Here is the link. One video has students joking about using a sharpie in an assault.
Category: Hazing News
Moderator comment: The State University of New York system has been troubled by deaths of pledges at these rogue chapters–including Geneseo, Plattsburgh, Albany.
Police at the College at Brockport are investigating hazing allegations linked to an unrecognized off-campus fraternity.
College officials said University Police on Wednesday detained a handful of students after executing a search warrant about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday at 104 Monroe Ave., a residence that borders the college campus.
The months-long investigation has focused on allegations of hazing, assault and drug use and sales, said Brockport Police Chief Daniel Varrenti. The two police departments are leading the joint investigation, he said.
Brockport police Lt. Mark Cuzzupoli said officers were previously called to 104 Monroe about six times this year for noise violations and fights.
“We found some things in the house that we were looking for. I can’t really elaborate on what they are,” due to the ongoing investigation, Chief Daniel Vasile, of Brockport University Police. said.
“There are a lot of kids that go here and we’re trying to keep everybody safe,” Cuzzupoli added. “We’re trying to be proactive here, with what we’re doing.”
“This house made Animal House look good,” Varrenti said Thursday. “I wouldn’t let my dog walk through this house.”
Note: On Nov. 30, 2017, I discovered the death of Jose Manuel Costa, 20, a University of Rhode Island sophomore, who died following an all night Lambda Chi Alpha session. A passenger, Costa was killed when the vehicle went off the road and hit a pole on Rte 1A in N. Kingston, R.I. Source The Journal News, White Plains, December 17, 1964. The chapter was punished by President Francis H. Horn with a $500 fine.
Here is the Chicago Tribune link
And the story.
John Keilman Chicago Tribune
The football teams at Wheaton College, Niles North High School and Lake Zurich High School have all faced hazing allegations over the last year, and the programs have one thing in common: a written policy that strictly bans hazing.
That has been standard practice for years at high schools and universities, the product of changing social norms and growing concerns about legal liability. But experts say such policies do little to prevent hazing unless paired with meaningful action to create a culture of respect and equality.
“If something’s just on paper but no one follows it, we conclude it’s not real,” said Linda Langford, a Massachusetts-based consultant who works with schools on hazing prevention. “That young athlete might say, ‘People have to know it’s happening and they’re not saying anything, so they must think it’s OK — and I have to go along with it.'”
The standard definition of hazing, such as the one published by the National Federation of State High School Associations, is “any humiliating or dangerous activity expected of a student to belong to a group, regardless of their willingness to participate.”
It has been documented in all sorts of organizations, from the military to marching bands, but it has long been especially prevalent on sports teams: One national survey found that 74 percent of college varsity athletes had been subjected to hazing, the largest proportion of any group.
Susan Lipkins, a New York-based psychologist and expert witness in hazing cases, said the varying ages, sizes and skill levels of athletes create natural hierarchies on sports teams. Hazing is sometimes seen as a way to maintain that pecking order, she said, especially when coaches encourage team leaders to enforce order without giving them any kind of training.
“Coaches may not call it hazing,” she said. “They’ll call it tradition, discipline or a rite of passage, but it’s hazing.”
Niles North administrators have not commented on the nature of the alleged hazing other than to say it involved the varsity team, which was suspended from practice and competition. Local police investigating the claim have been equally mum about specifics.
A former player told the Tribune that Niles North coaches were clear that hazing was not allowed, and the school’s extracurricular code of conduct says it is “strictly forbidden at any time and in any location.”
Wheaton College, where five football players were recently charged with criminal offenses stemming from an alleged hazing incident, had a similar policy. So did Lake Zurich, which is facing a lawsuit from two boys who say they were hazed by fellow football players last year.
Elizabeth Allan, who researches hazing at the University of Maine and trains college staffers on how to prevent it, said that’s not an unusual scenario.
“My experience is that the policy doesn’t communicate clearly enough about why (an anti-hazing mindset) is needed,” she said.
