Would you ever do any of the following to fit in:

Drink beer off of another person's penis?

Drink beer off of another person's penis? Set fire to your pubic hair and not extinguish it for as long as possible in order to win a competition?

Set fire to your pubic hair and not extinguish it for as long as possible in order to win a competition? Bash and kick an intoxicated student — who has been dubbed the "dead possum" — having fallen out of a tree, where other fresher students sit, skolling vodka?

These are just some of the hazing and initiation rituals uncovered by The Red Zone report, released on Monday, which examines residential college life at Australian universities.

Having spent months researching and writing the report, I've found that the issue of hazing is highly polarising.

Most non-college students find these rituals archaic and barbaric.

And yet many college students will insist that "it is all voluntary", "it isn't that big of a deal" or that "the positives outweigh the negatives".

Further, it is the older students and alumni who are most eager to defend and reproduce the rituals they have been subjected to. As one student said, "if I have to go through it, so do they".

Some alumni even speak in nostalgic terms about the hazing and advocate for its continuation.

I suspect this is because if we abolish these rituals it empties the experience that has already been endured of its meaning.

And if we stigmatise these experiences by labelling them gross, unnecessary and puerile (which they are), what does that say about those who have undergone them?

Hazing linked to sexual assault

So what is going on inside these colleges that normalises and celebrates these kinds of behaviours?

And given that college students are seven times more likely than non-college students to experience sexual assault on campus what, if any, links exist between the hazing culture and instances of sexual assault?

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We know that temporally, at least, these things are correlated.

At the University of Sydney residential colleges, O-week (Orientation Week) is the time when the most hazing occurs. It is also the time when the most rape occurs (a recent study by former Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick found that one in eight sexual assaults at the University of Sydney colleges occurs during a single week of the year — O-week).

But hazing culture is linked to sexual assault in other ways, too.

Alcohol is a common factor in both, as it increases vulnerability. They both involve the abuse of power and control, both occur within asymmetrical power hierarchies, and both are designed to degrade and humiliate.

In hazing, as in sexual assault, victims may believe they are consenting because they haven't said "no", but this fails to take into account the complex ways in which expectation, peer pressure and coercion, and fear of ostracism factor into the situation.

So while forcing drunk fresher students in academic gowns to crawl down stairs (while holding onto the ankles of the fresher in front of them) may seem harmless to some, it is these sorts of activities that set up the culture in which more egregious things can take place.

St Paul's College, at the University of Sydney, where hazing has allegedly taken place. ( Supplied )

In another example, I also heard from former college students at the Australian National University who had participated in a O-week game where each student was required to wear a wig for as long as possible.

Those caught without their wig on would be eliminated. Again, many found this a fun game.

However, it quickly led to male students barging in on women in the shower, the toilet, or having sex to "check" if they were wearing their wig.

And this is how the initiation culture can contribute to the systemic erosion of a student's boundaries and sense of privacy.

Moreover, students whose boundaries have been eroded are often less likely to recognise sexual assault when it does, in fact, occur.

'It's just a rite of passage'

As part of the research, I heard from a number of students who laughed off situations such as waking up on the oval at University of Sydney with their underwear removed, evidence of sex, and no memory of what happened or who it involved.

It is also not reasonable to expect freshers to be socially powerful enough to stand up to the united group of older students. ( Reuters: Jason Reed )

As one girl said, "it's just a rite of passage that we all go through".

It is also not reasonable for us to expect freshers to be socially powerful enough to stand up to the united group of older students. By the time freshers realise the full magnitude of what they are in for, they generally calculate that their best course of action is to endure the further indignities in order to progress up the college hierarchy.

In America various states already have anti-hazing laws. We have no such laws here.

It's time for a federal task force and a review of legislation in relation to hazing.

Nina Funnell is a Walkley award winning investigative journalist and the lead author of The Red Zone Report. She is an ambassador for End Rape On Campus Australia and is leading the exclusive investigation into college culture. Know more? Contact ninafunnell@gmail.com