Independent Lens

-Every time I hear about a young person dying because of hazing, it tears me up inside, because, truthfully, I've been a part of the problem. For too long, I've held back from talking about the hazing I experienced out of loyalty to my fraternity, because of my fear of the consequences, and because I didn't want to be seen as a snitch. But that all ends now. The news clips we see often become background noise, but tell a familiar and recurring story. -A hazing that left a fellow student beaten to death. -The ritual called The Glass Ceiling, a gauntlet meant to represent the plight of Asian-Americans. -The final act of their initiation process was to go into that river as boys and come out as men of honor. -Cal State Northridge student collapses in the mountains. He was on a hike with other young men who were trying to join a fraternity. -18-year-old Burch drank during a fraternity ritual, leaving him with a blood alcohol level six times the legal limit. -Fraternities are ingrained in higher education. They own $3 billion in real estate. They house a quarter of a million students, more than any other landlord except for colleges themselves. They raise $20 million a year for charity. Their alumni are among the most loyal donors. So that is powerful. -With that kind of power, it's not hard to see how fraternities keep the tradition of hazing alive. -Sigma Nu fraternity has been suspended following the death of a student. Ryan Abele had fallen... -I hadn't heard about Ryan Abele until I met his parents, Jack and Wendy. -You know, one of the kids in the pledge class with our son, Ryan -- he said -- he said, "It's surreal because it could have been any of us." -Yeah. -"But it should have been none of us." And there were 30 kids all handed a bottle of booze. He was several weeks into that pledge process, and they had a planned event, an event called The Big Brother Reveal.

Indistinct conversations

Our son, Ryan, was handed a bottle of 100-proof and instructed to drink it down to a certain point on the bottle. And from that point forward, he was incapable of making a rational decision. He was just drunk out of his mind. They decided to bring him back down into the basement and mess with him some more. So they walked him to the stairs. He paused at the top of the stairs. He then fell, hit his head on a concrete wall, suffered a fractured skull, never regained consciousness, and died several days later in the hospital. -Did you have any concerns when he told you that he was pledging a fraternity? -No, because Sigma Nu made sure they got his transcripts. They made sure that he did community service, made sure he had good grades. And it was supposed to be, like, the top-of-the-notch fraternity. So, no.

Indistinct conversations

Voice breaking

I believe that he thought they would look out for him. And they didn't. So there's no brotherhood in that. -Most colleges and organizations have anti-hazing policies. But the real question is, do they actually work? -Sigma Alpha Epsilon national headquarters reaffirms its zero-tolerance policy. -Syracuse University released a statement saying it has, quote, "zero tolerance." -Zero tolerance. -Zero tolerance for hazing. -They use that for legal defenses, but it does nothing to eradicate the problem of hazing.

Cheers and applause

-They don't want to get their other members in trouble. But more than that, there's a reward on the other side of it, which is belonging. "I did what everybody else before me did in order to be a part of this organization." -Hazing is clearly a systemic force, as opposed to a series of isolated incidents. It's way too common, and incidents are similar to each other over time and across geography. -This isn't a chapter problem. It's not an individual problem. It's a problem of organizational culture. Either the organizations don't want to stop hazing or they don't know how. - The effects are still daunting The eagle is still haunting They still laugh and they flaunting Hazing, it's sad that it won't end -Every single person in this room, whether you're Black, white, Latino, Asian -- it doesn't matter what your ethnic or cultural background is -- every single person has the ability, the power, the influence to actually confront this culture that I'm talking about.

Indistinct conversations

-What is needed is obviously for peers who are saying, "I cannot allow this." -We certainly need to change the mindset that our students have. -If we empower them and teach them how to stand up and how to question that authority, then I think we can change the culture.