high school hazing?

what 2 highschools ? you may have been in my area

We never had standardized initiation rituals. The right of passage was fist fighting. There was a fight or two every couple week ends at parties. Typically, a 14/15 yr old fighting up one of the smaller jerk Seniors (17-19 yr). The strongest teens generally avoided fighting due to sports commitments, hand injuries will take them out for half the season.

That didn’t happen here in New York either and I attended a couple of High Schools and several Middle Schools. Our little cliques seemed to stay together, there were jocks and cheerleaders, Metal heads and stoner Grateful Deadheads… a few Goth kids and some random oddballs. I really like this movie but the ‘beat the hell out of the 9th graders’ thing never happened over here.

This took place in the 70's, where hazing was tolerated a little more. Hazing died out in high schools by the 80's.

Today, hazing isn't allowed (but still may happen) in post secondary institutions.

I agree that the portrayal of hazing is ridiculous in this movie. Not sure how often that happens but it seemed so corny to me. Hazing always took place under the table and behind the scenes, not in broad daylight in front of the entire school. I feel like in real life nobody would respect those seniors for bullying freshmen like that; 90% of sophomores, juniors, and seniors would see that bullying and immediately shun it. And they're literally wearing sweaters that say "SENIORS" on them? I think Linklater deep down wanted to make a college film.

The most unbelievable part for me is Ben Affleck's attempted murder towards the freshman at the beginning of the movie, trying to run them off the road and get them to crash, possibly die in a car accident. That goes past "hazing freshmen" and enters the realm of sociopathic obsession. Might as well be chasing the freshmen around with knives and calling it "playful hazing". The mom threatening to shoot Ben Affleck was completely justified, I'd do the same if someone nearly murdered my kids as a joke.

That thing existed when I was a junior in the 00's. We were told to be shit scared of being "zeroed" and having our faces down in the toilet by the seniors. Fortunately, I had cool seniors when I was a freshman; the class that preceded them by reputation were not so.