Student Union
- By Pete Musto
Parents, Leaders Work to End Hazing at US Colleges
Tim Piazza and Marquise Braham told their parents they just wanted to make some new friends by joining college social groups called fraternities. Neither of them got much of a chance.
The two young men died after taking part in extreme rituals for admission into the all-male student groups. They were not even 20 years old.
Now, their parents are launching a campaign to end these rituals across the United States. They are joined by the parents of Max Gruver and Brian Kowiak, two students who died in similar ways. And they have partnered with national leaders of fraternities, and of female student social groups called sororities.
Fraternities and sororities are private social groups common to many colleges and universities in the U.S. They have a long history as part of the American higher education experience.
Parties, housing, projects
Students pay membership fees. The groups hold parties and other social events. Some offer shared housing. Members usually also must take part in community service programs. And members often help each other find jobs after they graduate.
But there is a darker side to Greek life, as involvement in fraternities and sororities is often called. The term comes from the letters of the ancient Greek alphabet the groups use to make their names.
The process of becoming a member sometimes involves what is called hazing. This is when current members force pledges, those interested in joining, to take part in dangerous, abusive or possibly illegal activities.
Last week, Piazza's father, Jim, and Braham's father, Rich, began preparing for a number of television appearances. They will use those appearances to announce their anti-hazing campaign.
"I know it might seem strange to some people that families who lost their children to fraternity hazing are now working with fraternities and sororities to eradicate hazing," Jim Piazza told the Associated Press.
"But," he added, "we will do anything that we can to save a life and to prevent another shattered family."
His 19-year-old son died last year after his fraternity "brothers" ordered him to drink a huge amount of alcohol. He became severely intoxicated. He fell repeatedly, including down stairs and into an iron fixture. It was almost 12 hours before the fraternity members called for medical help. He received treatment at a hospital, but it was too late. Tim Piazza died from his injuries.
Numerous arrests
Police arrested almost 30 members of Piazza's Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Pennsylvania State University in Centre County, Pennsylvania. All higher-level charges have been dropped. Three people have since admitted their guilt to lesser charges and one is already under house arrest.
The Piazzas have reached a settlement with the fraternity to end the civil legal action the family had sought.
Penn State student Marquise Braham, 18, killed himself in 2014. His suicide took place after a series of extreme Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity hazing rituals, about which he had protested to school officials.
Currently, the legal system — and that's the police, district attorneys and judges — "seem to view hazing as it's kind of like kids' stuff," Rich Braham said.
These fathers say they are happy to have found allies at the top of the North American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Conference. Together, these organizations represent nearly 100 fraternities and sororities nationwide. And their leaders are ready and willing to work with Piazza and Braham.
Judson Horras is the president of the North American Interfraternity Conference. He said a first goal is of this new joint effort is to press lawmakers in all 50 states to strengthen anti-hazing laws. They want lawmakers to make it a felony to force a student to drink alcohol.
Some states reluctant
Some state governments have been slow to strengthen such laws in the past. But Horras said he believes Greek organizations can get them to change their policies.
"Keep in mind fraternities and sororities have 9.1 million students and alumni as members," Horras said. "That's part of the network we're building now to make this happen across North America."
His organization is also trying to solve the alcohol issue itself. By this time next year, he said, highly alcoholic drinks will be banned from all fraternity housing of organization members.
"We can do more together than we can alone to address this societal problem," said Carole Jones, chairman of the National Panhellenic Conference. "The fight against hazing requires that an entire community step up, including sorority women, who can and must do our part to create safer campus cultures."
The Greek life leaders also plan to have parents like Piazza and Braham speak to as many as 25,000 college students this school year. They will talk about the dangers of hazing. And members of fraternities and sororities will be asked to speak to high school and middle school students.
"We realize that it takes many years to change a culture," said Piazza. "We're not going away. We'll be here next year, the year after, the year after that."
