Is Hank Huwer anti-fraternity?

[hoosier]

From Hank Nuwer commenting about near-death by forced water consumption of Alpha Phi Alpha pledge at SMU:

"It will take more than two parents' pleas to stop hazing, says Hank Nuwer,
a journalism professor at Franklin College in Indiana and Indiana
University at Indianapolis who has written four books on hazing.

"It's a well-meaning gesture," he said, but he added, "It's creating an
atmosphere that creates false hopes for a lot of people and in the
execution, it never produces social change."

Nuwer said parents such as the Currys should call for more research on
hazing rituals rather than tougher laws. He said there has been at least
one hazing death every year since 1970, but there is too little reliable
information on hazing methods and their prevalence on U.S. campuses."

While I hate all hazing and the bad publicity it brings to all GLOs, and I used to think Hank Nuwer was a positive force, the recent comments from him now lead me to question if he would prefer that GLOs just die.

[Rudey]

Why? I would like to see hard data coming forth about fraternities. I think through that you can start to see trends. You will see whether certain GLOs or schools have more hazing, alcohol, violent offenses and link that to certain policies they have. Perhaps it will even lower costs for those that don't carry the same problems on their backs and force change on the bad apples.

-Rudey

Originally posted by hoosier
From Hank Nuwer commenting about near-death by forced water consumption of Alpha Phi Alpha pledge at SMU:

"It will take more than two parents' pleas to stop hazing, says Hank Nuwer,
a journalism professor at Franklin College in Indiana and Indiana
University at Indianapolis who has written four books on hazing.

"It's a well-meaning gesture," he said, but he added, "It's creating an
atmosphere that creates false hopes for a lot of people and in the
execution, it never produces social change."

Nuwer said parents such as the Currys should call for more research on
hazing rituals rather than tougher laws. He said there has been at least
one hazing death every year since 1970, but there is too little reliable
information on hazing methods and their prevalence on U.S. campuses."

While I hate all hazing and the bad publicity it brings to all GLOs, and I used to think Hank Nuwer was a positive force, the recent comments from him now lead me to question if he would prefer that GLOs just die.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Hank Nuwer is pro-fraternity and anti-hazing. As I see it, anyone who is pro-hazing is anti-fraternity because he is reducing the elevated principles of an organization to base human behavior.

[wptw]

Originally posted by hoosier
I used to think Hank Nuwer was a positive force, the recent comments from him now lead me to question if he would prefer that GLOs just die.

Being a positive force for the world at large doesn't always jive with being a positive force for GLOs. When it comes to the specific issue of hazing, let's face it: GLOs are not a positive force for the world. Quite the opposite, in fact.

wptw

[madmax]

Originally posted by russellwarshay
Hank Nuwer is pro-fraternity and anti-hazing. As I see it, anyone who is pro-hazing is anti-fraternity because he is reducing the elevated principles of an organization to base human behavior.

Hank Nuwer is a hack and the only thing he is pro is Hank Nuwer. A certain percentage of the fraternity drinking/hazing/injury incidents that he lists on his website are a complete joke. The one that comes to my mind is he listed a sorority death because a girl that was on springbreak was hit by a drunk driver while crossing the street.

I think he should write book and have a website listing all the crimes committed by college professors. He could start with these:

PSU professor conviced for triple murder. http://www.post-gazette.com/localnew...2psuprofr4.asp

Villanova professor slits baby's throat and then committs suicide.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/973850/posts

A UPenn professor was charged with raping a grad student last year.

Penn was also sued because one of their profs killed a kid while trying experimental gene research. The prof neglected to tell the family that he had a patent on the research and he would make millions if the experiment was a success. He also failed to mention that all the monkeys used in the previous experiements also died.

[moe.ron]

I don't know what this info would do. Here is a few info on Hank:

He is an alum from Buffalo State (Go Bengals!!!). He is a brother of Sigma Tau Gamma in the 80s. Buff State is the Rho chapter of Sig Tau. They lost their charter and, I beleived, regained it a year or two ago. Not really sure, but they were a colony my senior year in college, and new most of their founding brothers.

