When does pranking and horseplay become 'hazing' or 'bullying' for teams, organizations, and fraternities?

Watching all the football games this weekend reminded me of my days in college.  I participated with greek organizations and had my share of getting pranked throughout my time as a pledge.  Most of the time, these activities involved nothing more than just 'brotherly' harrassment and joking around to see if I (or one of my fellow pledges) really wanted to belong to the organization.  I personally never witnessed anything that ever crossed lines into the darker world of hazing - meaning, nothing I saw that was 'dangerous' to the physical health of an another.  However, I did see many teasing situations that could've been misconstrued by someone else who might be looking in from the outside.  These mental games, at times, were pretty intense looking back.  At the time, it just seemed like something that I had requested/signed-up to be a part of when I took my pledge.

Moving onto my current career -owning a martial-arts school, I have to be very careful to make sure that when black belt candidates are in 'black belt training.'  All of our organization's schools have a developed a strictly regimented physical and mental toughening process easily lasting at-times more than 2 months where we finalize our training so candidates are ready to rise-up and be successful black belts in the organization. During that same time, I must be equally as careful to make sure that the activities we use to develop that person do not cross over into hazing or bullying.  If that happens, then we become the very people we train to be strong against - a very ironic situation in deed!

I believe the overall success and growth of teams/organizations/fraternities is that the people placed in charge of training others or overseeing new member/pledges recognize the purpose of their role and take the responsibility seriously.  Once that kind of self-control becomes unfocused or lost altogether, then THAT is the time when problems can occur.

I found a great article that helps outline the difference between bullying and hazing on a site targeting females.  However, the information is definitely NOT gender specific.  Follow the link to learn more...

http://www.girlshealth.gov/bullying/hazing/index.cfm