Learn more about the Stop Campus Hazing Act in this video from StopHazing.org and the Clery Center.
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US colleges and universities must publicly disclose hazing incidents later this year after President Biden signed the Stop Campus Hazing Act into law last month.
By December 2025, most of the nation’s 2,600-plus, four-year colleges and universities must publish a Campus Hazing Transparency Report on their public websites that summarizes findings against any student organization for hazing violations.
Campus safety advocates and families of hazing victims are celebrating the bipartisan bill after more than 10 years of effort to pass the nation’s first anti-hazing law.
The new federal law “won’t eliminate hazing overnight nor bring our son, Gary Jr., back,” said Julie and Gary DeVercelly Sr. in a statement. They are board members of the Clery Center, a national campus safety organization. The DeVercellys lost their son to hazing at Rider University in 2007 and spent most of the past decade lobbying Congress for the federal legislation.
“It will, however, expose this harmful practice, hold institutions responsible, and empower students to speak out against it,” the couple said.
“It is a critical step toward fostering a culture where students can pursue their aspirations without fear of harm or coercion — things that should have been in place before our son went away to college.”
President Biden’s signature on the bill, on Dec. 23, 2024, started the clock on the rapid rollout of new requirements for higher education institutions.
That timeline began January 1, 2025, when colleges and universities were required to start collecting hazing statistics for the Annual Security Reports (also called “Clery” reports) they submit to the US Department of Education, according to the Clery Center.
Colleges and universities have until the end of June to develop campus hazing policies. By July 1, 2025, they must have a process for documenting violations of the institution’s standards of conduct related to hazing.
By December 23, each school must publish its new Campus Hazing Transparency Report on its website. That report will include the hazing violations that the institution began documenting as of July 1, 2025, and it must be updated at least twice annually after that.
In that report, colleges and universities must report the name of the student organization found responsible for hazing, a general description of the violation, and the dates related to the incident, the investigation, and the formal finding of responsibility for hazing.
If campus authorities do not reach an official conclusion that hazing occurred, the reported hazing would not be included in the Campus Hazing Transparency Report.
There is also a second hazing report that will be required for each college and university.
Each school must also compile all hazing incidents reported to campus security or local police and include the data in its Annual Security Report by October 2026. These are campus crime reports already required by federal law.
The new hazing data to be added to these reports will include all reported hazing incidents, not just those that resulted in formal findings of hazing by campus authorities.
For the first time, all higher education institutions must use the same definition of hazing as spelled out in the new federal law when determining whether to include a hazing incident in their Annual Security Report.
That means the Annual Security Report data will likely provide a more complete picture of campus hazing once the information is available in 2026.
Families of hazing victims often tell a similar story: They searched for information about hazing before their student joined a fraternity, sorority, or other campus organization and found nothing of concern.
Currently, only 10 states require public disclosure of campus hazing incidents. Many of those states’ laws were spearheaded by families of hazing victims in recent years.
“Imagine how many lives could have been saved had (the federal law) been signed sooner," said Eric Oakes in an interview with CBS 6 News in Virginia. He is the father of Adam Oakes, who died from a hazing incident at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2021.
“Everybody is sick and tired of what’s happening, and it’s gotten out of control, and I don’t think the universities and the fraternities know how to reel it in, so having the federal bill is important,” Oakes said.
“It is horrifying what happened to our children,” Evelyn Piazza told The Times of London. Her son, Timothy, was killed by hazing at Pennsylvania State University in 2017, and she and her husband, Jim, helped pass tougher hazing laws in two states following his death and advocated for the new federal law.
“After all these years, things need to change,” she said.