Brown cites fraternity pledging deaths in push for anti-hazing bill
Earlier this month, fraternity hazing at Bowling Green State University is believed to have killed sophomore Stone Foltz of Delaware, Ohio.
In 2018, 18-year-old Collin Wiant died in a hazing incident at Ohio University.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) says legislation he’s introduced to address hazing on college campuses could help prevent future deaths. His bill would require that hazing incidents be included in colleges’ yearly crime reports, establish a definition of hazing to clarify what constitutes a reportable offense, and require institutions to establish programs to educate students about the dangers of hazing.
“This isn’t a rite of passage,” Brown told reporters on Wednesday.
He observed that in addition to those who are killed, many other students end up hospitalized with alcohol poisoning, some of whom suffer long term damage.
“It’s not fun and games in any way,” Brown continued. “It’s not something everyone does or everyone needs to do in schools. It’s dangerous. It threatens the health and safety and lives of far too many Ohio students.”
‘Endured extreme hazing’
Wiant’s mother, Kathleen, recalled how police awakened her family in Columbus in the middle of the night to inform them of Collin’s death.
“As the month went by, we began to learn that for the last weeks of Collin’s life, he had endured extreme hazing,” Wiant told reporters. “He was beaten, belted, waterboarded, and forced drugs. Our family, individually and collectively, has experienced the most painful type of heartbreak, unimaginable, because of hazing.”
Since Collin’s death, she says her family has devoted itself to fighting hazing.
“We have a culture that dismisses hazing with this ‘boys will be boys’ mentality when torturous acts like beatings and waterboarding are dressed up with words like tradition, rituals, brotherhood or rites of passage,” said Wiant. “We need to call it what it really is. It’s abuse, and it’s barbaric.”
She estimated that 1.5 million high school children are hazed each year and that 55 percent of students in college clubs, teams and other organizations are hazed. In addition to killing and physically injuring students, she said hazing can cause permanent mental trauma for students.
She said parents and students need access to information about hazing to preserve student safety. If the law Brown is promoting was in effect when her son went to college, Wiant said her family would have been able to see that the fraternity he pledged previously sent an aspiring member to the emergency room with a head wound, and learned that it was suspended because of its hazing practices. Armed with that information, she said Collin would not have pledged that fraternity and “could be here, alive” to celebrate his 21st birthday this Saturday.
Congress didn’t act on similar legislation that Brown introduced in 2019. Brown told reporters he believes support for the legislation will grow as members of the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate learn more about it.
“It clearly has public support, when you ask people, but it’s just not risen to get people’s attention,” said Brown. “That’s why what Ms. Wiant is doing is so important, speaking out.”
Wiant compared the battle against hazing to long-ago efforts to criminalize drunken driving.
“We know that when we change laws, it does change behavior and how things are perceived,” said Wiant. “If you look at drunk driving, for instance, decades ago, that was a serious problem and enough people got angry about it and changed the laws. That’s where we are with hazing. Once people realize it’s taken seriously, and this can be a felony, (they’ll say) ‘I want to graduate college with a degree, not a felony.’ Then they start changing their behavior.”