Hazing Is an Institutional Warning
OPENING STATEMENT
The recent incidents at LSU, Wisconsin, Arizona, Cornell and Penn State are not identical. They involve different allegations, organizations, legal standards and stages of investigation. But collectively, they reveal a problem colleges have been too willing to divide into convenient categories: hazing belongs to student conduct, sexual violence to Title IX, drugs to campus police, and dangerous organizational behavior to Greek life or athletics.
That separation may make administrative sense. It makes far less sense as a safety strategy.
Hazing should not be treated simply as an initiation ritual that went too far. It should be treated as an institutional warning, a sign that an organization may have learned to turn hierarchy, loyalty and belonging into instruments of coercion.
That does not mean every organization accused of hazing is responsible for sexual violence or other criminal conduct. Nor does it mean every allegation is true. It means the underlying conditions deserve more scrutiny than they typically receive: concentrated peer power, secrecy, humiliation, impaired judgment, fear of exclusion and pressure to protect the group. Years ago, The Atlantic highlighted how the fraternight system reinforces those conditions through institutional influence, financial relationships and liability structures that can make meaningful oversight difficult.
Recent research strengthens that connection. A 2026 study of 411 American adults found that people who were more tolerant of hazing were also more likely to minimize sexual violence and endorse rape myths. The study establishes correlation, not causation. But it adds to the case that hazing and sexual violence should not always be treated as entirely separate campus problems.
The law still requires distinctions. A hazing investigation is not a Title IX proceeding. A civil allegation is not a criminal conviction. Institutional discipline, criminal prosecution and civil liability apply different standards and serve different purposes.
But separate legal processes should not produce separate institutional memory.
When a college receives a credible hazing report, it should not ask only whether a particular ritual violated its conduct code. It should examine the organization’s broader history. Have there been previous allegations involving forced alcohol use, drugging, sexual misconduct, physical violence or retaliation? Did members discourage reporting? Were earlier sanctions effective? Did another university office possess information that would have changed the risk assessment?
Too often, each office sees one piece of the problem. No one is responsible for assembling the whole picture.
The Stop Campus Hazing Act moves colleges toward greater disclosure by requiring hazing statistics, prevention policies and public transparency reports. That is meaningful progress. But transparency is a floor, not a safety strategy. A report published after an institution reaches a finding does not establish that officials recognized the danger early, shared information or intervened effectively.
The same problem arises when conduct occurs off campus. A university cannot control every private decision made by every student. But “off campus” should not automatically mean “outside our responsibility,” especially when the institution recognizes the organization, regulates its conduct, provides recruitment privileges, promotes its activities or retains disciplinary authority over its members. Responsibility should follow meaningful authority and foreseeable risk, not stop at a property line.
That principle matters in college athletics, as well. Teams create their own hierarchies. Captains, veteran players and coaches can influence playing time, roster status, scholarships and social standing. A student may technically have the ability to refuse an initiation practice while understanding that refusal could cost acceptance, opportunity or a place within the program.
Coercion does not become consent simply because a student wants to belong.
None of this requires colleges to presume guilt or abandon due process. Pattern recognition is not collective punishment. It is risk assessment. Institutions can protect the rights of accused students while still examining whether an organization’s culture, leadership and history present a broader danger.
Colleges have spent years building compliance systems around individual laws and individual incidents. Those systems may determine whether the right form was filed, the proper office responded or the required report was published. They are less effective at answering the more important question: What did the institution know about the environment in which the harm occurred, and what did it do with that knowledge?
The latest cases should not prompt another round of temporary suspensions, mandatory training and carefully worded statements followed by a return to normal. They should force colleges to reconsider how they identify organizational danger before the next student is harmed.
The legal system may require separate cases. Campus safety requires institutions to see the pattern.
EXHIBIT A
Two points on the PCSA this week. First, while it passed 77-22 in the Senate, it’s going to be challenging to get it passed in the Senate - particularly in its current form. Objections are likely to several provisions, perhaps none bigger than the cap on conference membership, which senators raised from 19 to 20 schools just before passage. Reports suggest a letter urging House leadership to remove the cap has been drafted, and that more than a dozen lawmakers have committed to signing it. The provision requires a three-year independent probationary period before a school can move leagues, something that representatives in states like North Carolina and Florida - home to universities rumored to be considering leaving the ACC - will be challenged to support. Any change there would send the bill back to the Senate, and that makes a clean path to the president's desk less likely.
EXHIBIT B
The second point: the longer this debate runs, the more the people in power show where they really stand. Nick Saban has long cast himself as an advocate for college athletes. Yet on ESPN this week, the former Alabama head coach argued that player pay and coach pay are "totally different markets." Well, yes and no. But his point that one should be regulated and the other shouldn’t seems disingenuous from a coach who made tens of millions from “free” labor. And now whose employer, ESPN, benefits from suppressing college athlete compensation. If coaches' pay is set by contracts and the open market, why shouldn't it work for athletes?
ON THE DOCKET
Clemson's Tiger Band, a fixture at all football games for decades, recently skipped the game at Cal and will skip the game at Syracuse. The reason was about $150,000 in added flight costs. The athletics department held the band's travel stipend flat at $150,000 and did not add to it. It’s a single instance, but it’s another example of the breadcrumbs we need to follow. College sports spending is shifting. Revenue sharing and cross-country conference footprints are squeezing traditions that fans see as part of the product. Clemson was reportedly the last ACC school to fly its band regularly. Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama and Notre Dame have also trimmed band spending. Expect more of this, as the inevitable next round of realignment likely will lengthen travel.
FOOTNOTES
“The NCAA should give up on all of these lawsuits and let everyone in the Class of 2022 play this year.”
St. John’s basketball coach Rick Pitino, testifying earlier this week in Glancey vs NCAA hearing involving class of 2022 players seeking a fifth year of eligibility
