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Create safer fraternities and sororities and reap the benefits campuswide

Shifting the Focus to Address Hazing and Hazardous Drinking

Achieving safer and more sustainable campus fraternities and sororities is within reach through a combination of proactive strategies. By focusing on developing student leadership skills, enhancing prevention efforts, and redefining accountability and compliance, we can effectively address the prevalent issues of hazing and hazardous drinking within these communities. Despite the challenges faced by campus and professional staff in promoting the health and well-being of fraternity and sorority members, there is hope for positive change.

When students arrive on campus and engage in organizations, campus professionals often face a dilemma when it comes to educating fraternity and sorority communities about risky behavior like hazing. Much of this concern comes from high-profile and deadly incidents of hazardous drinking, while some campus professionals and fraternal organization staff consider different approaches and weigh their responsibility, some of the most at-risk students on college campuses suffer.

Not Just a Fraternity and Sorority Issue on Campus

Prevention expert David Anderson¹ emphasizes the vulnerability of fraternity and sorority members, athletes, and first-year students to risky behaviors. However, he also highlights the immense potential for intervention and the shared responsibility fraternity and sorority life (FSL) professionals and stakeholders have in addressing these issues. It is crucial to recognize these problems extend beyond individual organizations and reflect the broader campus climate.

Drawing from a comprehensive review of existing research, a new study led by J. Patrick Biddix (2022) is applying innovative approaches rooted in student development and preventative strategies. The What Works for Fraternity and Sorority Success and Safety “initiative” is a collaborative effort spanning three research centers and multiple campuses, integrating diverse fields such as psychology, biobehavioral health, and higher education. By aligning academic expertise with a clinical lens, the study aims to enhance the effectiveness of prevention practices within FSL.

“The center has a novel approach to prevention by supporting professionals to build the capacity to greatly reduce hazing in fraternities and sororities,” said Robert Turrisi, professor of biobehavioral health and a faculty member in the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center at Penn State. This groundbreaking research not only combines academic disciplines but also fosters meaningful connections between campus stakeholders and FSL professionals. The diverse range of stakeholders involved presents a unique opportunity to explore how student development, prevention strategies, accountability, and compliance measures can collectively mitigate risks and combat hazing. By leveraging these interdisciplinary insights, we can work towards creating a safer and more supportive environment for all fraternity and sorority members and extend these efforts further into the campus community.

Are Your Campus Strategies in Harmony or at Odds

Engaging with researchers who advocate for a structured and sustained approach to combat hazing, we can see the potential for all four strategies to work in tandem towards a common goal – safer fraternities and sororities. By illustrating the interplay between these strategies, we can create a comprehensive framework for effectively addressing hazing and dangerous alcohol misuse.

In the quest to reduce risk, it is essential to recognize the diverse perspectives and goals that support the four key strategies aimed at addressing these issues. These strategies can work collectively to reduce risks and eliminate harmful behaviors. They also help to identify the primary stakeholders most suited for implementation both on campus and in collaboration with fraternal organizations.

From university legal counsels to insurance providers, senior student affairs officers to FSL professionals, and fraternal headquarters staff to local campus law enforcement and advisors, there exists a pressing need for stakeholders with varying priorities to collaborate and agree on four strategies toward achieving safer outcomes. This collaborative effort is crucial in saving lives and fostering a more responsible community. They include how student development, prevention, accountability, and compliance are resourced and how they complement one another.

Strategy #1: Student Development

A student development and learning strategy focuses on equipping students with essential skills such as critical thinking, ethical reasoning, communication, and teamwork. Both faculty members, student affairs practitioners, advisors, and volunteers are committed to providing experiences that foster these competencies, enabling students to navigate peer relationships and lead student organizations, including complex fraternities and sororities. By investing in a student development strategy, we invest in the capacity to prevent and intervene in risky behaviors.

Strategy #2: Prevention

Empirical evidence supports a multi-tiered and assessment-driven prevention model as the most effective approach to combat hazing. Successful outcomes are already emerging from the “What Works for Fraternity and Sorority Success and Safety” study. Prevention must be a multi-pronged effort that is continually assessed for impact. Prevention efforts should encompass a range of initiatives such as social norms, in-person bystander intervention training, and programs that target shifting attitudes and behaviors.

By focusing on programs that target student motivations, we can change behaviors related to hazing and alcohol misuse. Institutions demonstrate a commitment to promoting a safe campus environment when they are serious about prevention. They are not one-and-done programs, but sustained and robust efforts. Centralized prevention efforts, as exemplified by the University of Tennessee Knoxville, SUNY Plattsburg, and the University of Texas at Austin, can yield positive results and reduce dangerous behaviors.

A robust assessment program to monitor progress continuously is essential. Campus staff often struggle the most in this effort. The forms of data necessary to diagnose issues, ensure programs are administered with high fidelity, and ensure efficacy, are essential if a campus is serious about reducing hazing and hazardous drinking. Without a comprehensive prevention program, you'll lack insight into whether the interventions provided to students are appropriate and effective, akin to prescribing medicine without knowing the correct type or dosage.

Strategy #3: Accountability

Accountability measures play a crucial role in complementing prevention strategies and fostering behavioral change. By integrating accountability with student development and prevention initiatives, students are made aware of the consequences of their actions in a manner that creates individual behavior and organizational commitment to prevention. Empirical research strongly suggests that an approach based on building relationships and providing prevention education is more effective in achieving desired outcomes compared to an accountability program that severs relationships.

How do you know you have a prevention-based accountability program? When a group violates the code of conduct, the related campus office, and staff are charged with a deeper relationship versus an accountability program that distances and separates. Further, if groups in the same or similar campus subcommunity start to see the same issues across organizations, that is a clear assessment that more emphasis on prevention is required.

Strategy #4: Compliance

While student development, prevention, and accountability are vital strategies in addressing hazing and hazardous drinking, reframing compliance offers a significant opportunity for creating a safer fraternity and sorority community. Legal compliance alone is insufficient in driving behavioral change. Campuses have an opportunity to redefine compliance developmentally as a measure of the quality and effectiveness of student development, prevention, and accountability strategies.

Campuses that prioritize data-driven implementation fidelity and programmatic efficacy in combating hazing and alcohol misuse can elevate prevention efforts beyond a compliance checklist approach. Compliance with a prevention lens becomes the quality and integrity of a comprehensive hazing and hazardous drinking program.

Through the “What Works” study, we are generating data on the factors that create change and sustain healthy communities. This research is critical for enhancing prevention efforts and evaluating them from a clinical perspective. It prompts us to consider who is most suited to lead a transformation.

Who Is Responsible for Prevention Integrity

Who drives the decision on strategies and goals needed to support safer FSL as well as other campus communities that pose risk? The answer can range from senior student affairs leadership to frontline professionals and campus administrations to national headquarters. In a diffusion of responsibility, we can lose sight of our most vulnerable students. Prevention science is clear. Investment in quality prevention, paired with assessment, is an empirically tested strategy. Who at the presidential cabinet level should lead this discussion?

University legal counsel and risk management professionals play a pivotal role in safeguarding campuses and reducing exposure to risks. Add a partnership with student affairs/fraternity and sorority life to enhance student development and grow prevention strategies. Campuses can enhance their policies with a prevention framework that tracks and evaluates success. Ultimately, compliance becomes a reflection of institutional integrity and commitment to students.

Aligned Efforts Can Make Safer Student Experiences

Achieving a safer, successful, and sustainable campus fraternity and sorority community is feasible when we elevate prevention efforts, enhance student development, infuse a prevention mindset into accountability practices, and redefine compliance as a benchmark of effective prevention. By aligning these efforts with a shared goal of enhancing student safety and well-being, campuses can facilitate safer student experiences in FSL and other at-risk student groups. Together, we can make significant strides in reducing harm and saving lives.

¹David Anderson, professor emeritus of education and human development at George Mason University, director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Health, and lead researcher of the College Alcohol Survey from 1979 to 2021.

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