players, who were allegedly hazed by other older players earlier this month, have retained attorneys that specialize in sexual abuse.

Videos of the incidents were put on social media and the football season was cancelled by the school district last week.

Many people are still trying to understand how such events can happen. It also has divided the Middletown community where Friday nights football games were something the community treasured and took pride in each week.

Much of the attention has focused on the incidents and videos. But how could the victims of hazing be impacted?

On Tuesday’s Smart Talk,  Mark Kiselica (Ph.D), Director of the School of Behavioral Sciences and Education and Professor of Psychology at Penn State Harrisburg said,”For some, they can shake it off and it doesn’t impair their lives very much. But there are others who are significantly. Damaged by this. They can have nightmares about the event, intrusive flashbacks throughout the day, which can make it difficult for them to concentrate. I’ve worked with boys who’ve had this happen to them and they can be walking down the hall and the perpetrators might pass them and just tap them on the shoulder as a way to remind them, We did this to you. We can do it to you again, these boys and may start the victims may start to avoid certain situations. They will have trouble sleeping at night and concentrating in class. It can then affect their academic performance. And as they withdraw from a variety of social situations because of the public humiliation they’ve experienced, then it can affect their relationships. And one of the key things we have to keep in mind when we’re dealing with boys or the victim of these kinds of assaults, is that boys tend to not ask for help, right? If they are socialized in a very traditional notion of masculinity, which means you have to be tough. You have to stand on your own. Don’t show weakness. We have extensive research that shows boys and men who have that kind of mindset about what it means to be masculine are very unlikely to ask for help. And then what we see happen is their distress gets expressed in other ways as irritability, sometimes substance abuse and violence toward others. And this is often we call masked depression, boys and men. So so what we need to be very careful to do is to try and not misinterpret what we’re seeing in boys who’ve been traumatized. ”

Kiselica indicated the most important thing for the victims of hazing is to ensure them that they are safe.

How does a divided community come together after traumatic events like this,”Part of what we have to do is to is to help others to have empathy and understand the kind of scenario that I just tried to describe, that these are experiences of horror and terror and helplessness. And they and they reverberate for an individual in their family for many weeks to come. So just trying to help them understand. The other thing is to initiate systematic education in the school systems. And I’m not just talking about Middletown, but starting in the very low levels about this kind of empathy and that hazing and bullying will not be tolerated and empowering children, as our teacher said, candidates to to learn how to speak up if you see someone being hurt or to go to a trusted adult to inform them about so that we nip this in the bud and then we can talk to the perpetrators and help them to develop and fix. And last but not least, men in the community have to stand up and say, this is not what it means to be a good man. If you’re a teammate, you protect your teammates. If you’re a good man, you look out for others. You care for the next generation. You mentor your fellow players, especially the younger ones, the weaker ones. That’s what a real hero does. They step up and they do the right thing.”