Adam Oakes, 19, died on February 27, 2021. Stone Foltz, 20, died on March 7, 2021. Neither had Covid. Both were white males. Both are in the news this week because their parents are pushing for accountability. What happened to them? Fraternity hazing. Yes, even in the midst of a pandemic, frat parties are still a thing. Both young men, along with many other potential new members, were pushed to drink way too much alcohol. Their parents and some schools and organizations want the individuals involved charged with murder and other serious crimes. Surely this time things will change?
No, things will not change. Tragically, I don’t believe that hazing deaths will decrease until our culture changes. I remember fraternity hazing deaths in the news back when I was a child — I’m now 60. I asked Mom, she remembers fraternity hazing deaths in the news back when she was a child — she’s now almost 90. So I looked into the history of hazing more fully. Hazing deaths in the United States go back to at least 1737. [Trigger warning: The link contains details of harassment, bullying, and worse.] The vast majority have been young men joining fraternities, or new students joining particular classes, but there have also been incidents in the military, sports teams, and the first one was in the Masons. Deaths have been caused by a variety of reasons, not only too much drinking. There have also been a few women who died from hazing at sororities; although the numbers are much, much lower than the numbers of men who have died, the humiliations sometimes might even seem worse. [Trigger warning: The link contains details of harassment, bullying, and worse.]
Whenever these deaths happen, everyone involved makes the appropriate noises and takes some appropriate, if inadequate, action. Certainly, our “boys will be boys” culture has left a lot of young bullies without accountability for very serious crimes, and that needs to change. We see that repeatedly when young women are attacked by young men, don’t we? And it looks like the girls want to imitate the toxic male culture in their own in-groups. Certainly individual and organizationally-backed bullies need to be charged with the serious crimes they have committed and face the consequences. It should be noted, though, that many a fraternity and sorority have been banned from many campuses and delisted from national organizations. They just set up informal frats off campus, and the illegal (most being below legal drinking age) partying and hazing continue. And imprisoning the worst of the bullies leaves about 74 million more for the next time. Whilst individual accountability and criminal charges would be great, overall nothing will change unless we change the culture.
What causes this intractable problem, in my opinion, is this persistent notion that young people somehow do not deserve success unless they prove themselves to be “elite”. They need to prove their worthiness, their toughness, to be “acceptable”. Despite our nods to a “classless society” without royalty, we persist in breaking down to in-groups and out-groups, those “with class” and those “without,” to congregate in close-knit groups who can count on each other (as long as nothing goes too horribly wrong) and who not only keep those who are "out" at arm’s length, but actively look down upon and sneer at the “non-elite”. Membership with in-groups can even be the key to getting good jobs, business loans, and other assets that make a “good life” in America.
So how do we combat this toxic elitism? It’s not only targeting women and minorities and those who are “different”. It’s even killing young white men. I don’t ultimately have any answers other than to combat classism wherever we find it. But maybe it will help a little if more people know, hazing deaths didn’t happen for the first time earlier this year, they happened well before you ever first heard about them. They are not a symptom of the pandemic, nor particular colleges nor organizations, nor male-only, nor Democrat versus Republican, nor the breakdown of the American family, nor the decline of Christianity, nor a harbinger of the End Times. They are a symptom of something much deeper, more widespread, more historic, more systemic, and much harder to root out. Also, for all our sakes, teach your kids to resist peer pressure and to be responsible bystanders. This is an age-old problem, so we're probably not going to solve it this week. Nevertheless, please discuss in the Comments.