The Enduring Hazards of College Hazing

Not long after midnight in late November 1974, 10 young men scattered down Avent Ferry Road in Raleigh wearing nothing but molasses and cornflakes. Their destination: the Pi Kappa Phi house on North Carolina State University’s Fraternity Court. 

Some cut through neighboring yards as they fled the nearby woods where fraternity members left them as part of “hell week,” which leads to initiation. Witnesses called the police, who arrested a 19-year-old on a charge of indecent exposure. The others got away, N.C. State’s student newspaper, Technician, reported at the time.   

Shortly after, the university’s fraternity standards commission found Pi Kappa Phi guilty of hazing. As punishment, the fraternity’s national office ordered the chapter to end hell week and “any traditional activities defined as hazing.” 

Yet 48 years later, in November 2022, N.C. State administrators received an anonymous complaint that alleged Pi Kappa Phi members ditched pledges several miles from the fraternity house and forced them to find their way back in an “abandonment challenge.” 

Records obtained by The Assembly show a university investigation in partnership with Pi Kappa Phi’s national office confirmed the claim. N.C. State and the fraternity’s headquarters found the chapter responsible for hazing, put it on probation until 2024, and imposed educational sanctions, including a requirement that members sign an agreement to abide by the hazing policy. 

That the chapter seemed to continue this modified initiation rite despite attempts to reform its culture isn’t unusual, The Assembly found in a review of more than 1,500 pages of public records from five state universities. 

The records offer a glimpse into previously unreported hazing incidents and the investigations that followed. Pledges from various fraternities alleged they endured forced alcohol consumption, sleep deprivation, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and humiliation at the hands of members of the very groups they sought to join. 

In disciplinary hearings, fraternity brothers have described hazing as institutionalized, a part of their organizations’ tradition. Some members, according to the records, have deceived administrators in apparent attempts to thwart university investigations. Some chapters were sanctioned, only to haze again.

Under North Carolina law, hazing is a crime, and schools across the state prohibit it. But the records, along with a review of court statistics and years of contemporaneous news reporting, show it’s still a widespread issue that authorities have at times struggled to probe and prosecute.

“If they didn’t go down that path of hazing, just this ritual of which happened year after year after year for that chapter, if that didn’t happen, then maybe my son would be here.”

Lianne Kowiak, whose son died after a 2008 hazing incident

In an email statement, North American Interfraternity Conference spokesperson Hillary Brewer said the fraternity trade association has advocated for federal and state anti-hazing legislation for more than a decade. 

“NIC member fraternities stand united in providing positive, hazing-free, meaningful membership experiences that strengthen and develop young men,” Brewer said.

A new state law that took effect last month is aimed at cracking down on hazing, in part by closing a loophole that lawmakers said may have allowed perpetrators to escape liability. But some, including the mother of its namesake, say more must be done to hold institutions and people accountable. 

Lianne Kowiak’s son Harrison, a student at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, died in 2008 after a hazing incident.  

“​​I can’t bring my beautiful son back, but I can do what I can to hopefully prevent this from happening to other students,” she said in an interview. 

The Costs of Brotherhood

Disciplinary records from Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, N.C. State, UNC Charlotte, and UNC Wilmington document the sometimes steep costs of brotherhood.  

The Assembly requested records from public universities that had posted disciplinary actions against fraternities on their websites. These universities provided fraternity case files, many of which include documents marked confidential. (After multiple requests, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a partial case file with heavy redactions and declined to provide a legal reason for the redactions).

The records obtained by The Assembly show 14 cases in which various fraternity chapters were found in violation of university hazing policies. Hazing is generally defined as any degrading or dangerous activity expected of someone joining or participating in a group, regardless of the person’s willingness to partake. 

The documents, which span from 2019 to 2025, include allegations that fraternity members called pledges racial slurs; forced them to hold a plank position on bottle caps; and made them consume alcohol and other substances, such as a concoction that contained “hot sauce, milk, chewing tobacco, cigarette butts, and, at times, bodily fluids like urine.” 

Another chapter made pledges eat a habanero pepper while planking and then drink a mixture of hot sauces, records show. Three new members reportedly vomited. 

