How Hazing Shapes the Gatekeeping and Political Culture in Classical Music

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — At the start of September, the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra held its annual off campus retreat at Greenwood Music Camp in Cummington, Mass. What was meant to be a bonding weekend for returning and new members has since become the flashpoint in a campus wide reckoning on hazing in music programs. The complaint of a freshman who described a blindfolded initiation prompted an investigation and led Harvard College to suspend the orchestra’s social functions through the fall semester, while allowing rehearsals and concerts to continue under its academic class number.¹ ²

On the surface the scenes described at Greenwood might look like a collegiate prank gone awry. New members were blindfolded and led up and down a hill, quizzed on the names of upperclass students, and given an option described to some as a choice between water or a shot of vodka while disoriented. Some readers have minimized the events as tame or “run of the mill.” But a closer look at music programs across the country shows that rituals like these sit on a continuum that includes physical violence, severe injury, and in the most awful cases death. That continuity matters because the same social mechanisms that make hazing possible also create the conditions in which sexual misconduct, coercion, and exploitation can flourish.³

When Bonding Becomes Submission

Hazing is rarely about a single ritual. It is about establishing who has power and who does not. In fraternities, scholars have long described hazing as ritualized dominance: tests meant to enforce obedience, create dependency, and reinforce in group control. Music programs are no exception. A 2014 master’s thesis on academic hazing in music education concludes that the musical domain is not immune to rituals of mistreatment and humiliation disguised as training or bonding.⁴

In marching bands the evidence is even clearer. Surveys and investigations have documented that large fractions of band members have witnessed or experienced humiliating or dangerous hazing practices, yet often do not report them for fear of reprisal or disbelief.³

The line between intense musical training and hazing is porous. High level ensembles require long rehearsals, exacting critique, and intense focus. But when rehearsal demands bleed into secret rites, coercive games, or initiation tests that mark insiders and outsiders, art becomes a pretext for enforcing submission.

Echoes from Other Programs

Harvard’s case sits alongside a long list of music program scandals that show how high status and prestige can mask brutality. In 2011 the death of Robert Champion, a drum major for Florida A&M University’s Marching 100, made national headlines. He died after a brutal initiation on a bus following a game.⁵ The drama of the band’s global reputation did not prevent ritual violence. Champion’s death exposed patterns of abuse and led to institutional scrutiny.⁵

Other reports documented band members beaten, forced sleep deprivation, extreme exertion, and coerced alcohol consumption.³

Women and students with disabilities are not immune. Survivors across campuses have described broken bones, long term health effects, and institutional responses that were at best belated and at worst defensive.³

Hazing’s Long Signature in Musical Careers

The amplified damage arrives later when musicians exit school and enter a profession that frequently routes jobs and prestige through informal networks and personal recommendations. In classical music, a gig often depends as much on who you know as on how well you play. Word of mouth and inside networks power hiring for freelance work, ensembles, teaching, and adjunct positions. That opacity means cultural signals learned in school persist in professional life. A tolerance for coercion and a belief that suffering proves worth can translate into workplace behaviors that amount to sexual misconduct, exploitation, or coercion.

Take James Levine, the once celebrated conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. After decades of whispers, a Metropolitan Opera investigation concluded he had engaged in “sexually abusive and harassing conduct” toward vulnerable young artists. He was fired in 2018.⁶

The survivors’ accounts were chillingly familiar: fear of retaliation, silence demanded by loyalty, careers hanging on a single powerful figure’s favor. That is hazing logic dressed in artistic prestige.

These patterns are not isolated. The We Had No Idea project has collected articles and testimonies across the music industry, documenting how systems of silence and complicity protect perpetrators and punish truth tellers.⁷ The same dynamics that underpin hazing—submission, secrecy, and loyalty at all costs—are at the heart of these accounts of exploitation, coercion, and abuse.

Orchestras themselves have shielded accused abusers to protect reputations. The closed ranks, the reluctance to air internal shame, the rationalization of cruelty as “tradition”—all of these mechanisms are hazing’s fingerprints.

Survivor testimony gives force to the connection between hazing and other abuses. In national reporting, musicians described incidents that started as coercive or humiliating and escalated into exploitation or abuse. The Washington Post’s “Assaults in Dressing Rooms, Groping During Lessons…” authors interviewed over 50 musicians, revealing stories of harassment, coercion, and threats of retaliation.⁹ Many said they feared speaking out because the same people who could harm them were the ones who decided auditions, roles, and jobs.