She collaborated with the Clery Center, a nonprofit organization that promotes campus safety, on a hazing prevention guide. It advises schools to communicate anti-hazing messages from top officials, conduct trainings for student leaders and promote “bystander intervention” to disrupt unsafe behavior.
“Those things don’t take a ton of effort, and I think they could yield some real gains based on what we know from the data,” Allan said.
Langford said anti-hazing policies are like speed limits — effective only if enforced. They can seem hollow if supposedly harmless activities, such as forcing newcomers to carry equipment bags or wear silly outfits, are tolerated.
“If your policy says it’s not allowed, you have to not allow it, whether or not you think it’s serious,” she said.
Jennifer Waldron, a physical education professor at the University of Northern Iowa who has researched hazing predictors, said sports that enjoy greater prestige tend to be at higher risk for hazing (they include football and, in her home state, wrestling). Male athletes are also more prone than female athletes to engage in physical, violent hazing, she said.
Changing the attitudes that lead to hazing can be difficult, especially in sports where athletes are drilled to be tough and uncomplaining. But Waldron said coaches have to make it a priority.
“There are ways to have quick conversations — even the ways the coaches interact with the players, what they allow to happen in practice,” she said. “There are ways to establish a climate that is more positive, versus having 30-minute conversations that have to happen every week.”
Another Northern Iowa professor, Christopher Kowalski, said the best form of hazing prevention is to establish an atmosphere of caring and support. When a different sort of culture is allowed to exist, his research has shown, hazing can take root no matter what official policy says.
“You really have to have people who are willing to say, ‘I’m not going to sacrifice a positive group culture for winning,'” he said.
Once a hazing incident does take place, some experts say, a deep and unsparing review must follow. The RAND Corp., a think tank that studies public policy, examined the reaction of Florida A&M University after drum major Robert Champion died in a 2011 hazing ritual, and found it was “coordinated, comprehensive, and well designed.”
The reforms the university imposed included small group discussions about hazing, a reporting system that did not require students to give their names, and the creation of alternative bonding opportunities such as philanthropic competitions.
Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95 announced its own spate of changes in the wake of its hazing crisis, which involved forced sexual acts and other forms of degradation committed by athletes, according to the lawsuit. The district now has a tip line for students to report hazing and increased monitoring of the locker rooms.
It also brought in Elliot Hopkins, a staffer with the National Federation of State High School Associations and a board member of HazingPrevention.Org, to do educational presentations. He said he met with teams and parent groups to discuss how to change the culture, and came away encouraged.
His message, he said, was simple:
“This is your school,” he said. “This is what people will remember about you as long as you live in this community. That legacy can be very positive or negative. You have to be invested and understand that your actions matter.”
Earlier this week, the Indiana University Interfraternity Council voted unanimously to suspend certain social events and new member activities until next spring.
It’s a move more and more universities are taking as stories circulate of hazing and alcohol-related deaths.
Hank Nuwer is a professor of journalism at Franklin College and the author of the book Hazing: Destroying Young Lives, set for publication in February.
After studying hazing and Greek life in general for the past few decades, Nuwer says recent media attention could be pushing fraternity and sorority organizations to crack down.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Q: Have fraternities always had problems with hazing and alcohol abuse?
The first fraternity death was in 1873 at Cornell. But the first alcohol-related hazing death didn’t occur until 1945.
Recently, between 70 and 80 percent of all hazing deaths have alcohol involved in one way or another.
Q: Are alcohol-related hazing deaths increasing?
I see it more as stable type of instability. Let me explain that: We’ve had a hazing death every year from 1961 to 2017, as incredible as that sounds. The alcohol ones are in the majority of all of these.
It’s hard even to wrap your head around that fact. There’s been up to nine deaths in one year, in the 1980s.
Q: Why are more and more colleges suspending Greek life activities now instead of before?
For me, it’s the impact of Timothy Piazza’s death at Penn State. One time previously we’ve had some video footage of a young man who died in a hazing incident, that was at Ferris State. But we’ve never had security footage where we’re able to take, from womb to tomb, the entire hazing process and to be able to see just how callous the fraternity members were who didn’t give aid to this young man and might have been able to save his life.