In one instance, a student who attempted to join Sigma Tau Gamma at ECU in 2019 reported that at a party on bid night, which marks when new members officially accept a bid to join, pledges were forced to drink to the point of blacking out. 

“The more a new member stated they did not want to consume alcohol, the more alcohol the brothers gave them,” according to an investigative report. 

The student said pledges spent the night at the chapter house, where the brothers yelled at them if they fell asleep, according to the report. The next morning, pledges were ordered to drive home. At least one told a brother he still felt intoxicated and didn’t think he could safely drive. The brother dismissed the concern and told him to drive anyway. 

Sigma Tau Gamma’s headquarters worked with ECU to investigate. The school found the chapter responsible for hazing and other violations, including providing false information to the university. As punishment, ECU issued a nine-month suspension followed by a three-month probation and required the chapter to complete an improvement plan proposed by its president.

Other records contain evidence that Pi Kappa Alpha at N.C. State ordered pledges to supply three pictures of “rush tits” by “reaching out to women on this and other campuses to solicit photos of their breasts,” an activity that’s been documented at other fraternities across the country. 

“Not only was the chapter responsible for holistically sexually harassing women, but they were encouraging individuals to participate in this behavior as well,” an N.C. State official wrote in a 2019 letter to the fraternity. The chapter pleaded responsible for hazing and was banned from N.C. State until 2023.

N.C. State in 2021 revoked Beta Theta Pi’s recognition after it found the chapter forced pledges to sort a carton of sprinkles by color in a room with matches as the only source of light. The chapter members also demanded a pledge watch a new pornographic movie every day and post his review on Snapchat, documents show.  

And in 2022, UNC Charlotte suspended Kappa Sigma for five years after the university reportedly obtained videos of various hazing acts, including of pledges duct-taped to a tree, holding large logs, while members yelled at them to recite information about the fraternity.   

Haunted by Hazing

The experiences haunted some pledges, records show. Lambda Phi Epsilon at N.C. State required new members to keep diary entries in which some pledges talked about “having breakdowns” at hourslong line-ups where members would quiz them on facts about the fraternity in a chaotic environment, according to a 2022 university investigative report. 

The report referenced chapter meeting minutes and materials where brothers were encouraged to yell at pledges during lineups, concluding the group “created events with the goal to create mental harm.” The chapter accepted responsibility for hazing and was sanctioned. 

In a few instances, universities partnered with the fraternity’s national headquarters to investigate allegations of wrongdoing, according to the documents. 

Some chapters cooperated with these investigations. At a 2019 disciplinary hearing where N.C. State’s Kappa Sigma accepted responsibility for hazing, one member “reflected that the chapter had lost its way and that there has been a culture within the chapter where hazing has been allowed to continue. [He] described the acts of hazing as something that has been used for new members to earn their spot in the chapter.”

In several cases, chapters said the hazing was perpetrated by a small number of members and didn’t reflect the fraternity as a whole.

“NIC member fraternities stand united in providing positive, hazing-free, meaningful membership experiences that strengthen and develop young men.”

Hillary Brewer, North American Interfraternity Conference spokesperson 

Other chapters were recalcitrant, records show. University investigators described members as “evasive” or “secretive,” and, at times, wrote that members coordinated their responses to questions or provided false information to officials. Sometimes witnesses were cowed into silence for fear of reprisal from fraternity members.

In contrast to legal proceedings, university disciplinary procedures are designed to prioritize student growth and education. Schools and fraternity headquarters often imposed educational sanctions like obligatory anti-hazing workshops on chapters they determined “more likely than not” hazed members or committed other misconduct. 

But The Assembly’s analysis of the records found that despite these requirements, some fraternities continued to engage in a pattern of insubordination. 

In one case in 2019, N.C. State found Kappa Alpha Order responsible for hazing and other conduct violations. The hearing officer wrote there was “strong evidence” that removing the chapter from campus could “provide benefit for the university.” But instead he opted to assign sanctions, including a roughly two-and-a-half-year probation, “that will hopefully create a pathway to success.”

The chapter was still on probation from the incident when it accepted responsibility for hazing involving other incidents in 2021. N.C. State revoked its recognition.

