The argument I will make in this article is in defense of non-violent hazing. That is: hazing that does not lead to the death or injury of students. I find it absolutely shameful that people die from hazing-related incidents, and I would never condone such behavior. But since the majority of hazing deaths since 1975 have been alcohol-related, I believe the root cause of deadly hazing is America’s high drinking age and excessive drinking culture, rather than malicious Greek life members.
Imagine now that you have to check a fraternity house at a university for a reported fire alarm. You go to the house on a normal Saturday night and expect nothing of note to happen other than flipping the alarm back to normal. You show up to the house and go downstairs to the basement to see where the alarm is, and as you turn into a room, you find a horrifying scene: a group of 56 first-years tied up and blindfolded, covered in condiments. This would certainly make any sane person immediately suspicious of the fraternity, and it’s exactly what happened in a recently publicized November 2024 incident at the University of Iowa. The real crux of the situation is that none of the students who were being hazed were willing to speak out about who was leading the hazing. Eventually, a 21-year-old man who is not associated with the university was booked on obstruction of justice charges. These charges were later dropped, and no one was punished directly in the end.
This hazing event is only one of many that we have seen in the last 10 years; it’s nothing out of the ordinary. But what, to me, makes it really interesting is the secrecy that the students who were hazed kept, even after being questioned by the authorities. Why would they stay quiet on something that, in theory, would lead to their “torturers” being punished for committing a federal crime after the passing of 2024 legislation criminalizing hazing at the federal level? I think that the general confusion at their silence makes clear that almost anyone that speaks of hazing doesn’t understand its structure. Legislators regulate surface-level consequences instead of considering the deeper motivations behind hazing.
Many governmental figures and activists who try to regulate hazing misunderstand it as occurring as a symptom of established members of a group of students wanting to bully and oppress newer ones. They believe that any and all hazing should be banned. I believe that rather than hazing being a bug of the system, it is the result of a system that selects for those that are willing to be hazed.
Hazing is a method to filter students for what Greek life represents. This is a far different mechanism than the one that government and activists believe hazing to be. Hazing is a system that is built upon the same idea and methods that college admissions are built on — one just selects for academic excellence and the other selects for those that want to be part of a culture and organization with deep connections.
Greek life is, by design, exclusive, and has instituted practices that we would consider draconian in any other organization in order to stay that way. The bid, pledging, and the induction processes are designed to be discriminatory in nature, since the goal of a fraternity is to be exclusionary. While the party line of fraternities’ is one of inclusivity, the pledging process clearly indicates that they are exclusionary institutions. And the reason for that exclusion is justified; the creation of a dedicated community is hard to cultivate if the cost of entry is zero, thus drawing in potentially undedicated members. The main thing that Greek organizations have to deal with is balancing the exclusivity of the organization with their mission of being a community and social space. This is achieved by having a high entrance fee and going through the hazing process. By going through that process, the community is tied together in shared suffering that makes bonds last for a lifetime after graduation. This process is good at reducing the cost of admitting uninvested members, as well as being able to filter out members that would not want to be hazed before the hazing begins. This previous point is crucial to the University of Iowa story I introduced at the beginning of the article. I’d be willing to bet that students pledging a fraternity at Iowa are well aware of the fact that they will be hazed and are willing to suffer that cost to join a fraternity.
Pledges are students that are actively signing up for Greek Life: They choose to start the pledging process, and they can choose to back out whenever they want. When regulators try to police Greek life, they paternalistically assume students can’t make decisions for themselves. This idea of paternalism — lawmakers knowing better than students — has been the main argument against hazing for decades now. But students who want to join Greek life organizations are adults who are capable of weighing the benefits and drawbacks for themselves. They want to join an organization that gives exclusive connections, gives membership into a strong community, and establishes a reputation for them. Those positives are all factored into students’ decision to pledge. Also, at least in my experience at URochester, there is enough gossip about Greek life organizations for students to determine which ones haze at what levels. Pledges can be logical and rational in their actions, and they have the opportunity in choosing to weigh the benefits and costs before they decide.
This is just a subsection of a larger argument against the paternalism college students have to live with. I believe that non-violent hazing is a totally consistent mechanism to be able to filter membership, and that students go into the pledging process with their eyes open.
