From the Chronicle of Higher Education issue dated November 26, 1999

The term "cult" conjures up images of the burning of David Koresh's Branch Davidian settlement and the mass suicide of Jim Jones's Peoples Temple devotees. Most of us believe that cult members are misfits who live in remote places; we take comfort in the fact that their influences are far removed from our daily lives.

Yet, in fact, many students, faculty members, and administrators regularly confront -- and even participate in -- cult-like behavior. The most prevalent cults among us are the numerous fraternity and sorority chapters that engage in abusive hazing practices on campuses, large and small, all across the United States.

No one has a firm count of how many members of fraternities and sororities engage in at least some form of cult-like activities. None of the national organizations that represent Greek organizations on various campuses have conducted formal surveys. But, based on my research of the topic since 1978, I believe that the percentage of Greeks, mainly male, who perform cult-like acts of hazing is probably at least as high as the 20 per cent of athletes who admitted in a recent national survey that they had been severely hazed.

Examining the cult-like aspects of hazing in Greek organizations can help us all understand why the practice is so difficult to stamp out. It also reinforces the urgent need to find new strategies to prevent the pledging-related injuries and deaths that have occurred for decades, despite strong efforts to eradicate them.

The latest attempt to discourage hazing is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's decision to revoke the diploma of a graduate who was accused of serving alcohol at an event where a freshman pledge drank himself to death. However well-meaning, M.I.T.'s gesture seemed only to make the graduate a scapegoat and, more important, did not come to grips with the complex influences on hazing. If we recognize that the abnormal behaviors found in Greek organizations are similar to, and as deeply rooted as, those found in cults, we will take a first step toward developing a broader, more systematic approach to the problem.

In Cults in Our Midst, the author Margaret Thaler Singer, a former adjunct professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, identifies many traits characteristic of cults, traits that, I believe, are shared by fraternities and sororities that practice hazing. I do not apply the term "cult-like" to the many Greek groups that operate legally without hazing -- only to those that use, in Singer's words about cults, "systematic" manipulation and coercion to effect "psychological and social influence."

For instance, the control and isolation of newcomers is a technique used both by cults and by fraternities and sororities that engage in hazing. Some Greek groups order pledges to limit or suspend communication and intimacy with parents, classmates, and others outside the chapter. Members pressure pledges to give their waking hours to the chapter, and deprive them of sleep to get maximum involvement. Members of some fraternities order pledges to avoid speaking to non-members. The members shave pledges' heads, forbid them to take showers or change clothes, and mandate the wearing of strange apparel.

Cut off from the day-to-day life of the college, fraternity and sorority recruits develop, in Singer's words about cults in general, an "enforced dependency." Just as cults convince recruits that membership brings with it the one true answer, so, too, hazers reassure tired, spirit-numbed pledges that the reasons for abuse will become apparent after initiation. So, too, do they claim to be able to satisfy all needs and wants.

Members of hazing fraternities and sororities, like those of some cults, emphasize the notion of "family." They appeal to recruits who consider themselves in need of friends and potential dating partners, or who find themselves under stress in a new environment. And, just as in cults, members of hazing fraternities and sororities believe that pledges are not part of the brotherhood or sisterhood until they have endured an ordeal or have successfully made it through an initiation ceremony.

James C. Arnold, a policy associate at the Oregon University System, has examined the alcohol addiction prevalent in white college fraternities; his writings convince me that both cults and hazing fraternities fall into the category of addictive organizations. Many fraternities, especially those made up predominantly of white males, have alcohol problems. Reports of alcohol-related injuries and deaths in fraternities are so frequent as to be almost commonplace. Predominantly African-American hazing groups have fewer problems with alcohol. But activist leaders of those groups, such as John Williams, founder of the Center for the Study of Pan-Hellenic Issues, argue nonetheless that the quest of many black pledges to complete physical ordeals in order to become members can be an obsession, tantamount to an addiction.

Members of cults and of hazing Greek groups alike are extremists who try to justify actions outside the range of normal human behavior. Members of the one true family -- be they Greeks or cultists -- veer away from conventional moral standards; they tolerate members who perform illicit and even illegal acts behind closed doors. Like cults, many Greek groups encourage near-delusional feelings of invincibility; fail to heed an individual member's moral qualms, in the interest of group unanimity; put a newcomer in harm's way with seeming disregard for that person's well-being; and, after a dangerous or fatal incident, deny that they have erred, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.

One difference between a cult and a Greek organization that engages in hazing is that the latter lacks a quasi-deity, such as a Koresh or a Jones. Nevertheless, at the local level, chapters that haze have gung-ho pledge-class presidents or members who act as "pledge educators." Those individuals pressure newcomers to accept a collective identity and to put the chapter ahead of self-interest. They resemble charismatic military and corporate leaders who jump-start the stalled resolve of others, calm fears, and renew fighting spirit. As scholars in the behavioral sciences know full well, a group not only reflects such a leader, but can, under his or her influence, suppress members' common sense and rational thought.

Finally, just as cults make it hard for their members to leave, fraternities and sororities make quitting as a pledge difficult. When pledges in a high-intensity hazing fraternity or sorority decide not to join after all, they can experience the same kind of post-traumatic stress, disconnectedness, and angst that experts have associated with cult members who opt to leave their group.