Members of Pi Kappa Alpha, which faced a four-year exile from N.C. State in 2013 for “significant conduct issues,” defied the university’s order and continued hazing, records show. Members said “this culture was still deeply ingrained in the organization” when the chapter recolonized on campus in 2017. N.C. State again revoked the chapter’s recognition in 2019 after it pleaded responsible for hazing for the second time in as many years.    

Appalachian State permanently revoked Delta Chi’s recognition in 2021 after a resident assistant reported that pledges came into a dorm “with blue lips, wearing [similar attire] and showing signs of intoxication.” In a letter detailing a conduct board’s findings, a university official said the chapter flouted the terms of previous sanctions and an interim suspension, which “led the Board to decide that revocation of university recognition is the most appropriate sanction.” 

Criminal Charges Rare

At times, university administrators seemed exasperated.

“It seems like every week we have a similar conversation about how they need to hold themselves accountable and work to live out the values of Sigma Chi and the fraternity experience,” one former UNC Charlotte administrator wrote in a 2023 email to other university and fraternity officials. “I personally am not seeing this chapter grow in the direction our office would expect.”

Hazing has long been deeply rooted on college campuses. In 1913, following a hazing death at UNC-Chapel Hill, state lawmakers made hazing a misdemeanor. But now, prosecutors seldom bring successful hazing charges, state court statistics show: In the past 10 years, district attorneys have opened nine hazing cases statewide, and most were dismissed. 

Kimberly Spahos, executive director of the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, said there are several reasons for this. First, until the law was amended last year, prosecutors were required to show the conduct resulted in a physical injury, which isn’t always the case. 

When hazing has caused physical injuries, prosecutors have pursued assault-related charges, Spahos said in an email statement.

“Once the general public is made aware of how deep and pervasive this problem is, it’s going to spark outrage.”

Gary DeVercelly, whose son died after a 2007 hazing incident

Spahos said prosecutors also can have trouble gathering evidence to prove a hazing case because it typically occurs within close-knit groups and “participants are often reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement.”

And, she wrote, “many hazing incidents are addressed through university or student conduct processes rather than referred for criminal prosecution, especially when the behavior does not rise to the level of a criminal offense under state law.”

Hazing is not exclusive to social Greek-letter groups, but research shows they and varsity sports are where the problem is most acute. A nationwide 2008 survey of college students found seven out of 10 students in these groups reported experiencing hazing at least once. 

The survey, which is considered the most expansive study of hazing to date, concluded that hazing is “woven into the fabric of student life and campus culture.” 

Harrison’s Law

On a late Monday night in November 2008, the landline in Lianne Kowiak’s Tampa, Florida, home rang. It was the emergency department at Frye Medical Center in Hickory, North Carolina.

Kowiak’s son, Harrison, then a sophomore attending Lenoir-Rhyne on golf and academic scholarships, was rushing Theta Chi. His big brother in the fraternity told her Harrison, 19, fell while trying to catch a football and hit his head. Harrison’s injuries were too serious for the regional hospital to treat, so he was airlifted to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.

“I was shaking like a leaf,” Lianne Kowiak recalled at a recent UNC-Chapel Hill visit, where she spoke to students about hazing prevention. 

Kowiak said she flew to Charlotte the next morning and went straight to the hospital. About two dozen Theta Chi brothers lined the hallway of the intensive care unit. They had bloodshot eyes, and some were covered in mud, she said. 

Harrison Kowiak had suffered severe brain trauma. Lianne Kowiak’s husband and her daughter flew to Charlotte to say goodbye. Harrison died on November 18, 2008. 

In the following weeks, the fraternity brothers’ initial account of the night of Kowiak’s injury began to unravel. 

Investigators with the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office said there were discrepancies in witness statements but concluded there was no foul play, The Charlotte Observer reported. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, prosecutors didn’t file criminal charges because there wasn’t enough evidence.

Lianne Kowiak said she hired private investigators who found Harrison Kowiak was forced to run the gauntlet at an off-campus field in a late-night initiation ritual known as “bulldogging” for the chapter’s hell week. 

