Transcript

Host: Hello, and welcome to Prevention and Protection, the United Educators Risk Management Podcast. Today’s episode features Stevan Veldkamp, Executive Director of the Penn State Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research, and Patrick Biddix, Jimmy and Ileen Cheek-Endowed Professor of Higher Education and College Student Personnel at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Director of Research and Assessment for the Division of Student Success.

Justin Kollinger, Senior Risk Management Consultant at United Educators, will interview Steve and Patrick about their research on hazing prevention. Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can find other episodes of Prevention and Protection, as well as additional risk management resources, on our website, www.ue.org. This and all other episodes of Prevention and Protection are also available on Apple Music and Spotify. Now here’s Justin.

Justin Kollinger: Steve, Patrick, it’s a pleasure to have you here. I’m a fan of the Piazza Center’s work, and it’s been refreshing to see more attention on hazing prevention lately. You’ve been working on this issue in the context of fraternity and sorority life for years, and now there’s an opportunity to take what we’ve learned about hazing prevention in fraternities and sororities and expand it to the full student body.

Before we get into the issue at hand, can you get us started with an introduction to the Piazza Center and your work?

Stevan Veldkamp: Absolutely. The center is engaged in hazing prevention. We’ve approached that, as you said Justin, from in the fraternity/sorority space, but it’s very applicable to other student organizations, athletics, and other spaces of the campus. And also, hazing is always commingled with other public health challenges. So it’s not actually just hazing prevention, but it’s hazardous drinking prevention, it’s violence prevention, and again, we’re dedicated to helping solve what is a public health challenge on college campuses.

Kollinger: So I want to level set here just so all of the listeners are on the same page. We’re going to talk a lot about hazing and hazing prevention in this conversation, but can you define hazing for us?

Patrick Biddix: Sure. I like to think of hazing as an activity intended to include, and I like to use it as an opposition to bullying, which is an activity that is intended to exclude. And by activity, I can give you sort of a range of what those things might be. So it can be things from physical abuse — that’s what we tend to think of, right? Pushing, hitting, forcing someone to exercise excessively. It might be forced consumption, which would fall more into the hazing side, and that’s not just alcohol. It can be non-food substances or large amounts of food or drink.

Largely though, what we see are degrading tasks and servitude. Degrading tasks — by that, I mean humiliating things like cleaning toilets with your bare hands or being made to do, to perform embarrassing acts in public, embarrassing outfits. Right? Servitude is being asked or made to do menial tasks or they may just be any sort of tasks for someone else.

Then there’s that spectrum of verbal abuse that’s yelling, swearing, making degrading comments toward an individual. It’s really aimed at lowering self-esteem, so that gets into that psychological side of hazing. So now we’ve talked about the physical side, the psychological side. In addition to that, sleep deprivation and isolation.

And then I think on the lower side, I say lower because really these activities don’t tend to exist in a vacuum. They tend to also happen together, commingle, let’s say scavenger hunts. And people often say to us, especially members will say to me often, “Well, how is a scavenger hunt hazing? That’s just asking somebody to go take pictures or whatever it happens to be.” But often scavenger hunts begin benign, but then they turn into things like stealing items or breaking the law to be able to access some obscure thing that you need to do, engaging in unsafe behaviors, often as part of some kind of challenge or competition.

So that’s a large list of examples that I hope is helpful in understanding how we define hazing and then how we see it operationalized or acted.

Veldkamp: And I would add a common thread through all of those — the physical, the mental — is a power dynamic, and I think that power dynamic that exists within an organization with the goal of acceptance is something that when you see it, and you can feel it in the organizations, that students are having to perform and do something because of that power.

Kollinger: And there’s one other thing that I’m going to add here that hasn’t explicitly come up, although I think you’ve both nodded to it, and that it is consent. And hazing is hazing regardless of consent, so I want to make sure that that’s in there too. And obviously part of the current attention on hazing prevention is a result of the Stop Campus Hazing Act, which was passed at the end of 2024, and it took effect at the start of 2025. Can you briefly describe the act to us and its requirements?

Veldkamp: Mm-hmm. Justin, there are really two main aspects of the act, the transparency portion and the prevention portion. The transparency portion amends the Clery report for the first time in 10 years, and it adds hazing to that, to the Campus Hazing and Transparency Report that now is a requirement for all institutions in the United States. It also says that you have to have a prevention program and post it. And so, we’ve been mainly focused on the prevention aspect of the law and really defining what is research-informed practice.

