Hazing solutions

re: "End student hazing rituals" (BP, Editorial, March 16, 2022) 

Dear editor,

As Anand Panyarachun, arguably Thailand's most effective and reform-minded prime minister of the last 70 years or so, bluntly put it in a recent interview: "The succession of military coups, one after another, since the adoption of constitutional monarchy in 1932 has retarded Thailand's democratic development, leaving a legacy of failed administrations and corruption," (Bangkok Post, March 6). Is there any reason not to suspect that this same succession of coups against the Thai people's aspirations for democracy has not also produced the social and moral corruptions of which the killing by beating to death of a university freshman is but yet another depressing repeat? Is the latest death by brutal hazing not at least in part a symptom of the moral effect of coups on the Thai mindset and social mores? 

It might be objected that hazing is not uniquely Thai, that it is, in fact, a tradition taken from Western university systems and still occurs there. This is true, but overlooks the salient differences: deaths from hazing in the United States and other nations are typically from overdosing on alcohol or the result of accidents that occur as a result of intoxication with that drug; they are not a result of vicious, deliberate physical assault. The same violent beating of freshmen might still characterize the Russian army and universities, but that equality of abuse there cannot excuse its inexcusable continuance in Thai institutions, military or civil.  

Coups are acts of violence. Beating a freshman to death is an act of violence. Coups are committed on the deceitful excuse of enforcing unity. The same lie is explicitly offered to excuse brutal hazing activities. Those who commit coups so sincerely believe in their own righteousness that they give themselves amnesties for past, present and future crimes. Those who killed 19-year-old Padyos Chonpakdi in the name of their revered institution similarly admit what they did, but claim as an absolving circumstance, their amnesty card, that they did it in sincere service to a greater good — upholding the sacred traditions of their beloved institution.

It is, of course, the need to protect their absolving deceits which requires that dissenting voices not be tolerated. That is perhaps the crux of how coups nurture the mindset that thuggish hazing follows. Having committed a coup, dissent cannot be tolerated. Dissent based on critical thinking is a direct threat to the fake justifications for the bullying that is hazing or a coup. Dissent brings into question mythic tales of amazing benevolence that might too easily be shown hollow. Dissent invites peaceful calls for openness, transparency and accountability, all the things that hazing, like coups, reject in principle. When your most sacred myths are dubious shams, you cannot allow independent thinking; rap nong must, therefore, beat out with a sufficiency of thuggish brutality any inclination to question, to assess truth and moral worth, to entertain any suspicion that the revered institution might be less worthy of mindless respect than blind faith dictates, or to take a stand for what is right against what is traditional.

Those who commit or conspire in coups against the nation corrupt social mores, creating the mindset that brutish hazing rituals faithfully follow. The use of indefensibly unjust law that is, as Anand also bluntly reminds us, "used as a tool for persecution" against those who question and think differently, is also wrong, and no amount of zealous faith in their own cause can make such intimidation right, no matter how blessed by written or unwritten law and rule. 

Ending brutish hazing requires more than exclaiming loudly about the latest death and promising zero tolerance of hazing: that non-remedy has been tediously repeated after every such killing for decades. Like eradicating the usual forms of corruption, ending the culture of bullying dressed up as rap nong requires a change in mindset, the reform of rotten social mores and norms entrenched by example over many decades. If Thai society and institutions are serious about ending Thailand's traditionally abusive rap nong initiations, they must begin by encouraging dissenting voices that can expose to critical review real defects in traditional social mores and mindsets. A good place to start would be to stop using the violence of imprisonment in strict accord with unjust law against peaceful protestors calling for the honesty of openness, transparency and accountability. 

 Felix Qui

 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on March 17, 2022, under the title "Hazing solutions" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2280379/hazing-solutions