In a wrongful death lawsuit against Theta Chi, Lenoir-Rhyne, and several fraternity members, the Kowiak family alleged that Harrison was repeatedly tackled by Theta Chi brothers, some of whom were nearly 100 pounds heavier than him. The fraternity and some of its members paid more than $4.6 million to settle the lawsuit in 2011. Theta Chi, which denied wrongdoing, no longer operates at Lenoir-Rhyne.

As time passed, Lianne Kowiak said her grief fueled a drive to keep Harrison’s legacy alive. She slowly struck up a relationship with leaders at the Theta Chi headquarters, where she began to speak about hazing prevention at the fraternity’s annual conference. In 2019, she started advocating for a stronger hazing law in North Carolina. 

Her early efforts to reach state lawmakers were futile. So Kowiak enlisted the help of Theta Chi CEO Michael Mayer, who connected her with an N.C. State Theta Chi alumnus and childhood friend of lobbyist David Powers.

Powers, who previously served on the UNC System Board of Governors and now sits on N.C. State’s Board of Trustees, told The Assembly he lobbied for the bill pro bono. He said Theta Chi sent him draft language, and he recruited two sponsors: Sen. Amy Galey and Rep. Steve Ross, both Alamance Republicans. 

The bill passed both chambers with bipartisan support, and Gov. Josh Stein signed it into law in July. 

The section that amends North Carolina’s hazing statutes is titled “Harrison’s Law.” It expands the definition of hazing to include acts that inflict serious psychological injury, rather than solely physical injury. 

Students convicted of hazing, which has been bumped to the highest class of misdemeanor, could now face up to five months in jail, which is consistent with the penalty for an assault that causes serious injury. Previously, the maximum sentence was two months and a $1,000 fine. 

Harrison’s Law also creates a new felony charge for school staff who engage in or aid and abet hazing, which Ross said was prompted by an incident in his and Galey’s districts. In March, The Alamance News reported that the mother of a Southern Alamance High School wrestler said he sustained a traumatic brain injury after his coach told him he had to either participate in a drill called the “circle of death” or quit the team.  

Jessica Eplee told The Assembly that her then-14-year-old son, Colby Eplee, was forced to wrestle his teammates and an assistant coach. At one point, she said, his head was slammed into a cinderblock wall, and he later passed out.

“It was complete and utter misuse of power on so many different levels, like, it was just disgusting,” Jessica Eplee said.

The coaches were not charged with a crime in connection with the case. Galey said regardless, Eplee’s allegations made clear that the state hazing law didn’t adequately address situations in which a school staff member is involved. 

“We need to be a society that looks after each other and doesn’t expect outsiders to endure dangerous hardships so that they can belong,” Galey said.

The Question of Consent

To Kowiak’s consternation, Harrison’s Law looks vastly different from the initial seven-page bill that was filed in March. 

The first version of the bill is almost identical to model state legislation put forth by the Anti-Hazing Coalition, of which Kowiak is a founding member. The coalition is a collaboration of parents who have lost children to hazing and trade groups, including the NIC, that represent some of the oldest and largest Greek-letter social organizations. 

In May, a Senate committee gutted most of the language, including measures that would have banned consent as a defense and made hazing a felony if it results in serious injury or death. 

Ross said he asked his colleagues to pare it down because his priority was the provision that criminalized hazing for school staff. With too expansive of a bill, he said, you run the risk of having it “stuck on the shelf in Rules,” referring to the powerful House Rules Committee.

But Doug Fierberg, a lawyer who represents hazing victims and their families nationwide, said the final statute is practically toothless. “What the North Carolina law suggests to me is that the fraternity industry has its fingerprints all over it,” Fierberg said. 

Thirty of the 44 states with an anti-hazing law say a crime can occur even if the victim effectively consents to participation, according to the advocacy group StopHazing. North Carolina doesn’t have that language, and courts have dismissed hazing charges on the basis that the victim chose to participate in pledging experiences gone awry. 

In 2014, for example, a Montgomery County judge ruled that four UNC Charlotte fraternity men weren’t responsible for the near-death experience of a Pi Kappa Alpha pledge who was hospitalized with a blood-alcohol level more than five times the legal limit. 

