Hazing is an age-old practice that continues to thrive in a modern society that can’t agree on how seriously to treat hazing offenses—or whether to punish them at all.
A patchwork of state laws address hazing and hazing prevention across the nation. If you seriously injure or kill a person by hazing in Pennsylvania, for example, you could face a felony charge and a prison term of up to seven years.
The same act in California could mean either a misdemeanor or a felony charge and a jail sentence of not more than one year. In Mississippi, you would face a six-month jail term.
And in New Mexico, there are no legal consequences for hazing at all. It is one of six states—also including Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Montana—where there are no laws against hazing.
Across the 44 states that do legally address hazing, their laws are inconsistent in how hazing is defined, tracked, investigated, sanctioned, and reported.
Some focus only on hazing in fraternities and sororities. Some include K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities.
Some states specifically prohibit perpetrators of hazing from using the victim’s consent to participate in hazing activities as a legal defense; others do not specify.
Nine states currently require all higher education institutions to publicly report hazing incidents on their campuses: Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. Indiana will become the tenth state in July.
Those reports are the foundation of HazingInfo.org. For the first time, these hazing incident reports are all accessible in one place on our website, giving college students and parents an easy way to quickly check the disciplinary track record of groups, teams, and clubs they may want to join.
At the federal level, the Stop Campus Hazing Act currently under consideration in Congress is a bipartisan effort that would bring consistency to hazing reporting.
It would require colleges and universities to include hazing incidents in their annual security reports and to publish on their websites the institution’s hazing prevention policies and the organizations that have violated them.
The families of hazing victims have been a driving force behind toughened hazing laws and increased penalties in recent years.
For example, the Timothy J. Piazza Anti-Hazing Law in Pennsylvania is named after a Penn State sophomore who died in 2017 after a night of hazing at Beta Theta Pi fraternity. His family also helped pass a similar law in New Jersey.
Collin's Law: The Ohio Anti-Hazing Act honors Collin Wiant, an 18-year-old freshman who died at Ohio University during a hazing ritual at Sigma Pi fraternity in 2018. The law was also supported by the parents of Stone Foltz, a sophomore at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who died in 2021 following an initiation ritual at his fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha.
Louisiana passed the Max Gruver Act in 2018 following the death of Max Gruver, an 18-year-old student who died in 2017 following a hazing ritual at Phi Delta Theta fraternity at Louisiana State University. His family drove the passage of a similar bill in Georgia.
In Washington, Sam’s Law and the Sam Martinez Stop Hazing Law are named after Sam Martinez, a 19-year-old freshman at Washington State University who died in 2019 during a hazing ritual at Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.
And in Virginia, Adam's Law was passed following the death of Adam Oakes, a 19-year-old freshman killed in 2021 by hazing at Virginia Commonwealth University's Delta Chi fraternity.
Learn more about state laws on hazing as well as an analysis of each state law’s strengths and limitations at HazingInfo.org.