Student Union
Tragedies Highlight Dark Side of Greek Life
Greek life communities on campuses across the U.S. are again facing a reckoning after recent student deaths due to alleged hazing.
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) freshman Adam Oakes died February 27, and Bowling Green State University (BGSU) sophomore Stone Foltz died March 7 after both consumed large amounts of alcohol at fraternity events.
Oakes was at an event at Delta Chi in Virginia, and Foltz was at an event at Pi Kappa Alpha in Ohio. In statements that expressed sympathy for the loss of Oakes and Foltz, the national organizations of Delta Chi and Pi Kappa Alpha announced that the chapters involved in the hazing allegations have been suspended.
"Regardless of if it's a fraternity or a sorority, it's absolutely despicable that these life-threatening actions are still carried out — often, with little to no accountability," Schanelle Saldanha, a junior at American University in Washington, told VOA.
"That, coupled with the accusations of racism and sexual assault, only reinforce why Greek life is such a toxic community for so many," she opined.
According to Inside Hazing, an anti-hazing website, while 65% of respondents in a survey of fraternity and sorority members said the primary goal of an initiation is to bond:
57% said it is important to tolerate psychological stress.
31% said humiliation is a significant element in an initiation.
29% said extreme consumption of alcohol is often part of an initiation.
29% said it is important to tolerate physical pain.
29% said they are concerned with the overuse of alcohol during pledge activities.
25% said paddles are usually used during initiation.
Not all the 12,000 chapters of 123 fraternities and sororities on U.S. campuses experience extreme violence or mayhem. Many of the 750,000 undergraduate members on the more than 800 campuses in the U.S. and Canada said they enjoyed being part of a community and gaining leadership skills.
Living in a house with other members offers support, socialization and even proximity to campus, students at Missouri State University told the student-run newspaper The Standard in 2018.
But, according to the Addiction Center website, while most agree that heavy drinking and partying is a big part of Greek life, driving pledges into harmful behavior is not.
"While the circumstances surrounding these deaths are still under investigation, we must be clear that hazing is a betrayal of the fraternal vows to which every member commits and has no place on campus. When hard alcohol is added to the mix, it is a formula for tragedy," the North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) wrote in a statement to VOA.
Regrets and apologies have followed injuries and death at fraternity initiations since 1959, said Hank Nuwer, a professor emeritus at Franklin College and author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives.
But each year, young men pledging for admission to a fraternal organization turn up dead or gravely injured. They have been poisoned by excessive alcohol and have choked on their own vomit, like Max Gruver, who died at the Phi Delta Theta house at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 2017.
They have fallen down stairs and sustained traumatic brain injuries, like Tim Piazza, who died in 2017 at Beta Theta Pi at Penn State University. They have been found dead at the bottom of a gorge, like Cornell University freshman Antonio Tsialas, whose death was ruled an accident after he left a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in 2019.
"The goal is for something like this to never happen again and to build a national model that promotes health and safety and creates a climate of respect and inclusion that is conducive to academic success," wrote VCU President Michael Rao in the university's plan for a review of Greek life. He did not mention Delta Chi specifically in this statement.
BGSU has suspended Pi Kappa Alpha for alleged hazing and is working with law enforcement and pursuing its own code of conduct investigation, according to a message sent from BGSU President Rodney Rogers and Provost Joe Whitehead Jr. In addition, the university is halting new member initiations and all other events.
Before the pandemic, the Anti-Hazing Coalition — composed of parents of hazing victims — spoke at universities to educate students about bullying, forced excessive drinking and other potentially dangerous behaviors.
"They tell the stories of what actually happened to their sons, and the heinous behaviors of hazing that emerged on the campuses where their sons were attending college," said Dani Weatherford, CEO of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), which, with NIC, is part of the coalition.
And they "try to educate those students on the campuses where they're visiting, about what hazing looks like, how it can get out of control, and to urge them to make sure that these kinds of behaviors are not happening in their organizations and on their campuses," Weatherford said.
In a Zoom event on March 21, parent Rae Ann Gruver described how much her son, Max, drank at the fraternity, explaining that he took 18-20 "pulls" — or swigs — of a 190-proof grain alcohol called Diesel.
