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Hazing News

Latest news release from University of Kentucky

Campus Community,

We have committed to timely and transparent communication following the death of one of our students earlier this week. We plan to honor that commitment.

Below is a message distributed this morning by Vice President for Student Success Kirsten Turner to students engaged in Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL) activities on our campus. Follow-up meetings with FSL student leaders also are taking place today.

The message outlines new steps we’re taking to further ensure the health and well-being of our students. These steps also increase awareness and education around our students’ responsibilities  with respect to critical issues such as hazing, alcohol use and bystander intervention. In short, the steps include:

  • Suspending activities of new members of Interfraternity Council (IFC) chapters indefinitely.
  • Requiring new training for all IFC chapter members focusing on bystander intervention, and an additional course around hazing prevention and university expectations.

As the message indicates, these are first steps, but we believe they are important ones in communicating our obligations to our students and their responsibilities to each other and to our community.

We will continue to communicate about these important issues as our investigations of this tragedy progress and as we continue to evaluate how best we can protect our community and hold each other accountable in upholding that responsibility.

Thank you.

Eli Capilouto
President

By 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, 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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