It is, however, a practical impossibility to stamp out hazing wholly
in an institution where hazing has been one of the most cherished
traditions through many generations of cadets.
The hazing of today is milder; there is less of it, and, with rare
exceptions, it is less brutal. Yet hazing, in one form or another,
will doubtless continue at West Point through the twentieth
century as it did through the nineteenth.
The form of hazing has changed, if not the spirit. Sorely pressed by
tac.s, and by other officers stationed at West Point, the yearlings,
or second-year men, who do most of the hazing, have developed
new forms of the ancient sport, and some of these forms may be
carried on in actual sight of an Army officer without exciting his
suspicions.
Where possible, some of the old-style forms of more innocent and
purely mischievous hazing are retained. Where "necessary" new
hazes are employed that are bound to tax the best efforts of
disciplinary or other officers to detect.
Hazing is one of the diversions of men of mature age on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange. Even in the United States
Senate there are recognized ways of hazing a new Senator who
displays too little reverence for the traditions of that august body.
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