Marching band survivors interviewed in hazing-death cases (such as Robert Champion’s) recall being ordered to keep quiet about dangerous rituals and beatings in the name of tradition and pride.⁵ Across these accounts, the pattern repeats: ritualized harm, silence enforced by shame, and delayed or inadequate institutional response.

Why Music Schools and Fraternities Collide

Music fraternities have histories of ritual and secrecy that overlap with Greek life more broadly. Organizations like Phi Mu Alpha, Sigma Alpha Iota, and Kappa Kappa Psi have at times faced allegations that their pledging practices echoed the worst practices of Greek hazing rather than mentorship. Because these organizations intersect with campus ensembles and professional networks, the culture they incubate can migrate into the rehearsal room and backstage.⁴

When the social rituals of belonging are indistinguishable from tests of obedience, the risk of normalized abuse escalates. At Harvard, the orchestra’s sibling family dinners, formal balls, and retreats became settings for social bonding. Once such spaces are repurposed as sites of coercion, musical identity is entangled with submission, and the obligations of belonging can trump personal safety.¹

The Costs We Do Not See

Hazing causes immediate physical harms. It also does quieter damage that fragments careers and communities. Students who cannot or will not endure hazing often leave programs or avoid elite opportunities, reinforcing a narrow pipeline of musicians who fit a particular social mold. Emotional silencing becomes a vocational habit. Social stratification produces clear insiders and perpetual outsiders. Abusive conduct becomes normalized and secrecy hardens into culture. The net effect is that talent is lost, diversity is stunted, and the industry reproduces patterns of exploitation.³

Harvard’s suspension is a necessary start but far from a complete answer. Institutions must move beyond episodic punishment to culture change. Effective reforms should include:

• clear education that distinguishes legitimate artistic rigor from coercion

• independent reporting channels protected from retaliation

• rotation and oversight of student leadership

• restorative practices that center survivors

• culture audits in professional institutions to ensure hiring and evaluation processes do not reproduce hazing logic
  

Professional organizations and unions also bear responsibility. When orchestras respond to misconduct only after public exposure, or when legal and bargaining structures obscure accountability, change is incomplete. Some orchestras have fired or barred members following independent reviews, showing that institutions can act decisively when evidence is credible and when survivors are prioritized. Yet many still find arbitration and institutional politics to be high barriers to redress.⁶ ⁹

The Harvard case is not the most violent or tragic in the archive of music program hazing. But its logic is familiar and its lessons are hard. The blindfolded walk is more than a rite. It is an emblem of a social pedagogy that trains silence, rewards submission, and cements closed networks that control opportunity. Those same networks can conceal sexual misconduct and exploitation and can punish anyone who tries to dismantle them.

If the field values artistry and integrity, it must also build systems that protect new musicians from harm and that break the circuits of silence that let abuse persist. That means not only punishing individual incidents but rethinking how belonging is conferred, how authority is distributed, and how careers are made or broken. Until we disentangle initiation from intimidation and mentorship from manipulation, the scores we teach will keep encoding the same old music of power.

Resources

1. The Harvard Crimson: College Suspends Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra After Hazing Investigation https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/9/26/hro-hazing-investigation/

2. Boston.com: Harvard Student Orchestra Suspended Over Hazing Allegations https://www.boston.com/news/education/2025/09/26/harvard-student-orchestra-suspended-over-hazing-allegations/

3. NPR: Brutal Incidents Shine Light on Band Hazing Culture https://www.npr.org/2011/12/21/144077864/brutal-incidents-shine-light-on-band-hazing-culture

4. Jenkins, C. (2014). Academic Hazing in Music Education (Master’s Thesis). University of Mississippi https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2085&context=etd

5. CNN: Florida A&M band suspended after suspected hazing death (Robert Champion case) https://www.cnn.com/2011/11/22/justice/florida-possible-hazing-death/index.html

6. Washington Post: Metropolitan Opera Fires James Levine After Sexual Abuse Investigation https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/13/the-metropolitan-operas-james-levine-once-on-the-cover-of-time-has-been-fired-for-alleged-sexual-abuse/

7. We Had No Idea: Survivor testimony project on sexual misconduct in classical music https://we-had-no-idea.org/about/

8. Washington Post: Assaults in Dressing Rooms, Groping During Lessons: Classical Musicians Reveal a Profession Rife with Harassment https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/assaults-in-dressing-rooms-groping-during-lessons-classical-musicians-reveal-a-profession-rife-with-harassment/2018/07/25/f47617d0-36c8-11e8-acd5-35eac230e514_story.html

(c) Katie A. Berglof, 2025