Biddix: If I can add right there, I would say from my standpoint, one of the key aspects of that is that a hazing prevention program must be research-based and comprehensive. And so that’s a part of the conversation we consistently have with campuses as well and a piece that we advocated for in the act.

Kollinger: Can you talk this through with me a little bit further? Because I think the transparency requirements in the act are pretty explicitly defined, but the development of a hazing prevention program, it’s much more open-ended. It talks about it being a research-backed hazing prevention program. Talk me through how a risk manager or somebody else on a campus might think about these two aspects of the Stop Campus Hazing Act and approach them in different ways, just because one is a bit more explicit about the things that we need to do. And the other half of it is, like I said, more open-ended about prevention on campus.

Veldkamp: I’ll start and I would say, Justin, from the risk management space and thinking about, again, the reporting, which is typical, we have already engaged in the Clery reporting aspects and adding hazing to that. And so that’s, again, more simple and straightforward. However, we also need to think about it in the fact of, hey, if we’re reporting some things that are related to hazing, what about the prevention of that? And can we start to imagine a future where we have less reports or no reports? And so I think that’s the opportunity as risk managers to think about the transparency side of it, to also be holding in their brain space that having convening conversations with their colleagues who are risk owners, engaging them in a conversation about actually, how do we prevent that?

I’d also like to add that hazing, because it always is commingled with another public health challenge or two, that it’s just good, solid prevention. So, it starts to start to look like: Hey, what are the things that are being put into the Clery reports that we can potentially have a hand in curbing, preventing, and/or intervening in? So, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for the risk managers in that conversation to feel like they’re helping champion a conversation that is really important to positively changing the campus culture. Patrick, what would you add to that?

Biddix: Yeah, I would agree. I think sometimes we get a little bit nervous around the research-backed part of it, right, because maybe we don’t feel like experts in the research space. But I think at its core, most of us sort of know what those things need to be, or should be, that effectively can prevent hazing. A lot of it’s very similar to other malbehaviors. It’s things like understanding communication, advocating for yourself, respecting others, and programming that, in malbehavior spaces, tends to effectively address those things at their core and addresses those key aspects of relationships with others. And when programs include those key components, they can transcend not only just the hazing space, but other things like sexual assault, like alcohol overuse, and other behaviors on campus.

Kollinger: Can I ask you to go a little deeper there? I think it makes sense what you’re saying about how we can do more communication, more outreach, treating others well, and that is part of hazing prevention. But when I think about tactics, what are the things that a campus might be implementing to achieve those goals, both from a student affairs perspective, but then also thinking, is there a way that risk managers or other colleagues on campus can help with some of those tactical components of the hazing prevention program?

Veldkamp: Well, and Justin, I would say, again, the risk owners, and most likely it’s going to be your student affairs folks. And so I think engaging the leadership and saying, what are we doing in some of our other prevention spaces that might be scattered across the campus, right? There could be something in athletics that is happening with champ life skills or could be something over here in student affairs that’s a leadership development program. And there’s something over here in health, wellness and promotion area that could look like something about making better choices around alcohol use.

So tying some of those things together and helping students make sense of those would be one strategy, and saying: Hey, we’re already doing some things and kind of casting a wide net around what those things are. In addition to that, and finding in the literature what have been our solid strategies, an example is bystander intervention, social norming campaigns, and building out those skill sets within students to stand up against hazing, and/or intervene if something does happen. And so I think those are all important programmatic areas, policy areas that the campus can really engage in. And so I think, again, from risk management, working with those risk owners, finding out what the campus is doing, but also figuring out what we need to add so that it becomes a multilayered, multi-strategy program. And then that’s where I would say the effectiveness really starts to kick in.

Biddix: To that I would add this key word that I keep coming back to often is comprehensive. So what we found in the campuses that we’ve been working with is that there are pockets of hazing prevention or related types of risk mitigation programs that exist on campus, whether it’s through athletics, ROTC, band, fraternities and sororities. A comprehensive plan really brings all those folks together and says, What are you doing to help students in this way? What are you doing to prevent these things? What types of programming do we have? And what we found is the programming often exists on campus and some of it very much meets our recommendations, but it’s scattered. It’s not comprehensive in the sense of both addressing the needs for all students in specific populations, but also kind of a concerted effort. And that’s what we found is a more effective strategy and where that word comprehensive kind of comes from in our language.

Kollinger: We’ve talked about the things that are probably already happening on your campus. You probably already have hazing prevention as part of fraternity and sorority life or athletics, or you mentioned ROTC or band. Where might a college or university have gaps where something doesn’t currently exist that they might need to create from scratch, or close to it, to make sure that they’re meeting the requirements under the Stop Campus Hazing Act or simply to have a more effective hazing prevention program?

