Winter 2025 Delta Upsilon Quarterly

For decades, fraternities and sororities have been providing hazing prevention education to members and have enacted policies to prevent and adjudicate the dangerous practice. This winter, the fraternity/sorority community scored a major win in the fight against hazing as the Stop Campus Hazing Act unanimously passed both chambers of Congress and was signed into law on Dec. 24, 2024.

The Stop Campus Hazing Act requires institutions of higher education that participate in federal student aid programs to report hazing incidents and establish campus-wide, research based hazing education and prevention programs. The goal is to provide transparency and help students make informed decisions about which student organizations to join.

Under the new law, campuses must include all alleged hazing incidents in their Annual Security Report (also known as the “Clery Report”) for any student organization, not just fraternities and sororities. This includes all other campus organizations, athletic teams, university bands, and even unrecognized student organizations. An additional Campus Hazing Transparency Report must be made available online that lists any organization, team or band found responsible for hazing, as well as basic information about the hazing incident. Campuses will begin collecting information July 1, 2025, and publish their first report by Dec. 24, 2025. Moving forward, the Campus Hazing Transparency Report must be updated twice a year and stay published for five years.

For nearly a decade, fraternal organizations worked alongside others, particularly the Anti-Hazing Coalition, to pass this legislation. This group is comprised of parents who lost their sons in senseless hazing-related deaths, the North American Interfraternity Conference, the National Panhellenic Conference, Hazing Prevention Network and others. Members of the Anti-Hazing Coalition (Jim and Evelyn Piazza, and Kathleen and Ava Wiant) spoke at Delta Upsilon’s 2019 Leadership Institute, and many were on hand as Congress voted on the legislation.

“The Stop Campus Hazing Act will bring transparency to make a lasting cultural change in student organizations and on university campuses,” said NIC President and CEO Judson Horras. “Our member fraternities firmly believe that hazing has no place in the fraternity experience and every student has the right to learn and thrive in a safe and healthy campus environment.”

While many states already have legal definitions for hazing, the Stop Campus Hazing Act defines it at the federal level in the U.S. for the first time. This definition will be used to determine which hazing activities are included in the Annual Security Report and Campus Hazing Transparency Report. All existing state laws and individual campus and fraternal organization policies around hazing will remain in place.

While the reporting of hazing related incidents is important for transparency, the educational component of this law will hopefully help shift societal norms and thoughts about hazing.

“Many see hazing as a fraternity/sorority problem and don’t fully understand the scope of the issue,” said Delta Upsilon Executive Director Justin Kirk, Boise State ’00. “When the larger community understands and recognizes hazing behaviors, we can more easily identify it in other areas of campus life and beyond. When that understanding and recognition happens, we are more empowered to confront the behavior. This is a huge win for student safety.”

Hazing prevention education is already a major component of Delta Upsilon’s membership programming. Any new program developed by higher education institutions for their students, faculty and staff will supplement DU’s existing efforts.