Wrongs of passage

University of Virginia police are still investigating a February incident where a 19-year-old freshman was rushed to the emergency room after consuming matzo balls, dog food, and gefilte fish - topped off with 12 to 18 ounces of soy sauce.

The bizarre meal, which is a traditional "rite of passage" for new members of the Zeta Psi fraternity, according to police affidavits, caused the first-year student to start seizing and foaming at the mouth. After being taken to the emergency room, the victim was transferred to the intensive care ward. In all, he spent four days hospitalized with an electrolyte imbalance caused by the high sodium content of the soy sauce.

While no one has been charged with a criminal violation, authorities have received warrants to search computer, email, and phone records of fraternity members - looking for evidence that the Feb. 28 meal constituted "hazing."

"While it has not yet been determined whether this incident was related to hazing, hazing is illegal in the state of Virginia and considered a serious criminal offense, as well as a violation of university policy," UVa spokeswoman Carol Wood wrote in an email to The Daily Progress. "If found guilty, students are subject to criminal penalties and also university judiciary processes that impose separate penalties, up to and including expulsion from the university. The university is cooperating fully with the ongoing police investigation and has launched its own investigation of this incident."

While hazing has been banned by 44 states and virtually all colleges and universities, more than half of college students belonging to campus organizations say they have participated in these kinds of degrading and sometimes dangerous initiation rituals, according to study released in 2008.

Academic clubs and social and cultural organizations all haze new members, students told professors Elizabeth Allan and Mary Madden from the University of Maine's College of Education and Human Development.

"It's far more widespread than many people would've assumed," Allan said.

The professors' National Study of Student Hazing found the highest rates of hazing among members of varsity athletic teams (74 percent) and fraternities and sororities (73 percent). But rates also were high for participants in club sports (64 percent) and performing arts organizations (56 percent).

Activities the survey counted as hazing were skits or roasts where members are humiliated, singing or chanting in public, wearing embarrassing clothing, being yelled or cursed at, enduring harsh weather without proper clothing, drinking large amounts of alcohol, and watching or engaging in sex acts. As campuses have cracked down on alcohol, pledges or new members also sometimes have been forced to drink large quantities of water or milk, sometimes with deadly results, Allan said.

Gary Powell, a hazing expert in Cincinnati, said defining hazing is difficult. Drinking to excess and physical abuse clearly are hazing, but the line is blurry for activities that don't put people at risk of injury.

Virginia's hazing statute is one of the oldest in the country, but has been criticized by anti-hazing organizations for only outlawing mistreatment resulting in "bodily injury" - effectively ignoring what anti-hazing advocates consider significant emotional effects.

"The mental and emotional aspects of hazing are incorporated into practically every hazing statute I'm aware of [besides Virginia's]," said Eileen Stevens, president of Committee to Halt Useless College Killings (CHUCK), in a 1998 interview with the Roanoke Times. Stevens' organization is named for her son, who was killed in a fraternity-hazing incident in Alfred, NY, over 30 years ago.

Still, the biggest obstacle facing anti-hazing advocates is underreporting, said Norm Pollard, dean of students at Alfred University and an adviser for the study.

Nine out of 10 students who report being subjected to behavior that constitutes hazing don't believe they had been hazed, according to Allan and Madden.

"They'll call it something else, team-building, or say 'I gave my permission to be treated this way,' Pollard said. "It's a challenge for college administrators."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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