Just over half of US colleges and universities are publicly disclosing hazing incidents one year after a new federal law took effect requiring all campuses to document hazing.
About 52% of campuses have published a Campus Hazing Transparency Report detailing any hazing violations that occurred between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, according to an analysis by HazingInfo.org.
Many of those schools posted simple statements saying they did not have any violations to report. “We’re establishing a baseline about hazing that never existed before, and that’s huge. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than it ever has been,” said Dr. Elizabeth Allan, a leading hazing researcher and principal of StopHazing.org.
“Ten years ago … we would have started at a place of trying to convince (campuses) why this is important,” she said. “Now, it’s just ‘How do we do it?’ It’s so refreshing.”
It’s still too soon to say how many total hazing incidents have been reported by colleges and universities.
To calculate that number, HazingInfo is currently analyzing the websites of nearly 1,500 four-year public and private universities in every state with baccalaureate degree programs and on-campus housing.
Our preliminary review shows 163 hazing incidents have been reported by US colleges and universities since July 1, 2025. But that’s a partial picture from colleges in just 24 states so far.
And with 48% of schools so far providing no information about whether they had hazing violations or not, a complete picture of college hazing is still out of reach for now.
“If people look at that number and think, ‘Oh, 163, that’s it,’ it’s important to understand that is a mere fraction of the number of hazing incidents happening,” said Allan, who also leads the Hazing Prevention Research Lab at the University of Maine.
Only 1 in 10 students who experience hazing formally reports it, according to research by StopHazing.org. Of the cases that are reported, very few yield enough evidence to complete a full investigation.
Many hazing prevention experts say they feel hopeful about the overall campus response to the new law,
“I’m encouraged to see about half of schools (reporting) in the first year,” said Laura Egan, deputy executive director of the Clery Center, a campus safety organization. “The general tone we hear from campuses is a desire to get this right.”
The US Department of Education has yet to provide any guidance, technical rule-making, or even a formal acknowledgment of the Stop Campus Hazing Act’s passage, she said.
That lack of communication has left “a big vacuum … in helping campuses understand how to respond,” Egan said.
Still, the law is serving as a rallying point for better on-campus collaboration. Campus administrators report they are having an easier time getting buy-in and support from their school leadership to prioritize hazing transparency and prevention, said Bob Alig, Clery Center’s executive director.
Egan said she is seeing campus professionals turning to higher education colleagues across the country for guidance and ideas on how to meet the requirements of the new law.
More conversations are also happening on campus between staff responsible for hazing prevention and those who oversee compliance as they figure out how to work together toward more transparency, she said.
Yet the shift toward greater transparency about hazing remains uneven.
Some campuses are starting with robust policies and systems already in place to gather hazing reports, investigate them, determine whether sanctions should be imposed, collect the data, and make it public.
But many campuses are creating those systems from scratch.
“Some will say we know hazing is occurring, but there is such a bubble of silence that we are still building the norm for people to come forward,” Boyer said. “Every institution has its own climate that isn’t going to change overnight.”
Colleges and universities appear to be interpreting the new law in different ways.
Some campuses provide very little or no detail about each hazing incident. The University of Maryland-College Park, for example, lists four student organizations found responsible for violating the school’s hazing policy in the past year by citing the section of the code violated without any accompanying detail. The Stop Campus Hazing Act requires a general description of the incident.
Other schools strive for full transparency and include lots of details. Some publish hazing cases that are still under investigation, or even hazing reports that were found to be unsubstantiated.
For example, James Madison University in Virginia reports 11 hazing incidents in the 2025-26 school year that resulted in a finding that the organization was responsible for hazing. That included a finding against Phi Buda Ruda, a music fraternity, which required pledges to recite the Greek alphabet while holding a burning match, among other violations.
James Madison lists an additional seven pending cases in the past year, all against Greek-letter organizations, that are currently being investigated.
The level of detail provided about each hazing case is important, Egan said.
It helps people understand that hazing isn’t just about violent, extreme behaviors, she said. Hazing also covers a wide spectrum of more subtle actions and behaviors that can cause harm. Being clear about what happened helps people understand when they should report hazing.
Some 68% of public colleges and universities share their hazing incident records compared to 42% of private not-for-profit schools. Private for-profit institutions have the lowest level of transparency, with 28% publishing hazing incident information.
HazingInfo also found that secular schools generally have a higher rate of hazing transparency than schools that are affiliated with a religion.
About 60% of non-religious schools share their Campus Hazing Transparency Reports.
For religiously affiliated schools, just 38% make that information available.
Our data also shows that hazing transparency tends to drop as the size of the student population decreases.
The largest universities are the most likely to have a Campus Hazing Transparency Report posted on their websites.
Many smaller colleges and universities are not following suit.
The percentage of campuses sharing that information drops as school enrollment shrinks, from 74% of schools with student enrollment between 10,000 and 20,000 down to just 24% of campuses with under 1,000 students.
It’s unclear why some schools are still not disclosing whether they have had hazing incidents.
“This feels like an easy fix for campuses to make that statement and bring clarity to the campus community,” even if they had no hazing incidents, Boyer said. “It’s sharing what you already know.”
When no information is provided, it leaves students and parents wondering if there were hazing incidents that aren’t being publicly reported, Boyer said.
Other reasons for the lack of transparency may include gaps in training and information, schools that haven’t allocated funds or staff to lead the data collection and reporting, or a mistaken belief that the law only applies to schools that have fraternities and sororities, campus safety experts say.
Under the law, campuses are not technically required to post a Campus Hazing Transparency Report if there hasn’t been a formal finding of a hazing violation. But hazing prevention trainers and experts urge schools to report whether or not they had a hazing incident.
HazingInfo requires schools to publish a hazing incident report, with or without formal findings of a hazing violation, in order to earn a green checkmark for transparency in our school listings.
As more hazing information becomes available, students and their families likely will be paying more attention to how — and whether — their colleges and universities respond, experts say.
“This is an opportunity for campuses to ask, ‘Are our processes clear?’ Boyer said. “We’re also creating new opportunities for connection and belonging and building spaces that can prevent others from experiencing harm.”