It’s all too easy for colleges and universities to look the other way when rumors about hazing emerge.
The incentives are strong for campus officials to ignore hazing to avoid bad press, protect their institutional reputations, and keep potential students, alumni, donors, and policymakers in the dark.
But clues exist on campus websites and in public records that can give students and families valuable information about whether a campus is making a serious effort to prevent and end hazing.
1. The campus hazing policy and relevant state laws are clearly stated on the college or university website.
Rutgers University-New Brunswick makes it easy to find its policies prohibiting hazing as well as information about New Jersey’s anti-hazing law on a dedicated student conduct website.
Many other universities make it difficult to locate their hazing policies. For example, Allen University in South Carolina includes a section on hazing near the bottom of its Office of Student Activities website, but you have to search for the term “hazing” to find it.
2. It is easy to report hazing on campus — and it’s clear who to contact about hazing if you have questions or need support.
Wake Forest University in North Carolina offers a website dedicated to hazing prevention that includes prominent buttons in multiple locations linking to an anonymous hazing reporting form as well as phone numbers to reach campus police and the Dean of Students office for hazing reporting.
The University of Washington has a dedicated hazing prevention and response specialist whose contact information is clearly stated and linked on its hazing prevention website.
However, Piedmont University in Georgia, like many other institutions, has no online link for anonymous hazing reporting and no hazing incident report as required by law. It suggests reporting hazing to its Greek life office—with hard-to-locate contact information buried in a Greek life FAQ.
3. Campus hazing incidents are easy to find on the college or university website.
In the nine states that currently require colleges and universities to publicly report hazing incidents, students and families have access to even more information to evaluate each school’s commitment to hazing prevention.
Clemson University in South Carolina publicly reports hazing and other student conduct violations dating back to 2013, going far beyond the state’s requirement for four years of data. It also includes sports teams and other student organizations, although South Carolina law only requires reports on fraternity and sorority hazing.
The University of Texas at Austin lists hazing violations that have occurred since 2017, although Texas law only requires three years of incident data. UT Austin has a robust hazing prevention and response website with a prominent link in the footer of each page of its website.
In contrast, the University of Houston-Downtown does not publicly report hazing incidents, despite the legal requirement to do so. It offers no specific resources on hazing prevention and no link to report hazing.
Central State University in Ohio buries its hazing incident report at the bottom of its Greek Life page without providing specific information on how to report hazing.
4. The school’s hazing transparency report names those organizations held responsible for hazing.
An institution that takes hazing prevention seriously includes specific organization names in its hazing report and includes all organizations, not just fraternities.
The University of Virginia-Main Campus maintains a current, detailed list of all organizations reported for hazing misconduct, including fraternities, sororities, an athletic team, and the university’s guide service, which provides campus tours.
Texas A&M-College Station includes its student-led Corp of Cadets training units in its report, along with fraternities, sororities, and other campus groups.
Virginia Commonwealth University includes an extensive list of organizations under suspension for misconduct, groups unrecognized by the university, and groups that are not authorized to operate on campus because of action by their national headquarters. That information is in addition to current conduct reports on authorized student groups.
For comparison, Princeton University only lists “members of a varsity athletic team” or “students in a fraternity” found to have violated its hazing policy, rather than naming the specific organizations. That is in line with New Jersey state law, but it limits how useful the information is to students and families.
5. Hazing reports include detailed descriptions of the incident.
Some schools provide only the bare minimum of information about student conduct violations, without supporting details to give students and families the context to understand what happened.
Bucknell University in Pennsylvania provides just a generic description of each conduct violation—not enough information for students and parents to make informed decisions about the severity of the event or the risk they might face as potential members.
However, Lehigh University in Pennsylvania provides significant details about reported hazing incidents, including cases under investigation as well as completed investigations.
For example, Lehigh reported that Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity was placed on interim suspension last year pending an investigation after an intoxicated student was transported to a hospital. Investigators reported the student was forced or coerced into consuming hard alcohol, and that fraternity members contacted the student to tell him to lie to investigators. That investigation continues.
For more guidance on understanding a college or university’s hazing transparency report, use this flowchart developed by our partners at StopHazing to help decipher the report.
And remember to use HazingInfo.org’s Campus Lookup feature to learn more about hazing on your campus.