If joining the team means humiliating the new kid, it’s not tradition. It’s a pattern somebody should end.

Traditions carry a strong argument with them: it happened to everyone before, so it is fair. That reasoning is comfortable because it shifts responsibility onto the past and away from the people currently in the room. The new person is not experiencing history though, they are experiencing this week. Belonging built on somebody being humiliated first is not belonging, it is a toll.

In most groups one person eventually refuses to pass it on, and it stops there. Be that person quietly. Sit with the new kid and let the tradition run out of participants.