Suny Hazing Flap

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Tuesday, October 28, 2003


SUNY Cracking Down On "Outlaw Frats"



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Oct 28, 2003 3:43 pm US/Eastern
(1010 WINS) (ALBANY) Mandatory suspensions and a crackdown on "outlawed fraternities" are being considered by the State University of New York months after a Plattsburgh State student died while pledging a fraternity.

A committee of campus presidents are also preparing SUNY-wide proposals while state legislators prepare bills to increase prison terms for the crime of hazing, SUNY officials said.

At Tuesday's SUNY Student Life Committee meeting, Trustee Gordon Gross praised Plattsburgh's policy against hazing. He criticized ambiguous penalties on many campuses that warn only of "possible suspension."

"They are all fudging that one aspect," Gross said. To students, he said the policies "read like, `OK, no big deal."'

He said policies need mandatory minimum sanctions, such as a semester suspension for involvement in hazing, to send a clear warning.

"I know parents would take it more seriously as well," Gross said during a teleconference.

The committee will also consider policies that would suspend students for joining an "outlaw" organization such as a fraternity that has lost its national or campus affiliation. Leaders of fraternities, sororities or athletic teams may also be held responsible for violations by members.

Three weeks ago, a former fraternity member at Alfred University, a private college, was sentenced to 60 days in jail and three years' probation after admitting his role in the beating of a fraternity brother who later committed suicide. Three other fraternity members also pleaded guilty.

Trustees on Tuesday also noted a high school hazing incident in which three members of the Mepham High School football team were accused sexually assaulting younger players with broomsticks, pine cones and golf balls at a preseason camp.

In April at Plattsburgh, Psi Epsilon Chi pledge Walter Dean Jennings, 18, of Saratoga County, died after he was forced to drink pitchers of water through a funnel as part of pledging. Eleven members of the fraternity faced more than 150 charges in Jennings' death from swelling of the brain. The fraternity was not recognized by the university because of past alcohol-related trouble.

"There is a very clear split," said Trustee Stephanie Gross from Oneonta State, the SUNY board's student representative. "You have students who obviously want rights and don't want more rules, and there are other students who don't like to hear about the hazing issues, who don't want negative connotations with their schools ... they don't want to go into a job and say, `I went to SUNY Plattsburgh,' and hear `Oh, you had the hazing incident' ... how does that look? There's a huge fear about how they are perceived."

Trustee Pamela Jacobs, the committee's chairwoman, said SUNY will also seek to change student attitudes to make hazing shunned, and its incidents reported.

SUNY's senior campus managing counsel, Marti Anne Ellerman, said reporting is the nagging problem in countering hazing. Even victims often refuse to cooperate in investigations, she said.

"The problem with hazing is what we call the code of silence," Ellerman said. "It becomes very difficult if not impossible ... to impose sanctions because we don't have the evidence."