I lifted this from Hoosier's post in the Risk Management forum. I know it belongs there, but I think it is way to important to only be posted there.
This is important.
Obviously, it's important to all of us, not the the black organizations.
Many of us have said all of this before in Risk Management -- but not everyone reads those threads.
Please, read this and really think about it.
The futures of your chapters and nationals may very well depend on it.
"From Hermes today:
Legal trends reflect grim future for greek hazers, provide wake-up
Dissecting the lawsuit against California AKA chapter and finding several lessons to be learned
By Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough
I recently received a huge box, delivered to my office this past summer. At first, I was excited, thinking that the hard-backed copies of my new book had been completed and the box contained my complimentary ones.
Not the case, however. The package came from an attorney. It weighed 24 pounds. Inside was a stack of papers one foot high.
This has been an interesting summer for me, given that this package represented one of three requests for my services as an expert witness. I've received eight such requests since 1998. I agreed to assist with this one involving a predominately white fraternity.
Despite the recent trends in lawsuits against fraternities and sororities, students continue to engage in life-threatening behavior and increasingly jeopardize their organizations. Courts abandoned slaps on the wrist in the 1960s for multimillion dollar lawsuits now aimed at making statements against hazing. Up until 2002, the largest lawsuit I have been able to find is a $36 million suit that was settled out of court.
That changed in September 2002 when two California State University at Los Angeles students drowned while allegedly pledging the AKA chapter there. The family of one of the women filed a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against AKA's national office.
The incident sparked an unprecedented media circus in the greek world and easily eclipsed the coverage garnered by the death of Scott Krueger at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology just five years prior. The LA Times, CNN's "American Morning" and Connie Chung, and NPR's Tavis Smiley were among the group covering the deaths. Dr. Phil was into his first two months with his own show when he spent significant attention on the story.
Once the lawsuit was filed, I went to the Web site of the law firm filing on behalf of the victim,
www.cmrlawoffice.com. Curious, I wanted to see what a $100 million lawsuit looked like. After having a chance to read the suit, it was clear to me that for greeks, regardless of color, several key lessons can and should be learned from this tragedy.
Frankly, it seems silly to even talk about lessons to be learned. If people would stop hazing, there would be no further lawsuits of this kind. Period. Yet history continues to prove that the utilization of hazing as a tool to make dedicated and committed members -- although unsubstantiated by any empirical data -- is preferred, regardless of the consequences. So, while hazing continues as it has for centuries, new strategies are being used to fight the practice and those who participate. This current lawsuit then provides another opportunity to address the issue.
Here are several lessons that can be taken from the lawsuit:
Members are viewed as agents of the organization.
One of the interesting aspects in the language of black and Latino fraternal organizations is the sense of "ownership" by members. Members often talk about "my organization" as if they were founders or sole proprietors. In some ways this is correct and the courts are likely to agree to make that point.
When members of a group go through the process of recruiting, selecting and educating new members, they are operating on behalf of that organization. You have become agents of the organization. Therefore, your actions affect not only yourselves, but "your organizations." Members should begin to take better care of the groups they claim they love.
Being chapter president is a serious obligation.
The lawsuit stated that the chapter president is the chief executive and "her personal actions outside the chapter are not her own." When a chapter president allows, either actively or passively for hazing to occur, they have opened up personal and organizational liability.
Today's times require chapter presidents who will have the courage to prevent hazing, if not for the sake of the organization, then for their personal protection. Presidents will be sued every time.
Actions speak louder than words.
Many believe that because organizations have anti-hazing policies, and because on all their literature it's indicated that hazing is prohibited, the organization is therefore protected. Wrong. The lawsuit argues that while the organization has written policies, it "is aware, or reasonably should be aware, that its chapters . . . regularly violate each and every one of their policies."
Basically, when members say in programs and forums that they don't haze, it is a joke and everyone knows it. The most basic level of proof comes from the constant barrage of hazing accounts in the news. It is senseless to even lie about not hazing when people get caught all the time, usually after an injury or even death.
But the more troubling problem comes from the artifacts of greek life, particularly for black organizations. Some chapters pride themselves as "death" chapters or "bloody" chapters. I haven't been able to trace the historical origins of these terms, but they are probably a statement to indicate that people pledged hard and did not walk into their organizations. When juries see these terms, particularly after an injury or death, they serve as confirmation of a violent culture.
My advice is to cease all of these sayings immediately. They need to be removed from paraphernalia, Web sites, etc. But this is just the beginning of the cleaning that is needed. In this Internet age, we can purchase videos of different greek events from across the country. I recently saw a video from a beach party a couple years ago where fraternity members "traded wood." What great ammunition these brothers provided against the fraternity when the courts see that members beat each other for sport. Surely the question will be asked: Imagine what they would do to a person trying to join their brotherhood? The same goes for step shows, as I've seen some where references to pledging and "taking wood" were videotaped and used in discipline and court proceedings.
In sum, it becomes hard to make a case to reasonable people that these acts are simply frivolous celebrations when the same acts have been proven to do great damage.
These are just a few of the lessons we can and should learn from the lawsuit against AKA. In this litigious climate, the continued determination to haze will undoubtedly cause many more lawsuits and I predict that we'll lose them with increasing regularity. If more reasons to stop hazing are needed -- in addition to its obvious moral and safety concerns -- I hope these lessons and this lawsuit will provide them.
If they don't, I am sure I'll get more big boxes and maybe your letters will be in the next one."
Walter is author of the recently published Black Greek 101: The Culture, Customs and Challenges of Black Fraternities and Sororities. He is currently vice president of
student affairs at Albany State University in Georgia and has given more than 250 presentations on black greek life at more than 80 campuses.
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