The fraternities have been getting a lot of attention, but there was an alcohol-related death of a lacrosse player at Lafayette College at Easton, Pennsylvania, and you don’t hear very much at all about it. You don’t hear any cries to shut down athletics.
Q: So it’s not just a problem within the Greek life system?
No, but it’s the image of Greeks right now because there have been a lot of sexual assaults reported, grade point averages, the hazing issues, alcohol incidents.
And so there’s been a lot of attempts at reform. There’s recommendations that members cut their guest list to just three people.
Right now, two things are kind of absurd: One, a lot of the hazing incidents there are young women present or friends, almost as if it’s a kind of entertainment.
Two, the parties themselves are unmanageable with so many people there, and that makes an atmosphere ripe for date rape, people passing out and no one keeping track of them, all these problems.
I think the attempt here is to stop fraternities from being underground drinking clubs.
Q: Is it significant that the interfraternity council took this action as opposed to university officials?
That’s happened perhaps once or twice that I’ve heard of. It’s very, very rare. And I would commend the fraternity council for doing this so that they can take a step back and evaluate the issues.
“When you’ve got these dangerous characters in your chapter, you shouldn’t be thinking ‘a brother for life,’ you should think ‘a life saved.’
—Hank Nuwer, Hazing Researcher
What I recommend is that the undergrads would meet with their responsible alumni, and I stress that word ‘responsible,’ and kind of look at the governance of the group. Go from the beginning of pledging until members are inducted. And treat this as a safety issue and see what dangerous practices are occurring.
Next, have the courage to drum out members who are like the members at Penn State who could have saved a life. When you’ve got these dangerous characters in your chapter, you shouldn’t be thinking ‘a brother for life,’ you should think ‘a life saved.’
Q: Will these high-profile cases impact the future of Greek life?
There are a lot of examples of reforms in various places. Someone at Cornell started a hazing task force. A legal expert has talked about why fraternities have to change their ways or be sued out of business.
But I’ve never seen such an outcry in the media for banning Greek groups. So this may be part of why the IFC was willing to shut down temporarily. A lot of people have called for an end to the Greek system in certain places.
For me, I believe in the reforms, I deal all the time with undergraduates. I believe that the dangerous chapters should be shut down entirely, but not all of them are. Also, at some universities they’ve shut down sororities as well as fraternities, but sorority deaths are very, very rare while fraternity deaths are common.
And a lot of the young women, what you would blame them for would be not to castigate the fraternity members, not to ask them to shape up.
But the hazing practices that they do are more like asking a young woman, a pledge, to wear certain clothes, to lose weight. I’m not saying these are good things, they’re demeaning, but the really dangerous behaviors are the province of the fraternities.
Q: Can Greek life as it exists now continue or will it have to go away or face significant reforms? And which option is ideal?
Over the years I had concluded that schools had kind of turned their heads to the practice of hazing. It was in the yearbooks, it was in the newspapers, and it was treated as “boys will be boys” type of thing.
No more. Now we’re seeing the schools crack down. Why? Because of civil suits, because the deaths have finally reached a level that is impressive, in a bad way. And then the next part, there’s more activists now than ever before. And a lot of these are the parents of hazing victims.
Q: How else has Greek life evolved over the past few decades?
In a positive way, Phi Delta Theta, since bout 1990, introduced dry houses as many of the sororities have. I find that to be really positive development. I am seeing some fraternities cracking down on chapters with no second chances.
“If we can get pledges to take some responsibility also and say, ‘enough, stop,’ it might save some lives.”
—Hank Nuwer, Hazing Researcher
Hazing really is something that has to hit the pledges, as well. When they go in, they know hazing is wrong. New Hampshire is even trying to arrest pledges who are caught because they should have stopped the activity. So that’s evolving over time, how we look at pledges: from victims in 1975 to, ‘well they should have said no themselves.’ That’s a whole different ballpark.
The hazing advocates who’ve lost their kids won’t like that, but if we can get the pledges to take some responsibility also and say, ‘enough, stop’ it might save some live