It happens in elementary school through college and beyond. Although it is usually thought of as something that's all in fun, hazing is usually vengeful, dangerous, mean and nasty. Sometimes people get hurt physically; many also are left with a mental bruising.

While an incident involving teen girls in Illinois got a great deal of attention this spring, hazing incidents are common in California and from coast to coast. Colleges and universities usually have rules against hazing, rules that too often don't get enforced until someone is dead. A student at UC-Chico died after over-drinking during fraternity initiation last year.

Students in middle and high schools as well as college are often beaten, demeaned and mistreated.

Professional athletes haze the rookies, taping them to goal posts, dousing them with water or forcing them to sing in public. Professional ought to be the optimal word here, but it's not.

Even elementary school students find themselves harassed by older students; it often looks like bullying, but some of the same principles apply.

Youthful though college students are, they should have reached an age where they have acquired some common sense, independence and the ability to say no.

Perhaps a law Gov. Gray Davis signed into law last month will help. It's an anti-hazing measure that gives public school administrators authority to expel for any initiation or pre-initiation that poses an emotional or physical danger. It was written as a bill after freshmen girls in a Dixon high school were drenched in vinegar and flour, rolled in mud and hit with a plastic bat. Welcome to high school!

This is simply unacceptable behavior. We hope making hazing punishable by suspension or expulsion will cut down on the incidents and will break the cycle that makes this kind of torment part of annual rituals for the new kids on the playground.