[33girl]

Madmax beat me to the punch re the drunk driver incident. Any good that you've done goes into the toilet when you use things to make your statistics come out the way you want them to come out.

He started out with good intentions, but I think he's fallen in love with his own publicity and changed his goal from "educating to elimiate hazing" to "my work will eliminate hazing." I know all researchers and scientists have some amount of ego, but his has gone too far.

p.s., that Penn incident sounds like a Law & Order episode. was it made into one?

[sugar and spice]

Originally posted by 33girl
Madmax beat me to the punch re the drunk driver incident. Any good that you've done goes into the toilet when you use things to make your statistics come out the way you want them to come out.

He started out with good intentions, but I think he's fallen in love with his own publicity and changed his goal from "educating to elimiate hazing" to "my work will eliminate hazing." I know all researchers and scientists have some amount of ego, but his has gone too far.

p.s., that Penn incident sounds like a Law & Order episode. was it made into one?

I have to agree with this. He either exaggerates or eliminates details to make things sound worse than they are. Check out the first item on this website:

http://hazing.hanknuwer.com/cs2000.html

Yes, kids, that's my chapter. Before I was a member, but my chapter nonetheless.

Unfortunately he eliminates enough of the details and exaggerates the "hazing." Most non-Greeks don't understand enough about Greek policies to understand why a scavenger hunt is considering hazing, so they assume that something bad must have happened on the scavenger hunt in order for it to qualify as hazing (like the scavenger hunt depicted on SL2). In reality it was a simple scavenger hunt where nothing illegal or scandalous (the ever-popular "fraternity guys forcing girls to do something for them before they give them an item they need" idea) happened. The issue was basic ignorance of national policies. Nationals came in, educated, kicked out those who were involved. I was definitely not hazed when I joined two years later, and we don't haze our new girls now. As far as I know, no hazing has occurred in our chapter since that incident. The way he describes it makes things sound far worse. A number of incidents in his "hazing file" are described similarly, which makes me wonder about how much truth there is to them.

And as madmax said, there are a number of deaths that have no ties to hazing or very tenuous ties to hazing that he tries to paint as related. I'm not sure why, because surely there are enough hazing-related deaths and incidents that are real that he doesn't need to make them up?

He would have much more credibility if he didn't try to paint every single hazing incident as a life-threatening problem and every fraternity member's death as a possible hazing incident.

PS: You will notice that on his description of the infamous AKA drowning hazing from last year, there is no mention of the fact that the chapter was not even a recognized one.

[hoosier]

It's very interesting to see others apparently are coming to the same conclusion.

Years ago I lost faith in Eileen Stevens and her anti-hazing campaign, when she counted as pledge deaths an incident at South Carolina. A couple guys who were denied entrance at a fraternity party came back with a gun and killed two pledges. That is hazing, only in Eileen's eyes.

Several times I have signed up for Hank's "hazing info email list" but I've never received the first email.

[33girl]

Originally posted by hoosier
Years ago I lost faith in Eileen Stevens and her anti-hazing campaign, when she counted as pledge deaths an incident at South Carolina. A couple guys who were denied entrance at a fraternity party came back with a gun and killed two pledges. That is hazing, only in Eileen's eyes.

Several times I have signed up for Hank's "hazing info email list" but I've never received the first email.

I think Hank & Eileen are holding hands and swinging in a hammock, har har.

Don't forget Henry Wechsler, who was finally forced to admit you can "binge drink" (according to his defintion) but not actually get drunk.

[madmax]

Originally posted by sugar and spice
I have to agree with this. He either exaggerates or eliminates details to make things sound worse than they are.


And as madmax said, there are a number of deaths that have no ties to hazing or very tenuous ties to hazing that he tries to paint as related. I'm not sure why, because surely there are enough hazing-related deaths and incidents that are real that he doesn't need to make them up?

He would have much more credibility if he didn't try to paint every single hazing incident as a life-threatening problem and every fraternity member's death as a possible hazing incident.

Another example I thought was totally BS was the University of Wyoming x-country team was involved in a crash on the way to a meet. As I remember 7 people died and the accident was caused by a drunk driver that crashed into the team bus. One person on on the x-country team was greek so Nuwer listed all 7 deaths on his website.