Author: Hank Nuwer

Here is an excerpt:

The Washington National Opera has commissioned a one-hour opera based on the life and death of Private Chen. Called “An American Soldier,” the opera is being composed by Huang Ruo, a Chinese-born composer now living in New York. The libretto is being written by the Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang, author of the plays “M. Butterfly” and “Chinglish.”

“I felt that this is a very good subject for us because, after all, opera is not just entertainment,” Mr. Huang said in an interview on Thursday. “It’s a way to fulfill a social duty for society — in this case, to bring more awareness about what happened to Danny and somehow to help spread the word and also to really see what we can learn from this tragedy.”

The opera is scheduled to premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington next June.

Here is the link.  This on top of the news a Fiji pledge at the University of Virginia survived with an even higher BAC

Here is the link

Snippet from the Intelligencer

A “hazing incident” among student-athletes at Brooke High School is being investigated, officials confirmed last week. There were reports three students had been suspended from team activities.

…Brooke County Board of Education President Jim Piccirillo told our reporter the problem is being addressed.

Nice job, Intelligencer. Please follow up specifically with the punishments and account of the crime. Make sure police were involved if it looks as if activities amounted to a crime. –Hank Nuwer

Here is the whole article based on a FOIA request.

Here is a snippet from the University of Virginia Cavalier:

In light of last week’s National Hazing Prevention Week, The Cavalier Daily returned to the email exchanges of relevant administrators during those months. The following information has been obtained from emails secured through the Freedom of Information Act.

In response to a specific rush incident at Phi Gamma Delta (FIJI) that resulted in the hospitalization of a student with a .45 BAC, FIJI subsequently underwent an Inter-Fraternity Council Judicial Trial and was placed on social probation for five weeks. Three individual members involved in the incident received specific sanctions, including suspension and loss of leadership positions in the fraternity.

Then-IFC president Andy Colberg sent an email to members of the IFC community warning the fraternity community of a possible crack down by the University on fraternity activities due to rush-related hospitalizations.

“If we do not take responsibility and change our process, the University has made it abundantly clear that they will take over the rest of rush or cancel it, and they will reconsider the standing of the Inter-Fraternity system at U.Va.,” Colberg said in a Jan. 25 email. “Unfortunately, we are too big not to fail.”

Writer Journal: I have an idea for a national hazing awareness project while I still have mobiity, energy and passion and health. My friend Ray who directed my play had a “blue sky” suggestion that I have been thinking about taking further than he had imagined. Wouldn’t it be an amazing awareness thing to travel across the country from the East Coast to the West Coast on an unpaid sabbatical in a van with Dogzilla from August 2014 to August 2015 putting on different versions (Greek, athletic, high school) of my one-man play on hazing?  (I had an Indiana library grant a decade ago to take a talk to schools and libraries at night, and son Adam came along as techie). The goal would be OPENLY to challenge that educators and students and coaches would sign a pledge that 2014-2015 would be, at the end, as hazing free as the nation can make it. If you have any places that give education grants, let me know. Of course I would document everything by blog and vlog and do a book and documentary movie called “Travels with Dogzilla,” while working in the evening on my other book projects. Don’t scoff. My favorite song is “Deacon Blues” by Steely Dan (“This one’s for real, I already bought the dream.”). And Dan Bureau at AFA took my challenge to start a hazing think tank and with Charles G. Eberly and many other Greek leaders, pulled it off. My goal would be to break even. Perhaps local newspapers would review the performance, and thereby would create public awareness. Ideas beget suggestions and other ideas and constructive criticism. If I can’t pull it off, then I’ll try writing a novel about an old man who does just this! Dare to dream BIG?