Hazing can happen in the closest communities. Preventing it is harder than you’d think

Acceptance, rite of passage, and tradition continue fueling the age-old practice of hazing, making it prevalent on collegiate sports teams, among Greek life groups and at the high school level despite state and federal laws. This time, 11 teen varsity lacrosse players from Westhill High School in Syracuse, New York, are accused of plotting or participating in a prank late April – a staged kidnapping that unraveled quickly in what Onondaga County District Attorney William J. Fitzpatrick called “criminal activity” and “hazing on steroids.” Now, one younger player is traumatized, and the older teammates were arrested and charged with unlawful imprisonment in the second degree, all while law enforcement officials try to keep up with the fallout as the tight-knit community attempts to make sense of it all. While hazing has come under intense scrutiny in recent years, incidents like the one in Syracuse are reminders of how vague the true scope of hazing nationwide remains and the need for more tangible hazing prevention practices, experts and advocates say. A practice thriving on secrecy Advocacy groups, sports teams and college websites have their own definitions of what constitutes hazing but the underlying intent of the practice remains the same across the board. Hazing is an activity that “humiliates, degrades, abuses, or endangers” an individual seeking to join – or participate in – a group, “regardless of the person’s willingness to participate,” according to advocacy group StopHazing. Hank Nuwer, a professor emeritus at Franklin College and adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who has written several books on hazing, estimates there has been at least one hazing death reported in the United States every year from 1959 to 2021. The only year without any reported deaths was 2022, with more reported in 2023, 2024 and so far this year, Nuwer said. Susan Lipkins, a psychologist and the author of “Preventing Hazing,” said there may be a disconnect between what most people think hazing and rites of passage are, and what students are facing. “And what’s actually happening is a lot more violent,” Lipkins said. Hazing deaths have become “more hazardous” and are “spreading in terms of, it’s not just White college boys, but it’s girls and minorities,” too, Lipkins said. Lipkins said students have told her the patterns and timings of hazing incidents are formulaic in that they occur at the same time of year with the traditions being largely similar but they are increasing in severity each year. More than half of students in the United States are hazed before they enter college, according to a 2008 University of Maine study, which is considered the only one of its kind painting — not a complete— but partial picture of hazing on college campuses. Once those students were in college, 73% of those who joined fraternities and sororities experienced what they described as some form of hazing at least once, the study found. Alcohol consumption, humiliation, isolation, sleep deprivation and sex acts were common hazing practices across the different groups in which hazing occurs. Elizabeth Allan, a professor of higher education at the University of Maine who led the study and is now the director of the StopHazing Research Lab, said a new online survey is expected to be conducted and published in 2026. Allan and her research team hope to gain a deeper understanding of campus culture as they focus on more higher education institutions like historically Black colleges and universities, and include responses from campus staff, including deans of students, coaches, safety officers, Greek life advisers, and others, Allan told CNN. What does hazing prevention actually look like? Hazing prevention can’t be a one-size-fits-all approach and even getting students to open up about it is challenging, Allan said. So how do you get students to open up about hazing and self-report their experiences for the research? Allan says the key is to not ask directly. “Instead you ask about certain behaviors,” she said. “The behaviors would meet the definition, some, not all … some of the behaviors are positive group team-building behaviors that are non-hazing, but there are also many hazing behaviors that would meet the definition of hazing.” Getting students to report hazing is challenging because the practice thrives on the desire to connect with others, belonging, and secrecy through what Lipkins calls “the code of silence.” When the code of silence is communicated directly, it directs members to remain tight-lipped about the group’s activities, and it’s also passed through stories of the past that create intimidation to make it clear to the people being hazed that if anything were to be revealed, it would result in trouble, according to Lipkins. For Allan, prevention can be custom-built by focusing on multiple fronts: public health strategies, skill-building techniques, research and of course, education and training as highlighted through a free, online workshop on StopHazing’s site. “It’s not really focused on ‘thou shall not haze,’ it’s more, how do we think about the groups we’re in and the relationships we have with our teammates or with our fraternity brothers or with our band mates?,” she said. Lipkins, on the other hand, remains skeptical of any effective prevention methods. She said there’s a lot of emphasis placed on focusing on student education, when it should really be on the adults and the systems and methods in which the students are educated. “They (the adults) may write the policy, but in most cases, they’re not actually enacting the policies,” she said. “So I would say we have to start from the superintendent all the way down to any part of the school system, so that the bus driver is reporting … the school resource officer, the athletic trainer, the people cleaning up the mess that the kids are leaving.” National and state legislation in place Advocates and experts hope new research on hazing coupled with a newly enacted national law requiring colleges to share annual hazing statistics and reports will paint a clearer picture and prevent hazing. In December, former President Joe Biden signed the “Stop Campus Hazing Act” into legislation, an amendment to The Clery Act, which says colleges must maintain and disclose campus crime statistics and security information. The Stop Campus Hazing Act requires colleges to post their hazing policy on its website and share which campus organizations have violated it – giving prospective students and their families a more informed look at groups they’re interested in, outline how to report incidents and compile an annual report showing what organizations were found in violation of the school’s policy, the act states. Here’s a timeline of how the act is expected to be implemented, according to the Clery Center: At least 44 states have enacted anti-hazing legislation but their scope varies by state, according to data compiled by StopHazing. New Jersey, for example, has one of the strictest hazing laws in the country. Public and non-public middle schools, high schools, and colleges are required to adopt anti-hazing policies and penalties, and the state classifies hazing as a third-degree crime if it results in death or serious bodily injury. Jolayne Houtz wishes more information about hazing incidents at schools was publicly available when her son was in college. Her son, Sam Martinez, died in November 2019 of alcohol poisoning while he was a pledge of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at Washington State University, according to the Whitman County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “I worried about things like parties and alcohol and adjusting to life away from home a lot, and I didn’t really think about hazing,” Houtz told CNN. “And Sam paid for that with his life.” Martinez and another pledge were ordered to finish a half-gallon of rum between them, and Martinez’s blood-alcohol content was measured at 0.372 after his death, almost five times the legal limit, his family previously said in a statement. Some former members of the fraternity were sentenced to several days in jail for providing alcohol at an initiation event to a minor, and Washington State University removed official recognition of the fraternity until May 2026. In January, the Washington State Court of Appeals ruled that the university bears responsibility for Martinez’s alcohol-related death, marking the first time a university has been held accountable for a hazing-related fatality in the state of Washington, CNN affiliate KING reported at the time. CNN has reached out to Washington State University for comment. When her son said he was interested in joining the fraternity, Houtz said she searched online for information about it and only found positive things. “All I found were the accolades and the talk about community service and the brand new fraternity house that they had just renovated,” she said. Houtz, who lobbied for state laws against hazing and the Stop Campus Hazing Act, along with others developed HazingInfo.org, a database that lists hazing incidents in the US and said more efforts are needed to make sure families have access to information and prevention tools. “If I’d known even a 10th of what I learned later, Sam would never have joined that that fraternity and maybe not that university, so I feel like anything that we can do to put data and information into the hands of parents and students will help protect them and prevent another tragedy like the one that we experienced,” Houtz said.