Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
September 29, 2005
Author: SUSAN R. MILLER, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Hundreds of fraternity brothers, sorority sisters and athletes jammed Florida Atlantic University’s student center Wednesday night to learn that if they ever become involved in a hazing that results in death or serious injury, they could go to jail. “Florida has the toughest anti-hazing law in the country,” Rep. Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach, told the crowd. He should know, he co-sponsored the Chad Meredith Act, named for a University of Miami freshman who drowned in a campus lake while trying to join a fraternity in 2001. “These types of activities are degrading and demeaning, and they do not belong on college campuses,” said Hasner, who is traveling around the state talking to college students about the law, signed by Gov. Jeb Bush in June.

It makes hazing that results in serious injury or death a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, even if the victim is a willing participant. Simply putting someone at risk of injury can result in prosecution as a misdemeanor. Anti-hazing activists traditionally have been families who lost their sons. But that’s changing, said Hank Nuwer, an assistant professor at Franklin College in Indiana who has written several books on hazing. “Now you are seeing the fraternity movement becoming the activists,” he said. Meredith was said to be a willing participant who had gotten drunk before he took a fatal swim. Last year during a civil trial two of his fraternity brothers were found 90 percent at fault. Meredith’s parents were awarded $12.6 million. The case was appealed and later settled for a confidential amount, according to David Bianchi, the lawyer who represented Meredith’s family and who worked with Hasner on the bill. “As a result of the trial, I learned how college students will try to get around the hazing law,” Bianchi said.

For example, the law states that it is no defense if the activity that resulted in death or injury was not done as a condition of membership. That was a defense attorneys used during the Meredith trial. Forty-four states have anti-hazing laws, according to a fact sheet created by Campuspeak, a higher education social responsibility organization. Instances of hazing range from pledges being forced to scrub detergent-covered floors with their bare knuckles until they bled, to sexual assault. There have been 86 recorded hazing-related deaths in fraternities and sororities nationally with 82 percent involving alcohol, according to the fact sheet.

Students said the FAU administration has made it clear there is zero tolerance for hazing.

Many of the students said they engage in philanthropic activities as a way to bond.
“It’s crazy, brothers are supposed to care about each other,” said Rocco Molfese, 23, a member of Beta Theta Pi, an international fraternity that rejects hazing. “Why would you want to put someone through that if you want them to be your friend?