Harvard Law School Target Shooting Club
Anti-hazing Policy

The HLS Target Shooting Club complies with the Massachusetts anti-hazing statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 269, sections 17-18 (included below). Note that under section 17, "hazing" requires, as a threshold matter, initation, and the Target Shooting Club has no initiation. (All one needs to do is provide one's e-mail address.) Therefore, the anti-hazing statute has no potential applicability to the Target Shooting Club.

But here are the sections of the law below anyway, since section 19 (not included below) requires that all members of the club get a copy of this and understand it:

Anti-hazing statute

17. Definition; Penalty.

Whoever is a principal organizer or participant in the crime of hazing, as defined herein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than three thousand dollars or by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than one year, or both such fine and imprisonment.

The term "hazing" as used in this section and in sections eighteen and nineteen, shall mean any conduct or method of initiation into any student organization, whether on public or private property, which wilfully or recklessly endangers the physical or mental health of any student or other person. Such conduct shall include whipping, beating, branding, forced calisthenics, exposure to the weather, forced consumption of any food, liquor, beverage, drug or other substance, or any other brutal treatment or forced physical activity which is likely to adversely affect the physical health or safety of any such student or other person, or which subjects such student or other person to extreme mental stress, including extended deprivation of sleep or rest or extended isolation.

Notwithstanding any other provisions of this section to the contrary, consent shall not be available as a defense to any prosecution under this action.

18. Reporting Hazing Offense; Penalty for Failure to Report Violation.

Whoever knows that another person is the victim of hazing as defined in section seventeen and is at the scene of such crime shall, to the extent that such person can do so without danger or peril to himself or others, report such crime to an appropriate law enforcement official as soon as reasonably practicable. Whoever fails to report such crime shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars.