Ragging Meaning: Ragging means when any senior or person with power makes juniors or freshers or anyone subordinate to them do something or not do something or abuse them physically or verbally is ragging. Ragging usually takes place in various universities or colleges but sometimes it happens in certain offices as well. In universities or colleges whenever any new students join the colleges the senior things or in the name of culture bully those students, they abuse them, they make them do something which might be vulgar or something which the new students might not be comfortable in doing so. This is called ragging.

History of Ragging: Ragging is the concept that used to follow in European Universities, but later it started in other countries and universities as well. The European Universities used to make practical jokes on the new students but later it started turning ugly. At that time making jokes on the students were not supposed to humiliate them but to lighten the mode of the new and young students and to break the ice between the junior and senior students but now they rag students for their own entertainment and to humiliate the students.

How Seniors Rag their Juniors: Seniors rag them in different ways now they are treating them badly in order to show that they are seniors, so juniors are supposed to obey them and follow their orders, basically they want to show that they have power and position. Ragging can be done in the following ways:

Clothes or Apparel: This type of ragging can be funny but can be humiliating as well, it depends on the intention, in this type of ragging the juniors or new students are told to wear either a specific dress code for fun or specific clothes for humiliation. For example, girls are told to wear proper ethnic clothes with braided hair, or they are told to wear some dirty clothes, etc.

Introduction: This type of ragging is less of ragging and more about opening up. Some students are very delicate and sweet. They hesitate to talk to new people and especially in new places, so to provide them the self-confidence they are told to give their introduction. But sometimes this introduction told to give by the seniors is to bully the students which are again wrong.

Verbal abuse or action: It means the juniors or new students are told to abuse someone or they were being abused by the seniors or to either sing or speak any dialogue etc.

Sexual abuse: This is one of the very serious types of ragging where the seniors asked personal questions or questions related to someone’s or their body or sometimes told them to strip or kiss etc. It happens with both male and female students.

Pranks or jokes: Seniors ask the juniors to act or mimic or perform for fun and entertainment, it can be done to make fun of the juniors or just for everybody’s fun including the junior, and did not mean to hurt anyways.

Ragging in hostels: Hostels are the most common place for ragging, the seniors order their juniors to do some tasks like polish the shoes or dance, or clean the room. It can happen from light mode to very dirty mode.

Drug abuse: Sometimes the seniors force the junior to drink or get high by using drugs, this is another very serious way of ragging because this could lead them to be addicted to it, which spoils their life and career.

The effects or consequences of ragging are:

Ragging is the incident that affects someone’s life very badly and due to ragging the victim or the student might suffer from depression or demoralization or sometimes it changes the person completely like they stopped caring about anything or anyone or they went into isolation.

Ragging can affect someone so badly that it might put pressure on their mind which they won’t be able to handle and commit suicide.

In some cases, the victim or students get so scared that they won’t be able to focus on their studies which affects their career.

The students or victims will remain under stress thinking that at any point they will be the next target which spoils the environment of the college as well.

Parents can not see their child in trouble or a problem, believe it or not, parents can tell by the voice or face of their children that something is wrong. Stress or tension not just affects the victim or the student but also their parents. They get worried about their ward’s emotional or physical condition or education.

Ragging can not just affect the victim or family, but it also affects the institution as well. Ragging spoils or damages the reputation of the institution. Whether ragging is reported or not it damages the image of the institution either way. If it gets reported then everybody will know if it is not reported then also students and parents will talk about it among their friends and relatives which will damage the reputation.

So be careful. Don’t go for any ragging.