The pledge’s attorney told WSOC-TV that 15 pledges were told to chug beer and hard liquor at a campout in Uwharrie National Forest. Under cross-examination in court, the pledge testified he wasn’t forced to go to the campout or drink once he was there, the outlet reported. The judge threw out hazing charges against three men and found the fourth not guilty. UNC Charlotte closed the fraternity for eight years.  

North Carolina is one of four states where victims can’t recover damages in a lawsuit if they are found to be even 1% responsible for their injury. That means if a jury decides a hazing victim is partly to blame because they voluntarily participated in a potentially dangerous act, like standing in a pledge line, “you have no civil legal remedy,” Fierberg said.

Galey, the senator, said in dire circumstances, a student accused of hazing could be charged with other felony crimes. Lawmakers chose to keep student hazing a misdemeanor charge because “a college kid who has been a bonehead and had something unfortunate happen on their watch, you want them to be held accountable, but you don’t necessarily want their life to be ruined,” she said. 

Kowiak sees it differently. She said a potential felony charge for hazing that results in serious harm would be a strong deterrent for students.

“Hazing obviously can easily get out of control,” Kowiak said. “Do I think that these individuals in that chapter at Lenoir-Rhyne for Theta Chi had the intent to murder someone? No. But if they didn’t go down that path of hazing, just this ritual of which happened year after year after year for that chapter, if that didn’t happen, then maybe my son would be here.”

Still, Kowiak stressed that the passage of Harrison’s Law is a “monumental hurdle that we’ve crossed.” 

In an email statement in response to detailed questions, Mayer, the Theta Chi CEO, said in part: “We are grateful for our friendship with Lianne Kowiak and our shared mission to prevent hazing on college campuses, and we are glad the state of North Carolina joined us in our efforts.”

Outsized Influence

To extinguish hazing, Gary and Julie DeVercelly think individual accountability is insufficient.

The couple lost their eldest son, Gary Jr., to a hazing ritual on March 30, 2007. He was a first-year student at Rider University in New Jersey when he died of alcohol poisoning after drinking most of a bottle of vodka at the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity house. 

Too often, when hazing happens, the current fraternity members are cast as the culprit, Julie DeVercelly said. She said she thinks national fraternities and universities let hazing culture fester. 

“That’s why they always close the house down or shut them down for four years or five years, and then it happens again,” Julie DeVercelly said. 

Spurred by their son’s death, the DeVercellys spent 10 years and dozens of trips to Capitol Hill from their home in California, advocating for a federal anti-hazing law. In the past, lobbyists for Greek-letter groups have stymied similar efforts. 

National fraternities can leverage powerful assets to influence policymakers at all levels of government. The groups enjoy a wide alumni base with outsized representation in leadership positions. 

Seven percent of men and 6% of women say they’ve been members of a collegiate Greek-letter social group. Yet The Assembly found at least one-third of members of the UNC Board of Governors are fraternity or sorority alumni. The ratio is roughly the same in the 119th U.S. Congress, according to the NIC.

The DeVercellys, who sit on the board of the nonprofit Clery Center, said they found a champion for an anti-hazing bill in U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, a Georgia Democrat and Delta Sigma Theta alumnus. National fraternity and sorority trade groups supported its passage. The resulting bipartisan legislation, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2024, is the first of its kind. 

The Stop Campus Hazing Act requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to track hazing incidents and include the tally in their annual report of crime statistics, known as the Clery report. 

The act also mandates that these schools implement hazing prevention policies and issue a biannual transparency report that summarizes findings of any investigation of student organizations found responsible for hazing.​​ 

The reporting requirements are designed to provide the most detailed look yet at the extent of hazing in higher education, especially at private universities, which are largely exempt from state public records laws. The deadline for the first transparency report was last month. 

The DeVercellys hope the transparency requirements will apprise students and their families of the potential risks when they consider joining a student organization. They want to see national fraternities and universities held accountable for hazing.

“Once the general public is made aware of how deep and pervasive this problem is, it’s going to spark outrage,” Gary DeVercelly said. “And then we’re going to get some legislation, which I hope will hold the people in charge responsible.”