• Hazing Deaths Database:
  • Blog
  • Storytelling
  • Bio
  • High School Sexual Hazing Incidents
  • Campus Speaker: Hazing & Binge Drinking
  • Hank Nuwer: selected media coverage
  • World Hazing Incidents
  • “Hazing,” “Sons of the Dawn,” “Legend of Jesse Owens”

Hank Nuwer's Hazing Scholarship Site

Follow me on Social Media

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Chronicle of Higher Education looks at hazing deaths

January 29, 2020 By Hank Nuwer Leave a Comment

Link to article by Lawrence Biemiller and excerpt below

 

Last year [2017] four fraternity pledges died in what are alleged to have been hazing-related incidents. The young men, aged 18 to 20, all died after drinking heavily at fraternity events — in one case, a ritual named “Bible study.” But while the number of hazing deaths in 2017 was high, it was far from unprecedented. Similar numbers were recorded in 2008, 2012, and 2014.

What makes last year’s hazing deaths unusual, though, is how much publicity they have attracted. That’s particularly true of the horrific death of Timothy Piazza, a Pennsylvania State University sophomore who was a pledge at Beta Theta Pi and whose final hours were captured by the fraternity house’s security cameras and brothers’ Snapchat posts. Intense media attention seems likely to continue as criminal and civil trials resulting from these deaths work their way through the courts.

The big question now is: Will any of this prompt real change? Penn State and other universities where students died — Florida State, Louisiana State, and Texas State — responded to their deaths by imposing a variety of suspensions and new rules on fraternities. But if the usual pattern repeats itself, the institutions will relax their vigils after a few incident-free semesters, and fraternities will slip back into holding alcohol-soaked parties and hazing their pledges. Already Florida State, saying that students are working to “shift the campus culture in the right direction,” has lifted some restrictions on fraternity recruiting.

Hank J. Nuwer, a journalism professor at Franklin College who has written about hazing since 1978, says it’s hard now to imagine ever eradicating the practice, which he says combines the appeal of belonging to an elitist organization with the lure of the forbidden and aspects of cultlike group-think. If you include band, sports-team, and other hazings, there has been at least one death every year since 1961 [now documented since 1959]  in American high schools and colleges, he says.

TAKEAWAY

Can Hazing Be Stopped?

  • The horrific death last year of a Penn State fraternity pledge, captured on security cameras and social media, put hazing in the spotlight — again. But it’s uncertain whether real change will come about as a result.
  • Some institutions, including Penn State, have cracked down on fraternities with new rules and suspensions. But Penn State’s president said in an open letter to the community that he worried that bad behavior would simply go underground.
  • As criminal and civil trials resulting from recent hazing-related deaths work their way through the courts, some parents of victims have joined a crusade to end hazing. Critics of fraternity behavior say parents often perpetuate the problem, by encouraging partying and drinking excessively themselves at Greek-sponsored events for parents.

Hazing dates to the 19th century, Nuwer notes, and by the early 20th, hazing of all of an institution’s freshmen and sophomores was not uncommon. But when he was a student at Buffalo State College in the 1960s, he says, even fraternity hazing was mild by today’s standards: “For us it was scavenger hunts and stealing something from a rival fraternity. The drinking wasn’t a part of it.”

Hazing that is potentially deadly is far more common today, he says. “It’s only a fraction of the cases that come to our attention, when there’s a serious injury, or a parent intervenes, or by chance campus police or an administrator inspect and catch something. Students find that if you lie and put on the aura of respectability, you can do what you want behind closed doors.” (Some sororities also haze new members, but deaths are vanishingly rare.)

Filed Under: Hazing News

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Contact Inquiries

Hank Nuwer

Correspondence: Hank Nuwer at Hnuwer@hanknuwer.com   Phone number upon request.  Available presentations USA, … Email to book a date.

Sons of the Dawn

Sons of the Dawn: A Basque Odyssey: Hank's novel is for teens 11-18 but also meant to be enjoyed by … Read More

Hazing Deaths Database:

… Read More

Pullman Police Chief Jenkins drops the ball in Big-Little death.

The police chief missed the deadline to post hazing charges. Shame on Pullman Police and the Prosecutor for letting the one-year statute of limitations expire in the “Big-Little” death of Sam Martinez, a travesty, at Washington State’s Alpha Tau Omega house. “We had our eyes on a potential more serious offense, that was manslaughter, and […]

Death of a rookie at Lyon College

The bruised body of James Gilfedder is undergoing an autopsy at this time while his teammates continue to play.   Gilfedder’s parents told Arkansas media that their son’s body was battered, and he consumed a fifth of alcohol at a team “hazing party.”  Police are waiting for autopsy results before commenting.  Media said the house […]

Another 2020 close call — TCU

Moderator: This is the same university that had injured pledges in September 2020: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article218683030.html Benton McDonald  -INCIDENT #2.  So similar to death of Nicky Cumberland at University of Texas–Moderator January 28, 2021 TCU placed a fraternity on probation after a hazing investigation revealed that students involved in a car crash last November had been sent […]

Suicide allegedly tied to hazing at Nebraska-Lincoln

Here is the link. Rahat Jalil, UNL Lambda Phi Epsilon

Archives


Hank Nuwer's Hazing Scholarship Site is proudly powered by WordPress