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Matt Carrington
       
When Will Hazing Laws Finally Curb Hazing?

    by Hank Nuwer

Forty-four states now have laws against the practice of hazing, 35 or so more than appeared on the books in 1969, the last year no fraternity, sorority or athletic death occurred in the United States.
    The laws are tougher now also--technically. I say "technically" because only one case since 1969 has resulted in anyone going to prison for more than two years.
    It would appear that having tough laws and enforcing those tough laws are different matters.
    In the last year, New York and Florida have passed more muscular versions of previous laws. Those states allow prosecutors to file felony hazing charges in the event of a death or serious injury in a hazing. New York's law was largely influenced by the death of a male student at Plattsburgh State who was forced to guzzle gallons of water through a funnel. Florida's was toughened following the drowning death of a University of Miami student, Chad Meredith, even though no criminal charges whatsoever followed that tragedy..
    Most states have only misdemeanor hazing laws, allowing existing laws governing manslaughter and other crimes to be tacked on to hazing cases in which a death or serious injury occurs. No state has any where near the life imprisonment sentence that the Philippines has on its books as possible in the event of a hazing death.
    Thus, guilty verdicts in the United States rarely result in hazers going to jail for long. Two men involved in an occupational hazing death while working for the Republic Energy Drilling Company were tried on manslaughter charges and were sent to prison for 18 years and five years respectively.
    In California in October of 2005, following an admission of felony hazing in the death of Chico State student Matt Carrington, defendant Gabriel Maestretti, 22, received one year in jail for involuntary manslaughter. Two others were given six months on a lesser charge. Another Chico defendant received 90 days for misdemeanor hazing. Carrington's death also occurred following a so-called "water torture" ritual.
    Over the years, no high school or college student ever has been sent to jail for hazing or crimes related to hazing any where near the 18 years the Republic hazer was hit with.
    --Three undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina in 1912 were given three months each for manslaughter when first-year student Isaac Rand accidentally had his throat slit with a broken bottle, but they were given over to their parents' custody following a trial.
    --A North Carolina A & T fraternity member received about two years' worth of jail time on multiple charges after eight pledges were belted with a board and some sustained head injuries.
    --Seven Winslow, Arizona high school basketball players and track athletes received up to nine months in jail (most much less time) in 2000 after a young man claimed he had been sexually assaulted during a hazing.
    --Sixteen students were charged with various crimes in 1994 following the death of pledge Michael Davis in Missouri, but only seven were given days or brief months of jail punishment.
    At this writing, based on past cases, it would be extremely unlikely for a high school or college student to receive the 18 years in prison that Louis Goodman received from a Texas court for his part in a reckless hazing committed on a job site.
    So will hazing laws halt these annual hazing deaths? It's unlikely....but possible.
    Possible during our lifetimes, anyway.
    Not in the lifetimes of Matt Carrington, Michael Davis, Chad Meredith, and Isaac Rand.
    These hazing laws, lacking all force when not enforced at all or enforced with token punishment, have value mainly in that they send the message that the citizens of 44 U.S. states disapprove of hazing behaviors--at least those carried to a criminal extreme.
    Laws unenforced may be worse than laws without force. Unenforced hazing laws depict our society as what it is: an enabler and co-conspirator in the practice of hazing that even plagued the American colonies..
    Until society (and what is society but each and every one of us?), musters enough empathy to fight for the voiceless--Carrington, Davis, Meredith, Rand, and more than 100 more among them--these unjust and treacherous hazing deaths absolutely can and will occur annually as I first wrote in a 1978 magazine article for Human Behavior magazine.
    Hazing hits every man and every woman who sees his or her friends do it in the most vulnerable ethical spot: that area where loyalty to one's friends keeps one silent in the face of a human rights abuse. And when one is appalled by hazing and remains silent, the effect is even worse. This particular law of unintended consequences makes the silent one not only a co-conspirator but a coward.
    Make no mistake. Society eventually--decades removed from our cowardly era--will regard hazing as the abomination it is, and a hazing death as the sick calamity it truly is. Rightfully so, citizens of that era will regard our silence and inaction and pitiful enforcement of law to be as disgraceful as we ourselves regard the once-flourishing American human rights violation of slavery.    
     --November 11, 2005--copyright Hank Nuwer


Additional essays by Hank Nuwer:

A Hazing Chronology from The Hazing Reader by Hank Nuwer

Rights v. Rites on Hazing

Adrift from the Brotherhood: A former pledge discusses his experiences with hazing

The Death of Nick Haben at Western Illinois University : "Athletic Hazing"

Exterminating the Frat Rats and "Cultlike" Hazing

Opinion:  The 2003 Federal Law Proposal Needs Fixing Before Passage

Commentary: Number of Days without a Greek Death: 2