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U.S. News & World Report tackles the challenges of paying for grad school as an international student with this story giving tips on paying for school. Read the full story here. (August 2024)
- By Tracy Liu
Economics, tensions blamed for Chinese students shifting from US to Australia, Britain
U.S. universities are welcoming international students as the academic year begins. But while the total number of foreign students is steadily growing, the top sending country, China, is showing signs of leveling out or shrinking.
Industry analysts say the negative trend is mainly due to higher costs amid China’s struggling economy, with a growing number of students going to less expensive countries like Australia and Britain, and tense ties between Washington and Beijing.
The number of foreign students studying in the U.S. in 2022-23 passed 1 million for the first time since the COVID pandemic, said Open Doors, an information resource on international students and scholars.
While the U.S. saw a nearly 12% total increase year-on-year for that period, the number of international students from China, its top source, fell by 0.2% to 289,526.
That’s 600 fewer students than the 2021-22 academic year, when their numbers dropped by nearly 9%. The COVID pandemic saw Chinese student numbers drop in 2020-21 by nearly 15%, in line with the world total drop.
While it’s not yet clear if the drop is a leveling out or a fluctuating decline, analysts say China’s struggling economy and the high cost of studying in the U.S. are the main reasons for the fall in student numbers.
Vincent Chen, a Chinese study abroad consultant based in Shanghai, said although most of his clients are still interested in studying in the U.S., there is a clear downward trend, while applicants for Anglophone universities in Australia and Britain have been increasing.
"If you just want to go abroad, a one-year master's degree in the U.K. is much cheaper,” Chen said. “Many people can't afford to study in the U.S., so they have to settle for the next best thing."
Data from the nonprofit U.S. group College Board Research shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, the average tuition and fees for a U.S. private college four-year education increased 4% to $41,540 compared with the previous academic year.
The British Council said three to four years of undergraduate tuition in Britain starts as low as $15,000.
The number of Chinese students in Britain was 154,260 in 2022-23, according to the U.K. Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, up from 121,145 in the 2018/19 academic year.
Australia’s Home Affairs office said in the 2023-24 program year, China was the top source foreign country for new student visa grants at 43,389, up slightly (1.5%) from the previous year.
Chen said Chinese state media's negative portrayal of the United States and concerns about discrimination have also contributed to the shift.
Bruce Zhang, a Chinese citizen who received his master's degree in Europe after studying in China, told VOA Mandarin he had such an incident occur to him after he was admitted to a U.S. university’s Ph.D. program.
When he entered Boston's Logan International Airport last year, Zhang said customs officers questioned him for more than an hour about his research, and if it had any links to the military, and took his computer and mobile phone for examination.
"Fortunately, I had heard that U.S. customs might be stringent in inspecting Chinese students, so I had relatively few study-related data and documents on my personal computer," he said.
Zhang was allowed to enter the U.S. for his studies in materials science, but the questioning left him so rattled that he has encouraged other Chinese to study elsewhere.
Cui Kai, a study abroad consultant in Massachusetts told VOA Mandarin that experiences like Zhang’s or worse happen for a reason.
"Students who were questioned or their visas were revoked at the customs are usually those who completed their undergraduate studies in China and come to the U.S. for a master's or doctoral degree in a sensitive major," said Cui.
Former President Donald Trump signed Proclamation 10043 in June 2020, prohibiting visas for any Chinese student who “has been employed by, studied at, or conducted research at or on behalf of, an entity in the PRC that implements or supports the PRC's “military-civil fusion strategy.”
The U.S. says China has been using students and scholars to gain access to key technology and, under Proclamation 10043, revoked more than 1,000 visas issued to Chinese nationals and has denied thousands more.
Critics say the policy is costly to the U.S. and is encouraging Chinese students to look to European and other universities.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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The report, the site says, debunks "characterizations of them as 'tech-obsessed, attention-deficit and self-centered'" and highlights "their emerging role in shaping global politics and economics."
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