LOUISIANA (KLFY) — An act to combat hazing on college campuses is being proposed by U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy and ranking members of the senate health, education, labor and pensions committee.
The bipartisan Stop Campus Hazing Act was proposed to improve the reporting and prevention of hazing on college campuses nationwide.
“A young person goes off to school and they want to be accepted. For most of them, hazing is something that you know they don’t understand the significance of it. Therefore, they go further than it should,” said Cassidy.
The act wants hazing incidents to be included in a college’s annual crime report and requires institutions to provide research-based programs to educate students about the dangers of hazing. This is set to help college students and their parents make the correct decisions on what organizations to be a part of.
“A parent should not have to worry about their child being endangered because of their sense of belonging,” Cassidy said.
A 2019 survey of 6000 college students found that 26 percent experienced some form of hazing. Since 2000, over 50 students nationwide have died from hazing. In 2019, a freshman at LSU, Max Gruver, died after he was pressured to drink large amounts of alcohol during a hazing incident. His father, Stephen Gruver, has worked with Senator Cassidy since the tragedy in effort to prevent what happened to his son from happening again.
“I know that had the Stop Campus Hazing Act been around when my son was pledging, he would not have chosen the Phi Delta Thetas. They are extremely bad actors. They were bad actors for years and this act would have saved my son’s life,” said Gruver.
Several Greek-Life organizations have shown support for the stop campus hazing act including the National Panhellenic Conference and the North American Interfraternity conference.
