Hazing Death
What the pledge looked like
Meanwhile, for black folks:
CACs even getting away with murder on their own
Harrison Kowiak was 19 years old when he died after schoolmates pummeled him on a pitch-black field in Hickory, North Carolina. It was part of a fraternity hazing.
Determined to protect other students, Kowiak’s mother Lianne devoted herself to fighting hazing. She thought she had a powerful ally in U.S. Representative [URL='http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Frederica%20Wilson&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1&partialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSYND&lr=-lang_ja']Frederica Wilson
[/URL], who calls herself the “Haze Buster” and backed Florida’s tough anti-hazing law as a member of the state legislature in 2005.
Standing beside Wilson at a Capitol Hill news conference in September, Kowiak helped display a 10-foot-long banner headed “Hazing Kills,” and depicting a cemetery. As Wilson vowed to deny financial aid to students who engage in hazing, Kowiak applauded. What Kowiak didn’t know was that, behind the scenes, the fraternity industry’s political arm, known as “FratPAC,” had been pressing Wilson to back off. Today, 19 months after Wilson first promised an anti-hazing bill, she hasn’t filed one.
The industry’s lobbying is “disgusting,” Kowiak said in an interview. “What are the priorities here?” They “should be to stop hazing so none of our youth have to go through it.”
Even as deaths and injuries proliferate at their local chapters, traditional college fraternities resist a federal role in punishing hazing, contending that Wilson’s proposal would infringe on student rights and that existing state criminal laws are sufficient.
...
‘Sacred’ Rock
In November 2008, members of the Theta Chi fraternity at Lenoir-Rhyne, a liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church, took Harrison to a field at night and told him to traverse a gauntlet of brothers in pursuit of their “sacred” rock, said Lianne Kowiak, 53, a former account director for a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary.
As he ran, Harrison, weighing 165 pounds, was beaten by fraternity brothers, some 100 pounds heavier, who were lurking in the darkness, she said. He died of a brain hemorrhage.
At first, fraternity members told Kowiak that Harrison died from injuries in a football game. A Theta Chi official said it was from “a team-building enterprise,” said her husband, Brian Kowiak, 55. Only later, as part of a lawsuit filed in 2009 against Lenoir-Rhyne and Theta Chi, did they learn that the gauntlet-running ritual, known as “bulldogging,” had been an initiation tradition for years during Theta Chi’s “Hell Week.”
No one was arrested. Prosecutors found “no basis for criminal charges,” said Eric Farr, a spokesman for the Catawba County District Attorney. and at this story
What the pledge looked like
Meanwhile, for black folks:
One of the most prominent hazing deaths was that of Robert Champion, 26, a drum major in the marching band of Florida A&M University, a historically black college in Tallahassee. According to his parents’ lawsuit, band members in November 2011 severely punched and kicked Champion on a chartered bus following a performance. Fourteen people were charged with crimes including manslaughter. Most of the cases are pending.
CACs even getting away with murder on their own