FOI_26-197 Sports club hazing and initiation

Date of response: 18 September 2026

We have now considered your request of 27 August 2026 for the following information:

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request internal and external training and policy documents related to sports hazing and initiations.

For the purposes of this request, “initiation” or “hazing” refers to incidents recorded in connection with an initiation, induction, recruitment or membership related activities of sports clubs or student groups involving harassment, coercion, intimidation, harmful misconduct, forced alcohol consumption, degrading acts, or related safeguarding concerns.

I request the following information:

Question 1. Training materials given to staff to understand how to identify, prevent, report, investigate, or respond to club initiation, hazing or related misconduct.

Our response:

Please see accompanying document, our ref: FOI_26-197 Appendix A for our ‘Investigating Student Misconduct in Sports Clubs’ training.

Question 2. Training materials, presentations, guidance, campaigns, or other educational materials provided or shown to students about hazing or initiation.

Our response:

Please see accompanying document our ref: FOI_26-197 Appendix B for our ‘Culture Check’ training and FOI_26-197 Appendix C for our ‘Positive Culture in Clubs’ training.

Question 3. Policy documents such as regulations, codes of conduct, guidance that explain what is and is not against the rules relating to student misconduct that can be interpreted as hazing or initiation.

Our response:

Please see our General Regulations for Students published on our website: general-regulations-2627

Additional to this, UEA Sports specifically hold the following standards and codes of conduct:

• Sports Club Student Behaviour Standards – See FOI_26-197 Appendix D.

• Behaviour Standards for positions of responsibility in sports clubs – See FOI_26-197 Appendix E.

Question 4. Policy, procedure, classification, or framework that explains how student misconduct will be treated by the university.

Our response:

All student misconduct, is treated and investigated in line with our General Regulations for Students and University Disciplinary and Investigative Procedures and Powers.

Question 5. If the University has commissioned or engaged any external organization, consultant or training provider to provide training or education relating specifically to sports club initiation, hazing or related misconduct during the requested period:

1. the name of the organization/provider;

2. the nature or title of the training provided.

Our response:

Name of provider – Beyond Equality

Nature of the training provided – Team Talk, an interactive conversational workshop for clubmates to explore important conversations that impact them, including wellbeing, sex and healthy relationships. Delivered exclusively to the UEA Men’s Rugby Club

Where the University does not use the terms ‘initiation’ or ‘hazing’, please include equivalent or related policies, guidance or training addressing the conduct described above.

SECOND REQUEST:

I request anonymized statistical information relating to sports club initiation, hazing, or related student misconduct incidents recorded by the University between the academic years of 2019/20 and 2024/25 academic years.

For the purposes of this request, “initiation” or “hazing” refers to incidents recorded in connection with an initiation, induction, recruitment or membership related activities of sports clubs or student groups involving harassment, coercion, intimidation, harmful misconduct, forced alcohol consumption, degrading acts, or related safeguarding concerns.

I request the following information:

Question 1. The total number of reported sports related hazing or initiation incidents during this period per academic year.

Our response:

2019-20 = 0

2020-21 = 0

2022-23 = 0

2023-24 = <5

2024-25 = 0

2025-26 = 0

On this occasion, it is not possible to provide all the requested information. The Act contains several exemptions that allow public authorities to withhold certain information from release. We have applied the following exemption to part of your request.

We can confirm that the University does hold this data and we believe that the requested information, constitutes the personal data of individuals, as defined by Article 4(1) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, due to the small numbers involved, we consider these details are exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the FOI Act.

We believe that disclosure this data would be contrary to the requirements of Article 5(1)(a) of the GDPR; namely that information must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner. These individuals would have no expectation that this information would be made publicly available, and we have not identified a lawful basis that would allow or require us to disclose this information. To ensure that we do not inadvertently release personal data in this response or in combination with other publicly available data, we have replaced all values between 0 and 4 in relation to the number of individuals with the value ‘<5’.

Please note that reports of student actions which could be interpreted as ‘hazing’ or initiations can be reported to the student sports club, members of UEA+Sport or through the student’s Faculty or School, which may then also be passed on to UEA+Sport.

We have searched through disciplinary records held by our UEA+Sport department and have provided the figures above which meet the request criteria.

Any disciplinary action will be taken in accordance with our Disciplinary Procedures, against students who have breached sports club conditions or General Regulations for Students.

Question 2. The number of incidents that resulted in each:

a formal investigation,

disciplinary action,

suspension of individuals or clubs,

referral to the police or external authorities.

Our response:

Zero. There were no incidents reported which resulted in formal investigation, disciplinary action, suspension of individuals or clubs and no incidents were referred to the police or external authorities.