"Wrongs of Passage" is about the breakdown of common sense, civility, and leadership in major areas of American college life. What forces young men and women to accept inhuman, degrading rituals in order to belong to a social club, sorority, or fraternity? Are they the same forces that have made college binge drinking a national epidemic? Why do college administrators and Greek fraternities and sororities continue to allow practices that frequently lead to death or permanent psychological damage? Why are black fraternities more prone to violent rites of passage than their white counterparts? Is it inevitable that today's victims will become tomorrow's hazers? How can we help our youth achieve a mature, self-confident, individual adulthood? These are some of the questions dealt with in Hank Nuwer's hard-hitting, heart-felt investigation. Nuwer first wrote about hazing in 1978 in an article entitled "The Dead Souls of Hell Week." His first book, "Broken Pledges", appeared in 1990, and tells the story of the alcohol-related death of Chuck Stenzel at Alfred University. He had hoped that book, like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", would lead to an end of the many related problems involved in hazing and binge drinking. It did not. In "Wrongs of Passage" he has provided a much broader look at the problems of hazing and binge drinking, including legal and historical perspectives and case studies. You will learn in detail about: Chad Saucier, a Phi Delta Theta pledge at Auburn University, dead of binge drinking in 1991; Amanda Jones, marked for success at Widener University, Pennsylvania, a Phi Mu pledge, broken psychologically by the experience; Gabriel Higgins, successful student at the University of Texas, until he pledged the Texas Cowboys (whose graduates include Senator Lloyd Bensten and Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry), dead in a drinking accident in 1995; Joseph Jeremy Snell, a pledge of Omega Psi Phi, at the University of Maryland, one of several pledges who needed hospital attention for broken bones and other injuries; Jessica Zimmerman, a Kappa Kappa Gamma pledge at DePauw University in Indiana, quit pledging when her Big Sister insisted on branding her with a cigarette. Nuwer takes us back to Plato (who complained of hazing rituals among Athenian boys)and gives us a historical overview of the phenomenon in various institutions and at various times in history. We also get a history of the growth of fraternities and sororities in North America and many of the wrongs, including death, which were perpetuated in the name of initiating new members. A detailed, final chapter, offers a list of strategies for society in general, parents, college administrators, fraternities, and the police for combating these demeaning and dangerous practices. A detailed chronology lists the recorded deaths from hazing activities in this country from 1838 to the present. Amherst College, Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the United States Military Academy, Kenyon College, Purdue University, the University of Kentucky, Northwestern University, the University of Southern California, Georgetown College, Baylor, and many more-a national litany of failure. An appendix lists where concerned individuals can find help and information.
National Award Renamed for Franklin College Professor
FRANKLIN, IND. - A national organization focused on hazing prevention and intervention has renamed its prestigious annual awards program in honor of Franklin College associate professor of journalism Hank Nuwer.
HazingPrevention.Org recently presented the "Hank Nuwer Anti-Hazing Hero Award" in 2011. The award recognizes up to five individuals, ranging from students, educators, social fraternity advisers, coaches and researchers, for extraordinary effort or accomplishment in the task of standing up to the dangerous and often illegal practice of hazing.
Nuwer's involvement as a social critic and journalist targeting hazing abuses began in 1978 when he wrote about the behavioral aspects of hazing in an essay for Human Behavior magazine. Nuwer has since made hazing education, prevention and intervention a significant part of his life's work.
"One death from hazing diminishes us all as a culture," said Nuwer. "For me as a journalist I saw the grief parents felt when a son or daughter died so tragically and unnecessarily.
"I saw how the lives of hazers were forever ruined, knowing every day of their own lives there was one who walked amongst them who would never graduate, never have a child, never have the opportunities he or she was meant to happen. And then there are the colleges and the Greek groups or athletic teams who will always bear the stigma of having a death from hazing that they somehow failed to prohibit.
"I simply feel that my work gives a voice to the voiceless, all those who died from hazing who cannot tell readers how easily their demise might have been prevented."
Nuwer has written numerous articles and four books on hazing, including the groundbreaking 1990 book Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing . His other hazing books are High School Hazing (Scholastic), Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader (Indiana University Press). He's written several books on the craft of writing, including To the Young Writer.
In 2006, the State University of New York awarded Nuwer an honorary doctorate to recognize his scholarly work in the area of hazing prevention. Author Michael Kimmel's 2008 best-selling book Guyland cited Nuwer as "a virtual one-man crusade to eliminate hazing" for more than 30 years. A frequent commentator on TV, Nuwer's appearances include the Today Show with Matt Lauer and CNN with Anderson Cooper. Nuwer also is a nationally-known speaker who has lectured at more than 120 campuses, including Dartmouth, the University of Michigan, Penn State and Syracuse University.
Nuwer serves on the board of HazingPrevention.Org and the advisory board of Security on Campus, a national watchdog organization devoted to rooting out violence on campus. He developed an online hazing prevention educational course for the Human Equation group in 2007-08 and started a collection of educational print and video materials on hazing at Buffalo State College's Butler Library. He has appeared in numerous documentaries, most recently Haze , the documentary inspired by the death of Colorado student Lynn Gordon Bailey and narrated by Robin Wright Penn. His regular hazing prevention column appears on the StopHazing.Org Web site.
A resident of Waldron, Ind., Nuwer advises Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society at Franklin College and teaches journalism courses such as investigative reporting. He is a member of Sigma Tau Rho social fraternity at Buffalo State College and Phi Kappa Phi national honor society.
Founded in 1834, Franklin College is a residential four-year undergraduate liberal arts institution 20 minutes from downtown Indianapolis. He has also taught at other institutions such as the University of Richmond and Ball State University. He is a member of the BSU Journalism Hall of Fame and was inducted in 2010.
A graduate of Buffalo State College, he has been named a Distinguished Alumnus (1999) and awarded an honorary doctorate (2006). BSC's Butler Library honored him with its establishment of the Hazing Collection and the Hank Nuwer Collection. The curator at Butler Library is archivist Dan Dilandro.
