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Seeing through the Haze

A first-year Kasetsart University student was put in a coma after a near-drowning in a pond at the university’s Sri Racha campus.

The university authorities strenuously denied claims on social media that this was part of a freshman hazing activity that went wrong.  Anonymous posts (from, it must be said, suspiciously distant places) say that the freshman was ordered or challenged by senior students to go into the pond to wash himself after being muddied in other hazing activities.

An acting deputy rector has stated that the student was swimming in the pond, a two-metre deep pool of muddy rainwater with the dimensions of a large swimming pool, as part of a physical training course in preparation for their 3rd and 4th year studies in the International Maritime College.

Vice Admiral Nirut Hongprasit, dean of the College, confirmed in a press conference that hazing was not involved.  It was rather an activity to unveil ‘senior students who will take care of freshmen’.

As the two officials are respectable academics, there is, of course no reason to doubt their word, even if between them, they can’t get the story straight.  And of course it is quite logical for physical training for 3rd and 4th year courses to take place in the first few days of a student’ first year.  As is the fact that maritime training does not take place in the sea, that it was undertaken by senior students rather than staff, and that it proceeded without the benefit of safety equipment.

And as for the obvious dissimilarity between ‘receiving younger students’ (the literal translation of the Thai term for hazing) and ‘unveiling senior students who will take care of freshmen,’ only an ignoramus would fail to see the stark difference in meaning.

This case is of course one of only a few to get into the media.  Untold numbers of other cases lie in obscurity until unearthed by the indefatigable and imaginative investigative reporting by Prachatai.

There is, for example, the hazing practice conducted regularly at the South Thonburi University Physical Instruction Department.  This involves senior phys ed students lining up their new recruits against a wall and throwing mugs at them.

This is not, as the casual observer might rashly conclude, a blatantly dangerous hazing activity that could result in neurological damage to the freshmen, leaving them with lopsided smiles and uncontrollable drooling (and yes, some may already look that way).

It is in fact an essential part of their professional training.  The mugs, you see, are not thrown directly at the freshmen as a way of inflicting injury, but are directed at the wall close to them, merely as a method of physical intimidation that, in the eyes of many in the teaching profession, skirts just this side of the law criminalizing violence against children.

‘It is important for graduating seniors to learn just how to throw the mugs so that they hit the wall or window frame behind the target at such an angle that they do not ricochet and actually clout someone,’ explained a university administrator, who claimed that all such activities are carefully monitored by teaching staff who are somewhere else at the time.

The first year students are in fact not victims, but willing subjects in an educational experiment.  Observing their seniors will give them an idea of what to do when, in 3 years’ time, they become the bully-ers, rather than the bully-ees.

There are also the role-playing exercises that occur in the first weeks of student life at the Thai Western Institute of Theatre.  These involve dressing up in uniforms of a variety of dictatorial regimes and posing for social media pictures.  The participants will normally adopt a Nazi-style raised-arm salute no matter what regalia they are wearing (this being the only politically offensive gesture known to Thai students).

While extremist organizations like the Israeli Embassy, the National Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International are quick to condemn such goings-on as the uninformed glorification of genocide and dictatorship, the Institute totally rejects such criticism.

‘The students are merely reflecting the general ahistorical ignorance of Thai society,’ explained one lecturer wearing a brown shirt and carrying a small red book.  ‘If they were to engage in activities that actually respected such notions as truth and justice, which are totally alien to the Thai education system, they would in a way be looking down on those not fortunate enough to enjoy tertiary education.’

The activities will therefore continue with the permission of the Institute, especially, as the lecturer noted, because the girls have to wear such cute short pants.


About author:  Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).

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