She said that the fraternity brothers made Max drink when he answered questions wrong, and that because he had been late to fraternity events, he was made to drink even more.
"They singled him out," she said. "The actions taken by these hazers resulted in my son's death."
Rae Ann Gruver and her husband, Stephen Gruver, have also worked to pass new hazing laws in Louisiana and founded the Max Gruver Foundation. Weatherford said NPC and NIC are also taking action at the legislative level.
While criminal accountability in hazing is under state jurisdiction, federal legislation addresses it through the END ALL Hazing Act and the Report and Educate About Campus Hazing (REACH) Act, Weatherford said.
The END ALL Hazing Act focuses on campus transparency and would require that universities post online any adjudications — formal judgments — of hazing incidents. The REACH Act aims to establish a federal definition of hazing and requires that hazing be a Clery Act crime, meaning that universities would have to include hazing in their crime statistics.
Weatherford recommends that hazing victims, at the least, report the acts to the university, but how things are handled and what resources are offered could differ according to the campus.
As for prospective students who are interested in Greek life but worried about the possibility of hazing, Weatherford advises them to be aware and know that both NPC and NIC — and the fraternities and sororities that fall under them — are anti-hazing organizations.
"We want to make sure that if there are bad actors, that those bad actors are held accountable and removed from our organizations," Weatherford said.
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Pro-Palestinian protests spread on US university campuses
U.S. university campuses are seeing pro-Palestinian protests daily. Students are demonstrating against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and demanding that humanitarian aid be allowed to flow into the territory. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
US police clash with students who demand colleges cut financial ties to Israel
Police tangled with student demonstrators in the U.S. states of Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests.
At the University of Texas at Austin, hundreds of local and state police — including some on horseback and holding batons — clashed with protesters, pushing them off the campus lawn and at one point sending some tumbling into the street. At least 20 demonstrators were taken into custody at the request of university officials and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
A photographer covering the demonstration for Fox 7 Austin was arrested after being caught in a push-and-pull between law enforcement and students, the station confirmed. A longtime Texas journalist was knocked down in the mayhem and could be seen bleeding before police helped him to emergency medical staff who bandaged his head.
At the University of Southern California, police got into a back-and-forth tugging match with protesters over tents, removing several before falling back. At the northern end of California, students were barricaded inside a building for a third day at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. The school shut down campus through the weekend and made classes virtual.
Harvard University in Massachusetts had sought to stay ahead of protests this week by limiting access to Harvard Yard and requiring permission for tents and tables. That didn't stop protesters from setting up a camp with 14 tents Wednesday following a rally against the university's suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war are demanding schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies enabling its monthslong conflict. Dozens have been arrested on charges of trespassing or disorderly conduct. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.
Columbia University averted another confrontation between students and police earlier in the day. The situation there remained tense, with campus officials saying it would continue talks with protesters for another 48 hours.
On a visit to campus, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, called on Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to resign "if she cannot bring order to this chaos."
"If this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard," he said.
Shafik had set a midnight Tuesday deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations, saying it was making "important progress."
On Wednesday evening, a Columbia spokesperson said rumors that the university had threatened to bring in the National Guard were unfounded. "Our focus is to restore order, and if we can get there through dialogue, we will," said Ben Chang, Columbia's vice president for communications.
Columbia graduate student Omer Lubaton Granot, who put up pictures of Israeli hostages near the encampment, said he wanted to remind people that there were more than 100 hostages still being held by Hamas.
"I see all the people behind me advocating for human rights," he said. "I don't think they have one word to say about the fact that people their age, that were kidnapped from their homes or from a music festival in Israel, are held by a terror organization."
Harvard law student Tala Alfoqaha, who is Palestinian, said she and other protesters want more transparency from the university.
"My hope is that the Harvard administration listens to what its students have been asking for all year, which is divestment, disclosure and dropping any sort of charges against students," she said.
Columbia encampment inspires others
Police first tried to clear the encampment at Columbia last week, when they arrested more than 100 protesters. The move backfired, acting as an inspiration for other students across the country to set up similar encampments and motivating protesters at Columbia to regroup.
