Trust me, as least where I go to school, it isn't bad at all. I'm just finishing up my freshman year, and seriosly, the seniors don't really care lol. I haven't heard of any freshman getting beat up or any of that.
It's usually nowhere near that bad, but at times there can be some pretty harsh and merciless teasing. Usually it's all in good fun (although most freshman don't think it's funny), but sometimes it can go a little too far.
On an unrealted topic, using Firefox in Windows, in which the spell check function fails to work most of the time, is really ticking me off.