Opinion: Stop letting our schools cover up deadly hazing practices

Just days after graduating from high school, my son, Sam, began receiving text messages from fraternity members at Washington State University trying to recruit him. Soon after, Sam decided to accept a summer bid to join Alpha Tau Omega.

I was wary of fraternities generally and worried about Sam joining even before starting his freshman year. I set out to learn all I could about the fraternity.

I discovered that it was one of America’s oldest fraternities. Its alumni had raised nearly $3 million to renovate their chapter house and the school’s president and other campus leaders participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony unveiling the renovations.

What I did not find were reports about hazing or other misconduct by this fraternity. That’s because most colleges and universities aren’t required to disclose hazing incidents publicly.

Now, federal legislation to bring campus hazing out of the shadows is on the cusp of passage in the Senate. The Stop Campus Hazing Act gives college-bound students and families access to information that colleges and universities already know about campus groups that haze.

Despite my best efforts to investigate Alpha Tau Omega, I found nothing of concern. Yet just weeks into Sam’s freshman year, police arrived at our door to tell us that Sam had been found dead of alcohol poisoning following a hazing ritual in which pledges were required to drink toxic amounts of alcohol to demonstrate their allegiance to their “brotherhood.”

In the agonizing months that followed, our family finally learned the truth about this fraternity.

In the six years before Sam was killed, authorities from Washington State University, local police and Alpha Tau Omega’s national office had knocked on the door of that chapter house and its nearby annex dozens of times to investigate allegations of hazing, assault, rape, and less serious issues such as noise complaints, according to evidence uncovered by our legal team.

Things were so out of control that the fraternity’s chief executive and other leaders had conducted a chapter review, kicking out nearly half of the members for hazing, drug use and other offenses the year before Sam was recruited.

Although both the school and national fraternity knew this was a deeply troubled chapter, none of this information was publicly available. Their lack of transparency cost Sam his life.

Our family’s story isn’t unique. Sam’s 2019 death was the 95th death by hazing since 2000 . Colleges and universities have long promoted the benefits of fraternities and other student organizations while hiding or downplaying the truth about hazing.

The Stop Campus Hazing Act is a bipartisan bill requiring U.S. colleges and universities to publicly disclose hazing incidents, putting the power of information in consumers’ hands. The bill, which passed the House on Tuesday, would also require institutions to publish their hazing prevention policies on their websites and identify student organizations that violate those policies. In addition, it would establish campus-wide, research-based hazing education and prevention programs.

The bill compels universities to share what they know about student groups that haze, so that families, students and incoming freshmen can assess the risks and make informed decisions about which organizations are safe to join. It leverages existing reporting mechanisms under the Clery Act, which requires colleges and universities to submit annual campus crime reports to the U.S. Department of Education.

Hazing isn’t just a fraternity problem. Some 55 percent of college students involved in clubs, teams and groups experience hazing , according to research led by University of Maine Professor Elizabeth Allan , who leads StopHazing.org. That figure rises to nearly 75 percent for students involved in Greek life and varsity athletics .

Without a national transparency law, states have created a patchwork of policies to prevent hazing . Currently, nine states require colleges and universities to publicly disclose hazing incidents. But fewer than half of institutions in those states are meeting their legal obligations to report hazing, according to a review by HazingInfo.org .

This is the closest that national anti-hazing legislation has ever been to passage after a decade of advocacy efforts by families of hazing victims and three previous attempts to pass bills requiring disclosure of campus hazing.

The Stop Campus Hazing Act brings consistency to hazing reporting. Students and their families are entitled to know which campus groups pose the greatest risk of harm. This bill will save lives, by forcing colleges and universities to call out the bad actors among their student groups and protect other families from the heartbreak of losing a child to hazing.

To end hazing for good, it’s time for the institutions that permit and perpetuate toxic hazing culture to come clean.

Jolayne Houtz is the mother of Sam Martinez, who died following a campus hazing incident in 2019. She is also the founder of HazingInfo.org , a free, searchable database of hazing incidents at U.S. colleges and universities.

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