College students' relationships with friends, professional staff members, faculty and other members of their campus community are an important factor in their willingness to report hazing to their institutions, according to a new study from University of Maine researchers.
Shared during National Hazing Awareness Week, which runs through Sept. 26, the study describes how the connections that students make with others help determine whether they choose to speak out when they or one of their peers experiences hazing.
Devin Franklin, a Ph.D. student in higher education and the study's lead author, said hazing prevention occurs at three levels. There's primary prevention, which is trying to shift attitudes before hazing behaviors occur, as well as secondary and tertiary prevention, which are more reactive and used to respond to incidents as they happen or after they happen.
"The goal is to have most of the prevention happen at the primary stage, but the reality on college campuses — and in the interpersonal violence space — is that hazing does happen. So it's really important that we understand what leads students to report hazing and what factors deter them from doing so," Franklin said.
Franklin said it's important to note that relationships can both prevent and deter reporting. Some students who participated in the study described fear of social isolation if they were revealed to be the person who filed a report, describing a "culture of silence" on their campuses.
For participants who described relationships as an enabling factor for reporting, having multiple connections between students, staff, faculty and other community members where students might feel more comfortable reaching out was important. One student told the researchers that if a member of their club or group experienced a hazing incident, "ideally they would take that to me first and then I would take it to one of my advisors and she would deal with it from there."
Franklin said the study highlights the important role of student support professionals on college campuses.
"When you have even one trusted staff member or advisor, a student is going to be more likely to go to them when they have an issue," she said.
The study also found that institutional contexts, such as the way campus leaders or leaders of specific groups or organizations respond to incidents, are weighed when it comes to reporting hazing. Students' understanding of what hazing is was also a key factor.
UMaine professor of higher education Elizabeth Allan, who is Franklin's doctoral advisor and co-author of the study, said there's a spectrum of hazing behaviors that includes intimidation, harassment and violence.
"Lack of recognition is certainly a deterrent when it comes to reporting," said Allan, who led a landmark national study of college student hazing published in 2008 that she is currently working to update .
"While there's a recognition of physically violent incidents as hazing, intimidation and harassment behaviors have more of a tendency to be normalized and accepted," Allan said. "That just highlights why primary prevention through education about the spectrum of behaviors is so important to getting a full picture of the extent of hazing."
The Hazing Prevention Consortium: From Research to Practice
The study was published in the Journal of American College Health .
Franklin and Allan say they hope the study will boost prevention efforts at colleges and universities nationwide. The findings are based on analysis of interviews and focus groups with 64 students and 100 staff members from six institutions that have participated in the Hazing Prevention Consortium , a multi-year research-to-practice initiative that supports higher education institutions in developing campus-wide, evidence-base and data-driven approaches to hazing prevention. Since 2013, more than 40 colleges and universities have participated in the consortium, which is part of StopHazing , a research group founded and led by Allan.
"We intentionally designed the consortium so we could conduct research to inform the interventions on different college campuses," Allan said. "Institutions participate in three-year cohorts, and each one gets a site visit and tailored recommendations to strengthen prevention strategies."
Franklin, who earned her master's degree in student development in higher education from UMaine in 2023, is a doctoral research fellow with StopHazing. She received a 2025-26 Chase Distinguished Research Assistantship from the UMaine Graduate School to support her dissertation, which will focus on institutional hazing policies.
"I feel very fortunate that I'm able to apply the concepts I've learned about in my doctoral coursework, not only in my dissertation research, but to inform the work we're doing with StopHazing," Franklin said. "It's given me more confidence in my skills as a researcher, and the access we have to campus professionals and the questions they're asking and the challenges they're facing, we're able to see the impact of our research almost immediately.
StopHazing is participating in several activities and campaigns for National Hazing Awareness Week. More information is online .