National Greek organizations, confederations, colleges, and foundations have poured time, dollars, and soul into trying to eliminate hazing behaviors. Yet those behaviors seem always to repeat themselves, leaving everyone frustrated and wondering if the problem will ever be solved.

Simply abolishing fraternities and sororities is not only impractical, but also unfair to those Greeks who do not haze, and who support the passage of anti-hazing legislation at the state level. It also is unrealistic for national fraternities to say that once-sodden houses will be "dry" by 2000, as executive directors of a number of national fraternities envisioned several years ago. Only about nine national fraternities were able to persuade their undergraduate delegates to vote for no-alcohol rules by 2000, and even those reformists have no power to stop students from returning stumbling-drunk to their "dry" houses after imbibing to intoxication at local pubs.

Nonetheless, I think that reforms can occur, if we recognize the cult-like influences that prevail in many Greek groups, and develop specific strategies to deal with them.

My solution is to abolish -- with no second chance to recolonize -- all hazing chapters that exhibit dangerous, cult-like behaviors. Colleges and universities must identify clearly the rituals and acts that are illegal or that have led to deaths, injuries, and incidents of post-traumatic stress, and must publish those definitions widely in anti-hazing policy statements.

Forty-one states have their own laws governing what constitutes illegal hazing; colleges and universities can educate their students about the laws that apply to them. In addition, institutions should clarify which activities are dangerous, manipulative, or inconsiderate of a pledge's human rights -- and then communicate those characterizations often. Those steps would significantly strengthen the general but often ineffectual institutional bans on hazing. We must put an end to decades of passivity, during which institutional leaders have been able to ignore the problem because its definition has been so vague as to be meaningless.

College administrators must expel students who engage in illegal or dangerous hazing practices. Away from the pressures of a group identity, those hazers may finally examine their own thought processes and the consequences of their actions. Since nine states lack any anti-hazing laws, the Association of Fraternity Advisors could specify which practices merit suspension or expulsion.

Campus leaders should employ trained counselors to help end destructive patterns of behavior in student organizations. Too often during rush weeks, Greek advisers heartily greet pledges but never inform them that others like them have died or been injured during pledging at institutions across the country. Instead, an expert in abnormal behavior could describe examples of cult-like activities during hazing and could tell pledges that they have an ethical responsibility to report any such activities. Counselors should routinely interview students who voluntarily resign or are blackballed by the chapter, to ascertain whether hazing has occurred.

Senior administrators should designate specific offices on their campuses where victims of hazing can receive counseling. Many institutions now provide support services for people who believe that they have suffered sexual abuse. Hazing victims, however, have no similar resources when they are feeling stunned, bewildered, lost, or psychologically distressed (unless the hazing was sexual in nature).

When pledges have been treated for alcohol overdoses or have participated in dangerous hazing rituals, student-personnel administrators should enroll them in mandatory counseling and alcohol-awareness classes.

The magnitude of the problem is great, and other strategies should be adopted as well. Among them:

* Whenever a fraternity or sorority, or one of its members, is convicted of hazing in a criminal court or in a student judicial procedure, campus administrators should keep a record of it, and then publish those records each time rush is held. National fraternal organizations should commission surveys on cult-like and hazing behaviors, to ascertain the extent and severity of the problem. When asked informally, individuals have often been unwilling to admit to being hazed -- but they have given positive responses when asked questions about specific hazing activities, such as whether they have ever been forced to drink excessive amounts of alcohol or eat contaminated food. By assessing the specific ordeals that pledges have undergone, researchers could begin to get an accurate picture of how prevalent and severe hazing is in fraternities and sororities.

* We should put responsible adults in Greek living units. Colleges, with support and guidance from national fraternity and sorority headquarters, should hire trustworthy people and train them in aspects of Greek life, notably how to deal with cult-like practices and hazing.

* National Greek organizations must expel fraternity alumni who cannot accept positive change or who themselves participate in hazing activities that could result in death or injury. While many alumni serve the fraternity or sorority system as mentors, financial supporters, and moral consciences, a few others have been present during initiations that have caused injuries or deaths. College presidents should inform participating alumni that they have a duty to report hazing, and that they must refrain from encouraging it.

* Courts, not student judicial groups, should handle those actions that meet the definition of criminal hazing, as determined by each state's laws. Often, student judicial groups -- whether comprising students alone or administrators and faculty members as well --view pledges as willing participants rather than susceptible victims of cult-like groups; as a result, they punish hazers too lightly. College administrators should encourage every state to enact harsh legal penalties for hazing, and hand over to legal authorities any cases that appear to involve criminal behavior.

* Finally, if college presidents cannot get results, Congress should mandate hearings on the alcohol and hazing problems in our institutions.

After decades of failed efforts, the message is clear: We must all work together to attack the problem of hazing, with specific strategies aimed at causing social change. College and university presidents, student-affairs and other administrators, faculty members, alumni, psychologists, substance-abuse counselors, anti-hazing and anti-substance-abuse activists, legislators, and the many non-hazing fraternities and sororities should all contribute to the effort. Only then will we break the seductive, powerful grip of the cult-like subcultures found in fraternal groups on too many campuses.

Hank Nuwer is the author of Wrongs of Passage: Fraternities, Sororities, Hazing, and Binge Drinking (Indiana University Press, 1999), and an adjunct professor of journalism at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. His High School Hazing: When Rites Become Wrongs will be published by Franklin Watts next year.