It Will Take More Than Increased Supervision To Fix Hazing At Marine Boot Camp

QUESTION: Does hazing build better military members? Yea or nay...

REPORT: The pro-hazing voices out there, as repulsive as some of them are, do have one decent point, however. There are some recruits who shouldn’t be in the military. However, we shouldn’t need to resort to hazing or abuse to get rid of them. In addition to the stock administrative solutions that have been or will be implemented, there should be one more: Kick out more recruits...To fix this, the Marine Corps should build a greater amount of attrition into the system. Recruits who have persistent trouble during initial training often have issues later in their enlistments. Accept the cost of more attrition in boot camp in order to avoid first-term attrition later on. Give the DIs much broader latitude to bounce recruits and quickly process them out of the service with minimal review. This would also further enhance the elite reputation of the Corps — not only would it be known for the toughest initial training of the services, but also for its selectivity during that training.

Just as importantly, giving DIs more administrative authority to kick out non-performers removes the last excuse of those who haze — that they were doing it to remove a non-hacker from the service. Allow them the authority to do that the right way, without physical force, and the only DIs who still haze will be the true bullies and sociopaths, who can then be punished appropriately without any institutional remorse or second-guessing. It puts the onus on the DIs to do the right thing, because they will have no more excuses.