Surviving Summer Camp: When Hazing Goes Too Far

It was unusually cold the summer I walked naked down a highway in the Santa Cruz mountains. Shortly past 2 a.m., a group of older girls had led me, blindfolded and with my hands tied, to the edge of the road. By the time I worked the blindfold off, I found myself alone.I was 13, a nerd with thick glasses and frizzy hair, when my mother sent me to an upscale residential summer camp.

She hoped that by going away for a summer of horseback riding, crafts, swimming and day hikes, I would somehow blossom into the cheerful, successful and well-liked teen that my older sister had somehow become during junior high. Her dream came true-but it came with a price.

While "hazing" is usually associated with college students desperate to join fraternities or sororities, it happens in many other places as well -- high schools, detention centers, group homes and even high-priced summer camps. Almost nine million kids in the United States go to summer camp each year, and the number has been increasing by about 10 percent every year. "Name calling, cliques, bullying, pranks and acts of retaliation" have become such a problem at camps that the American Camping Association has devoted an entire section of its web site to responding to and preventing such problems.

As for me, I arrived at summer camp to find that all the other girls in my bunk had been going there since second grade. They were good friends, and I was an outsider. Even the counselor seemed to be part of the clique, and happy to ignore me. I spent the first few days wandering around sulky and depressed.

About a week after we arrived at camp, several of the older girls approached me as we were changing into our swimsuits. "We're going to be meeting at the fire pit after dinner," they told me. "You should come." Finally! This was what I'd been waiting for. I hurried over to the fire pit after dinner. Eventually, Vicky and Amanda, two of my bunkmates, showed up, followed by the rest of my cabin (with the notable exception of our counselor). Amanda seemed to be the leader, and everyone flocked to sit near her, especially Vicky.

Amanda finally stopped the chattering and addressed me. This whole group had pledged to be friends forever, she told me, and I would have to prove myself worthy before I could join their crowd.

I had no interest in giggling about boys or music, which is all they ever talked about, and I didn't want to spend my summer worshipping Amanda as the goddess everyone seemed to think she was. At the same time, though, these girls had come to represent everything my mother wanted me to be. Every trait I felt I lacked, they had in abundance. I agreed to submit to their "tests of friendship."

We began that evening in the fire pit. Giggling nervously, one girl lit a match and set a twig on fire. Amanda told me to pull up my pants leg, and the girl put the flaming stick to my leg and held it there as the group counted to 20. Years later, the scar is still there.

Several other "tests" followed but the last was the most memorable. I was woken up in the middle of the night and led outside, where Amanda and the rest of her posse confiscated my shoes and clothes. They blindfolded me and led me around for what felt like hours but was probably no more than 30 minutes. I kept stubbing my toes and rocks along the trail that cut my feet. But I didn't protest. I didn't sit down and refuse to go on (which is what I felt like doing). In fact, it didn't even cross my mind to question whether what they were doing was OK. They were the popular kids, and they had a right to make people suffer to join their crowd -- especially since, as they'd all told me, they had gone through these tests already themselves. When the camp director found me four hours later, I was walking down the side of the road, freezing and covered in mud. The staff wanted me to turn in the other girls, but I refused. We were friends forever, right?