Baby Steps

Essay by Hank Nuwer

Baby Steps: 2006 passes without a Greek death. Amen

Hazing educators, like any other field that attempts to educate the public to jumpstart social change, need to be a patient lot.

Gains are slowly made. Student relapses are frequent. Legislators seem to “not get” the importance of what we try to communicate.

Yet, sometimes we have rewards. Sometimes we see a student or entire chapter turn its program around. We become mentors to quickly maturing students who, in turn, join our ranks as educators.

Occasionally, the gains we make our symbolic. For me, it was a wonderful boost to be able to say no local or national U.S. fraternity or sorority reported a hazing death in 2006 (and none have through March 13, 2007 as I write this). That’s the first time any of us can boast that since 1970.

True, we continued to have a couple close calls in fraternity hazing incidents involving alcohol in 2006-2007. True, we’ve had several recent fraternity deaths in the Philippines, an athletic club fatal initiation in England, and the death of a freshman athlete at a Souther school at a party where younger players and walk-on players were asked to bring a bottle (but the school ruled it a non-hazing). True, we’ve seen fraternity members at Florida A & M sentenced to two-year terms after being found guilty of physical hazing.

But I view it as a tremendous boost to morale to contemplate that the Greek world has gone 15 months since the last fraternal death occurred at the University of Texas in December 2005.

I’d like to think that the AFA Taskforce spearheaded by Hazing Hero Dan Bureau and many other team members had something to do with the hazing awareness that has seen at least a prolonged stoppage (and let’s hope a permanent halt) to the dozens of deaths that plagued fraternities and sororities for 35 years. I’d like to think that Stophazing.org, Insidehazing.com, Campuspeak, Mashinc.org, the pioneering Committee to Halt Useless College Deaths (CHUCK), anknuwer.com/blog and the great Fraternalnews Yahoo list, International individual Greek fraternity and sorority anti-hazing sites such as Dave Westol’s Theta Chi site and Kappa Kappa Gamma's awareness site, Cornell hazing awareness site and other Greek sites (Forgive me if I’ve left out some big ones for space limitation reasons) have had something to do with preventing a death.

But we all know preventative education never knows exactly what has been prevented. Even so, I’d like to think the Greek world has come a long, long way in creating awareness since the first death in that long chain back in 1970.

Here’s to you all who contributed to keeping fraternity and sorority members and newcomers safe.