On Wednesday about 60 tents remained at the Columbia encampment, which appeared calm. Security remained tight around campus, with identification required and police setting up metal barricades.
Columbia said it had agreed with protest representatives that only students would remain at the encampment and they would make it welcoming, banning discriminatory or harassing language.
On the University of Minnesota campus, a few dozen students rallied a day after nine protesters were arrested when police took down an encampment in front of the library. U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, whose daughter was among the demonstrators arrested at Columbia last week, attended a protest later in the day.
A group of more than 80 professors and assistant professors signed a letter Wednesday calling on the university's president and other administrators to drop any charges and to allow future encampments without what they described as police retaliation.
They wrote that they were "horrified that the administration would permit such a clear violation of our students' rights to freely speak out against genocide and ongoing occupation of Palestine."
Netanyahu encourages police response
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on U.S. college campuses in a video statement released Wednesday, saying the response of several university presidents has been "shameful" and calling on state, local and federal officials to intervene.
Students at some protests were hiding their identities and declined to identify themselves to reporters, saying they feared retribution. At an encampment of about 40 tents at the heart of the University of Michigan's campus in Ann Arbor, almost every student wore a mask, which was handed to them when they entered.
The upwelling of demonstrations has left universities struggling to balance campus safety with free speech rights. Many long tolerated the protests, but are now doling out more heavy-handed discipline, citing safety concerns.
At New York University this week, police said 133 protesters were taken into custody and all had been released with summonses to appear in court on disorderly conduct charges. More than 40 protesters were arrested Monday at an encampment at Yale University.
Columbia University demonstrators in talks with administration officials
Officials at Columbia University were continuing talks Wednesday with student demonstrators from the Gaza Solidarity Encampment as the protest reaches a full week.
At 9:41 p.m. Tuesday, university President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik sent an email to the Columbia community setting a midnight deadline for an agreement to be reached about dismantling the encampment and dispersing the protesters.
“I very much hope these discussions are successful,” she wrote. “If they are not, we will have to consider alternative options for clearing the West Lawn and restoring calm to campus so that students can complete the term and graduate.”
As midnight passed, Columbia University Apartheid Divest posted a statement on X saying, “We refuse to concede to cowardly threats and blatant intimidation by university administration. We will continue to peacefully protest.”
The statement also said the university had threatened to call the National Guard. But after visiting the university earlier in the week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Tuesday she had no plans to deploy the National Guard.
As midnight approached on Tuesday, a student organizer announced that the deadline had been extended to 8 a.m. Wednesday.
At 4:09 a.m., the Office of the President sent an email saying the discussion deadline would be extended for 48 hours, given the constructive dialogue, and the university would report back on progress.
The email announced that leaders of the student encampment had agreed to remove a significant number of tents, get non-Columbia affiliates to leave the encampment and comply with New York Fire Department requirements. They also agreed to ensure that the encampment is “welcome to all” and to prohibit “discriminatory or harassing language.”
This development comes nearly a week after more than 100 students were arrested at the school on April 18, after Shafik authorized police to clear away protesters. Some of the students received suspension notices from the school.
Columbia’s action prompted an onslaught of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at other universities and responses from faculty and politicians.
Students at other campuses, such as Yale, Stanford and New York University, have also rallied around the Palestinian cause, calling for their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel and for a cease-fire in Gaza. Many also have put up tent encampments on their campuses. About 150 students and faculty were arrested at New York University Monday night.
Columbia also announced Tuesday morning that classes on the Morningside main campus, where the protests are taking place, will be offered in a hybrid format for the remainder of the spring semester. The last day of classes is April 29.
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Paper: International students faced extra pandemic challenges
Astrobites, which describes itself as "a daily astrophysical literature journal written by graduate students in astronomy since 2010," focuses on the challenges international students faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It examines a paper published in the Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education entitled The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on International Students in a Public University in the United States: Academic and Non-academic Challenges.
Read the Astrobites article here. (April 2024)
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15 cheapest US universities for international students
Yahoo!Finance has compiled a list of the 15 cheapest U.S. universities for international students.
Among them: Arizona State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Michigan State University.
Read the list here. (March 2024)
