It was on a dark stretch of highway in Alaska when my life — and my life’s work — flashed in front of my eyes.
Earlier this year, a full-grown bull moose collided with my vehicle, destroying it. My wife and I know how fortunate we were to walk away mostly unharmed. But if we hadn’t, the hazing deaths database I created in 1975 and still maintain would have died with me that day.
The unofficial hazing deaths clearinghouse I developed tracks hazing deaths back to the 1830s. My research has found that one or more hazing deaths occurred each year in the United States between 1959 and 2021.
Why is a database useful? As Shakespeare wrote, let me count the ways.
News organizations such as the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, and hundreds more refer to it. Attorneys in civil litigation employ its data. Documentary filmmakers use its data and request specific information from the database. I’ve lost track of the hundreds of dissertations, theses, books, research studies, and articles that cite my work.
I appreciate each and every student, researcher, attorney, activist, librarian, and journalist who cites my database accurately.
That’s why I am fully supportive of HazingInfo.org and its mission to compile a national hazing incident database that includes more than just the hazing deaths database I began in 1975.
A fully functional and searchable database by Hazinginfo.org will make hazers even more accountable and serve as a deterrent to many groups and individuals. I certainly will help and support the work to the best of my ability.
Other partners in the HazingInfo.org project include Jolayne Houtz, mother of hazing victim Sam Martinez; the University of Maine; the University of Washington Information School; and StopHazing, an organization I contributed many columns to from its inception until around 2020, when I did my final podcast.
My initial hazing deaths list, started in 1975, began to expand after the data was published in 1978 in the journal Human Behavior.
Eileen Stevens, the mother of Alfred University fraternity hazing victim Chuck Stenzel and a tireless fighter for hazing legislation, also located historical cases of hazing deaths.
In 1990, my book “Broken Pledges” came out from Longstreet Press. It contained an expanded hazing death list and a historical database of hazing incidents. My subsequent books for Indiana University Press (“Wrongs of Passage” and “Hazing: Destroying Young Lives”) also contain hazing examples gleaned from a database that has run without a break since 1995.
Assisting me with that first website was my son, Adam, then 10 years old and self-trained in web development. Our first efforts at putting up a page took enormous patience. We simply lacked the skills at that time.
A major breakthrough occurred when Indiana University-Purdue University Journalism Dean James W. Brown and I put together an international hazing listserv. That listserv put me in touch with members of the public and Alfred University researchers, most notably Norm Pollard.
My contacts expanded after I joined HazingPrevention.org as a director. Tracy Maxwell was the founder, but all early and many later HPO directors proved supportive. Dr. Elizabeth Allan and her colleagues at StopHazing and the University of Maine, along with her husband Brian Rahill, became invaluable colleagues.
Fraternity and sorority executives, student affairs professionals, and other journalists all contributed ideas and critiques of my database. Over the years, colleagues Ray Begovich, Dave Westol, Bob Biggs, Joe Gilman, Elliot Hopkins, and others have given valuable feedback, encouragement, and constructive criticism.
I also have been gratified by the activism of Lianne Kowiak, Evelyn Piazza, and many more winners of the Hank Nuwer Awards sponsored by the Hazing Prevention Network and Northeast Greek Association.
A great many parents and family members of hazing victims have reached out to me (or me to them) and have grown into valued and valuable colleagues. I have been pleased and frankly amazed at their ability to get old hazing laws reformed and new ones passed.
And it now appears, for the first time, that a federal hazing law, the Stop Campus Hazing Act, is a distinct possibility.
In the meantime, I continue to pursue hazing investigations and add to the hazing deaths database, as well as selected hazing incidents included in my blog. My current research specialties are hazing incidents in athletics and hazing deaths of police recruits.
I am grateful to son Adam Nuwer for his long-ago expertise. Without him, the site never would have come into being. I am also grateful to my wife, Malgorzata (Gosia) Nuwer, who has supported my journalism 100 percent since the day we first met in Warsaw, Poland.
I also tip my hat to Buffalo State University Butler Library archivist Daniel DiLandro, who maintains the Hank Nuwer Hazing Collection with his staff.
I have left out dozens of people who have assisted me from 1975 to present. Please forgive me. The hazing deaths database and my hazing research owe their existence to hundreds of supporters (and also fierce critics) over the years.