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IU student paper challenges administration to punish ATO individuals

Link to hard-hitting editorial   Excerpt

 

ATO received more than its fair share of warnings to get it together.

The greek organization made national headlines in 1992 after forcing pledges to drink copious amounts of alcohol to induce vomiting. This hazing landed a sophomore in the hospital with an almost deadly .48 blood alcohol content. The pledge luckily survived.

We thought they would learn their lesson after that train wreck but, unfortunately, ATO doesn’t take second chances seriously.

The Editorial Board has come to an impasse, where we have to do ?something we absolutely hate to get the point across: use a cliché.

Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. IU is partly at fault for letting an organization get to this level of recklessness and maltreatment.

A report of sexual assault was filed in 2013. Speculations about a “Ménage Tau” party ATO plays host to every year — where “body shots, threesomes and much more magic follows” — were printed in 2013 by brobible.com.

Reports of sexual assault, battery, alcohol violations and even a man falling off the three-story house have plagued the fraternity since its temporary ?suspension in 1992.

The time for an ATO redemption has come and gone. But the rest of this school still has a fighting chance.

If we want to learn anything from these events, it’s that inaction from our administration or action that comes too late isn’t going to cut it.

You want to fix this, IU? Start by holding every single person present during the filming of that video ?responsible.

By Hank Nuwer

Journalist Hank 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, the Alaska Press Club awarded him first place in the Best Columnist division and Best Humorist, second place.

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 Warsaw, Poland and 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 and in his weekly column "Far from Randolph" in the Winchester Star-Gazette of Randolph County, Indiana.

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