As a University alumnus, I read Adeline Garvie’s column, “Let clubs be about interests, not interviews” with concern. While her frustration with hyper-competitive student organizations is understandable, her suggestion that the University establish new standards for clubs’ recruiting process, including banning multi-stage interviews, risks confusing discomfort with danger — and selectivity with hazing.
In the wake of the Stop Campus Hazing Act, some universities have begun treating stress itself as suspect. Multi-round interviews, skills-based questions and selective recruitment processes are increasingly lumped together with coercive initiation rituals. That is a category error. Hazing is about abuse and humiliation. Interviews are about standards.
This distinction matters. When rigor is recast as harm, merit suffers, and students are poorly prepared for life beyond Grounds — where interviews, evaluations and rejection are routine. The University should be equipping students to meet high expectations, not lowering the bar in the name of comfort…