When hazing leads to death: one campus' response - Southeast Missouri State University

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 25, 1998 by Karin Chenoweth

All campus administrators face issues of hazing, some with more urgency than others. Southeast Missouri State University faced a worse crisis than most in 1994 when twenty-five-year old Michael Davis -- a journalism major -- died after two weeks of hazing at the hands of his Kappa Alpha Psi brothers.

At that time, a horrified campus held countless discussions about what the college as a whole knew or should have known -- and realized it did not know nearly enough.

Today, Loren Rullman, director of the university center with responsibility for Greek life, says confidently, "There is not hazing that is taking place. I really believe that.

Rullman, who came to Southeast Missouri six months after Davis died, has spent a great deal of time working with fraternities and sororities, both Black and White, to get to the point where he can be so confident.

Whether other campuses can duplicate the procedures that has made him so confident is an open question, he says. The unfortunate death of Michael Davis gave the entire campus "an incredible sensitivity" to the issue of hazing.

"We have never forgotten that, but it isn't something you can program," he says.

Still, he says, other campuses can learn from the experience of Southeast Missouri.

"They need to took at what has happened here and learn something," Rullman advises.

One of the ways Rullman has approached the issue is to emphasize that hazing is not peculiar to Black fraternities and sororities, despite the public attention focused on them.

In my view, hazing is a behavioral problem, not just a Greek problem, and not just a Black Greek problem. Hazing can take place in a variety of circumstances where there is group identity and entrance into the group."

For that reason, many of the responses of the university have been general rather than specific to the fraternities and sororities.

The vice president for student affairs at Southeast Missouri, Dr. SueAnn Strom, was one of the crisis managers at the time of Davis's death. She has since given talks to campus administrators at other institutions about what steps have been taken at her campus.

The first step, of course, was reacting directly to the death -- providing buses for students and faculty to attend the funeral, and arranging for counseling for students and faculty who knew Davis and knew the thirteen young men in the Kappa Alpha Psi chapter charged with hazing offenses -- ranging from misdemeanors to manslaughter.

I knew Michael well. I had found him to be a very bright, goal-oriented person. I knew a lot of the thirteen men and what their life plans were," says Strom, who adds that the incident had been a terrible shock not just for her, but for the whole campus,

Then a few days after the death, the campus dismissed the Kappa chapter and according to Rullman, "They will not be allowed back on campus.

Shortly after that, Strom and the then-Greek life coordinator conducted a campus-wide hazing survey to assess what members of the campus knew and when. What they found, among other things, was that people around Davis had noticed a change in his behavior over the two weeks that he had been hazed which they had not recognized as danger signs. But Strom also found deep layers of ignorance.

"I hadn't even known the Kappa chapter had a line," Strom says, referring to the line of new pledges who are sometimes paddled or otherwise hazed.

New Policies

Since Davis's death, Southeast Missouri has taken several actions, including:

* Changing its rules regarding hazing. Although it had been forbidden, it was in line with stale law which considered most hazing activities a misdemeanor. Following Davis's death, his family and the local prosecutor worked with the state legislature to make some hazing activities felonies. The university also tightened its rules regarding hazing.

* Each new pledge of any fraternity or sorority -- known as Greek organizations -- sign a hazing card saying that they will report any hazing activity.

* The university holds a retreat for all the presidents of fraternities and sororities every year to discuss the nature of leadership and the role the presidents must play in stopping hazing.

* The university also does extensive training with campus administrators and resident advisers to keep alert for any signs of hazing. The problem with that, Strom admits, is that out of the 8,200 students this fall, only 1,600 lived on campus. It is impossible, he says, to keep tabs on what students are doing at all times. Davis, for example, lived off campus.

* Strom and other officials made a video that included an interview with one of the young men convicted in the death of Davis. Among other things, he said he certainly hadn't expected Davis to die. He himself had undergone similar activities, he said. He also said he didn't think hazing would stop unless the national organizations developed a culture that didn't approve of it.

* The university consults with the national affiliate of a fraternity or sorority any time a new activity is proposed.