Author: Hank Nuwer
Journalist Hank Nuwer tracks hazing deaths in fraternities and schools. Nuwer is the Alaska author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives; Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing, High School Hazing, Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader. In April of 2024 and April 2025 , the Alaska Press Club awarded him first place in the Best Columnist division.
He has written articles or columns on hazing for the Sunday Times of India, Toronto Globe & Mail, Harper's Magazine, Orlando Sentinel, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His current book is Hazing: Destroying Young Lives from Indiana University Press. He is married to Malgorzata Wroblewska Nuwer of Fairbanks, Alaska. Nuwer is a former columnist for the Greenville (Ohio)Early Bird and former managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska.
Nuwer was named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists columnist of the year in 2021 for his “After Darke” column in the Early Bird. He also won third place for the column in 2022 from the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He and his wife Gosia, recently of Union City, Ind., have owned 20 acres in Alaska for many years. “The move is a sort-of coming home for us,” said Nuwer. As a journalist, he’s written about the Alaskan Iditarod sled-dog race and other Alaska topics. Read his musings in his blog at Real Alaska Daily--http://realalaskadaily.com
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Hazing alleged in New York
Here is the link to the New York Post story
Here is an excerpt:
Two Medgar Evers College freshmen have blown the whistle on a CUNY sorority’s secret hazing.
Wooed by Gamma Beta Delta, Shawntee Caton, 17, and Gabby Jones, 18, had planned to join the impressive-seeming sisterhood when things turned ugly. They were blindfolded, interrogated about sex acts, humiliated and asked if they could be tied to a tree naked, the girls told The Post.
Their 10-hour ordeal began Sept. 21 when suddenly strict sorority sisters took the girls’ bags and cellphones, ushering them and six other pledges into a stifling, dark basement with a radio blaring static.
They got questionnaires asking whether they were sexually active, how many sex partners they had, whether they were gay or bisexual, whether they had engaged in a threesome or were willing to, and whether they had ever gone to an orgy.
Each was blindfolded and led separately upstairs to a room and surrounded by 20 to 30 women, they said. The tone got “nasty.”
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Dante’s Inferno by Hank Nuwer
Dante’s Inferno By Hank Nuwer
I’ve never been a fan of trying to end a persistent criminal act by making an example of one guilty party.
Nonetheless, Florida A & M band member Dante Martin may soon become a human cautionary tale for those who would take hazing to a felony level by either beating someone or encouraging/coercing someone to guzzle lethal amounts of alcohol.
Barring a mistrial should Dante Martin’s legal team of Ricahrd Escobar and Dino Michaels successfully appeal, the now-convicted, two-time felon will be sentenced in January from a minimum one year sentence up to 22 years (15 for manslaughter; seven for three counts of felony hazing) in the death of FAMU band member Robert Champion.
Florida State Attorney Jeff Ashton told Orlando Sentinel reporters following the verdict that he hoped the seriousness of the Martin judicial decision would deter other young men and women in band, athletics, fraternities and clubs from conducting hazing activities qualifying as deadly and demeaning.
A jury deliberated just two hours before delivering the verdict to Circuit Judge Renee Roche.
The parents of Robert Champion stressed there were no winners in the courtroom today. The sobbing family of Dante Martin will only see him while he is wearing an orange jump suit for a long time to come. The Champions will never visit their son Robert. And the cruel unknown, of course, is whether Robert Champion, had he survived the brutal attack on Bus C, would have pushed for all such hazings to end or if he, too, would have been part of a deadly tradition.
It is unlikely that the judge will sentence Dante Martin to a 22-year term, but soon, since word travels fast in the world of college sport and Greek life, all potential perpetrators will know that they could be sentenced to a term equal to one-third or one-quarter of their lives.
They will know that they could be walking the prison yard with rapists, killers and other career criminals.
No, I am not pleased that Mr. Dante Martin will serve as a national symbol of what can happen to a hazer when the worst happens.
But he now clearly IS an example. How ironic that his first name is Dante. Like the pilgrim in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, his life now begins a journey through Hell. Dante’s good life thrown away for hazing. Thrown away for brutality. Thrown away because of a hazing death.
And hazing makes sense?
A FAMU band member was found guilty by a jury of manslaughter & felony hazing. Dante Martin will be sentenced Jan. 9.http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/11797955/famu-former-band-member-convicted-hazing-death
Empire High School–Five juniors victimize one younger player.