Hazing: A Chronology of Events by Hank Nuwer
(an excerpt from The Hazing Reader, by Hank Nuwer, Indiana University Press


387 B.C. E. Plato commented on the savagery of young boys he observed. Fraternity historian Frederick Kershner considered Plato’s observations perhaps the earliest account of hazing-like behaviors.

371 St. Augustine at Carthage described hazing-like taunting and bullying of newcomers by the eversores or “Overturners.”

530 circa Justinian, the Byzantine emperor who codified Roman law, decreed that the hazing of first-year law students must be ended.

1340 The University of Paris forbade hazing under penalty of expulsion.

1441 Students at Avignon created the anti-hazing Fraternity of St. Sebastian.  Hazing was rampant during the age of the rise of universities.

1481 The Manuale Scholarium described hazing customs at Heidelberg, including the wearing of ridiculous yellow-billed caps by new students.

1501 Martin Luther endured hazing at Erfurt as a student. Later, in 1539, at Wittenberg, he advocated hazing as a means of strengthening a boy to face and to endure life’s challenges.

1657 In the American colonies, two Harvard College students paid small fines for hazing John Cotton and John Whiting. Later, a member of the class of 1684 was expelled for hazing but was readmitted after repenting.

1838 A family history describes the death of John Butler Groves (born October 31, 1819) in a hazing at Franklin Seminary in Kentucky.

1846 The University of Heidelberg forbade the pelting of new students with garbage.

1873 Cornell first-year student Mortimer N. Leggett died in a fall into a gorge while wandering with Kappa Alpha Society members.

1874 The president of the University of Michigan sent a letter home to the parents of behavior to express his displeasure with the practice.

1900-1901 A U.S. House of Representatives committee investigated hazing at the United States Military Academy. Douglas MacArthur, then a plebe, testified. MacArthur failed to provide full disclosure of the savage hazing he endured.

1912 The death of first-year student Isaac Rand in a University of North Carolina frosh hazing led to the arrest of his hazers and a stern warning to the university president issued by the then-governor of the state.

1928 National Interfraternity Conference leaders issued a condemnation of hazing.

1940 A subrosa fraternity at the University of Missouri required a drinking session that led to the death of Hubert L. Spake, Jr.

1959 After Kappa Sigma pledge Richard Swanson choked to death on a slab of liver, a filmmaker used the event as the inspiration for the fictional movie Fraternity Row.

1969 Anthropologist Lionel Tiger in “Men in Groups” depicted hazing-like initiations as a form of men courting men.

1970 A female member of a national sorority died in an accident at Eastern Illinois University as pledges were dropping her off in the country far from campus. Her death marked the beginning of more than three decades of pledging-related and hazing deaths in fraternal organizations/athletic teams that were to occur every year through 2003.

1978 Virginia State College student Lynn Delk, 20, likely was the first sorority pledge to die in a “going-over” ceremony for a local African-American sorority. A fraternity male who tried to save her from drowning instead also perished. In an article for Human Behavior magazine, author Hank Nuwer interviewed Irving L. Janis who commented on fraternal hazing rituals as a form of “groupthink”  in which members out aside their moral qualms in the interest of what is perceived as tradition and unanimity. The same year, Eileen Stevens became a nationally recognized anti-hazing activist following her son’s death in a hazing at Alfred University. National Lampoon’s Animal House was released, portraying hazing as just one more comic misadventure in the Delta fraternity house.

1990 Although athletes had perished in fraternity initiations several times going back to 1928 at the University of Texas, the death of a rookie lacrosse club player Nick Haben at Western Illinois University was likely the first conducted by a non-fraternity athletic team. That year, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, a national umbrella group of prestigious African-American fraternities and sororities, outlawed and condemned all acts of hazing.

1991 A U.S.Marine Corps hazing ceremony called “blood pinning” would eventually end up being shown internationally on CNN and raise public sentiment against hazing in the military.

1993 Dazed and Confused was released as a movie, depicting high school hazing as humorous.

1994 The death of Southeast Missouri State Kappa Alpha Psi pledge Michael Davis following a cruel pummeling in a hazing attracted widespread media coverage.

1998 An Ann Landers letter on hazing written by Rita Saucier about the death of her son Chad at Auburn University in a fraternity bottle exchange led to increasing awareness of how alcohol and hazing too often are inextricably linked.

1999 Alfred University researchers published a national “Initiation Rites and Athletics: A National Survey of NCAA Sports Teams” that estimated one in every five athletes was subjected to grossly unacceptable and potentially illegal hazing.

2001 Arizona became the forty-third state to pass anti-hazing legislation.

2003 Following a longstanding pledge tradition, members of Yale University’s Delta Kappa Epsilon staged a night of reveling and bonding in New York. Four participants were killed and five were injured in an automobile accident on an unlit Connecticut highway.

2005 A pledge receives one year in prison related to the water torture hazing death of Matthew Carrington at Chico State College. Florida passes a felony hazing law.

2006 The death of Travis Cross in a residence hall fall, said his fellow pledges in email obtained by a prosecutor, was preceded by some hazing. Whether it rose to the level of a criminal offense was unknown as of September 3, 2007.

2007 Authorities mull over two deaths of Greeks in 2006 to determine if hazing was a factor. Wyoming Senate refuses to pass a hazing bill.  Michigan Senate refuses to pass a hazing bill. Cris Mendez (Sigma Rho) and Gary DeVercelly (Rider University)  die in hazing incidents.

Last updated: September 3, 2007

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