There's a fine line between harmless initiation ritual and felonious assault, but the closer we get to the gray fringes the more we come to realize that this line needs to be drawn in much bolder strokes.

Two weeks ago, Alfred University released an exhaustive study on initiation rituals among college athletes. The study, based on a survey of 14,000 athletes, suggested among other things that - willingly or unwillingly - four out of five of them had been participants in incidents that could be defined as hazing.

Considering the range of definition, this is disturbing enough. Yet it didn't have the impact of a story that came out a few weeks earlier, the one about the 13-year-old boy who attended the summer football camp for Middletown High School South students, a camp at Wagner College on Staten Island.

Lawyers for the boy have since alleged that he was stripped naked, punched in the genitals, and paddled repeatedly on the buttocks during the four-day camps.

The story went on to say that other students at the camp were forced to engage in bare knuckle fistfights until they drew blood, and that others were made to sit in their underwear and read erotic material.

Clearly, the fine line had been crossed. This wasn't to be confused with an NFL rookie singing his alma mater's fight song during a team meal.

The most alarming aspect of the Middletown South story was the fact that these were children doing this stuff to each other. Thirteen - year-old boys are hardly equipped to withstand such harsh treatment at the hands of their peers, just as most 17-year-old boys are not equipped to fully understand the difference between right and wrong.

"High school kids don't have great judgment, that's why they're not allowed to vote, that's why they're not allowed to drink," says Ronald Kamm, a sports psychiatrist in Oakhurst, Ocean Township. "They make poor decisions."

"And with initiation rituals in high school there are sexual overtones, because the kids are still wrestling with their sexuality."

Where a 23-year-old NFL rookie might be able to handle wearing a dress in a skit designed to entertain his veteran teammates, a 13-year- old child could be scarred for life. Where a 19-year-old college freshman might be able to handle certain amount of traditional hazing, a 13-year-old child may not have developed to the point at which he can cope with even the most mild forms of initiation, let alone the kind of things alleged in the Middletown South story.

But what about the kids who do the hazing? Not just the leader, but the ones who fall in line behind him - even if they know there's something wrong with abusing other kids in the name of initiation?

Maybe that's where we should start in our search for solutions. Maybe a heightened awareness of what goes on in the minds of the kids who follow the leader would yield some answers our high school administrators could work with in these troubling times.

"There's a certain security in hazing the younger kids, because they aren't being hazed themselves," Kamm says of the followers. "They're thinking, 'As long as it's not me, that's great.'"

"If you can identify the victims before hand, you're off the hook for the duration of the summer camp. And even if the leader was sadistic or, quote, perverted, acceptance by the group is more important than sticking up for what's right. So they go along with the group, even though they may think it's wrong.

"Most men are passive onlookers, by nature. Boys, maybe even more so."

Kamm was not at all surprised when he read reports of the hazing incident at Wagner. He believes such disturbing incidents are commonplace.

"Lord of the Flies," he says matter-of-factly.

In William Golding's 1962 masterpiece, some English schoolboys are marooned on an island when their plane crashes. There were no adult survivors, therefore no adult supervision. As the story unfolds, a leader emerges among the children and a victim is soon designated, a fat boy they call Piggy.

"Take a group of boys and leave them to their own devices, and that's the group dynamic," Kamm says. "There's a lot of attraction to that when you're a young kid. So what kids do to other kids doesn't surprise me.

"And the farther you get from home, the more inhibitions weaken. That's why they should try to keep these camps in state. If they're out- of-state, for them it's like 'Wow, school's really out, we're really free.'"