Veldkamp: My thought, Justin, as you started to lay that question out, and where my mind immediately leapt to, is like a landscape analysis that can be conducted, again, with risk owners and in a collaborative fashion to say, Hey, where are the spots around campus where we have programming and initiatives and policy implementation and where don’t we? The other part — and I would actually maybe even back up a little further in terms of that analysis — where do we have some of the other commingled public health challenges popping up? Where are the yellow flags? Where are the red flags? Example: Where is there higher risk drinking happening and in what subcommunities is it really presenting itself here and there? Same thing with violence: Where is it starting to be hotspots around the campus community? And I think those are really, really important data points and the diagnosis of where this thing is happening at.

The other important moment here — that hazing doesn’t look exactly the same in this community as it does in that community. So this really has to be nuanced to different community types. This is the complexity of this thing called hazing on college campuses, where we really have to pay attention very closely to what some of these different subpopulations are, and to get the prevention programming right that is then effective. But with, I would say some intentionality behind that and then some landscape analysis on those issues. That’s where I would start to look at, where are the hotspots? What are some of the adjacent commingled activities that we need to be paying attention to? Specifically, hazardous drinking and violence are two great examples, in addition to some straight up, Hey, is hazing happening here and there? So, I think those would be my recommendations in terms of landscape analysis and then overlaying that with where are we meeting some student needs, but also where we’re not.

Kollinger: You mentioned something that I think is really interesting there, and I’m just wondering if you can give an example for our listeners. You talked about how hazing might be different for this group or that group. Can you bring that to life a little bit?

Veldkamp: Absolutely. And one of the go-tos is thinking about some of the communities that potentially are drinking more — which could be a fraternity; it could be a band; it could be a athletic, academic group — and so figuring out where those episodic drinking incidents are from your organizational conduct folks or a drinking survey as an example. So those would be two clear examples to say, yeah, that’s potentially an issue that this community is having.

Now, do they also have hazing? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s one of the commingled public health challenges that often gets commingled with hazing, especially the hazing that leads to death. And so I think that’s one thing that the campus really needs to be paying close attention to is where those traditions exist, and being sensitive to them doing programming that relates to those issues, which then doubles back to, you’re probably already doing some things in that space, but are you doing enough to actually drive change?

Biddix: Yeah. I might add there too: One of the things that we talk consistently with campuses about is problem diagnosis. And what I mean by that is, do we know exactly what the problem we’re trying to address is? And if we define the problem in this case as a form of hazing or several forms of hazing, what is that? To your question earlier Justin, so an example of that is servitude. Is the biggest problem that you see on campus servitude for other students. Is it alcohol related hazing?

So there’s sort of different forms along the spectrum, and it’s helpful to know that because it’s helpful to be able to address the heart of the matter a little bit better. To Steve’s point, if you’re really trying to address holistically hazing, that’s a tough approach. It’s a little bit more nuanced than that on campuses. I mean, even within organizations some of it’s based off age and prestige, and I guess perceived prestige of the organization. That’s where hazing might arise. Some of it might come from older members and alumni who come back and talk about the old days and that sort of thing. And then others might talk about the exclusivity of the organization.

So hazing can sort of grow in these spaces in addition to transferring across organizations. So maybe someone’s a member of a band; they learned this in their band and they carry that into their fraternity. So addressing this at a campus level is really critical in that space. And I think one place where we often miss is we tend to address the groups that we expect. Right? It’s ROTC, band, fraternity, sororities, places that we tend to see hazing crop up. I think what we neglect often or we forget about is that there’re some opportunities to educate faculty, to educate students, practitioners who work with student leaders at writ or broadly, that dean of students’ office, and then maybe even the accountability or conduct office on campus as well, to help folks understand how to recognize hazing, what to do when they hear it, and how to begin to have conversations or referrals when they start to see these issues come up.

Veldkamp: Well, I think Justin, what popped into my mind, and maybe we should have discussed it earlier, but hazing doesn’t just start in college. And so, I think it’s really important for folks to conceptualize that hazing starts in middle school and high school, and it’s something that colleges inherit. So students coming in already have been bullied and potentially hazed in middle school, high school, and those students have an acceptance of it. They normalize it. They are more likely to participate in it or they’re perpetrators of hazing. And so, while a campus can say, well, it’s not happening here, we don’t really have to make this a priority, you don’t know the students that are going to come to your door the next semester or the next semester after that. So it’s one of these issues.

Again, I’ve talked to a number of college campuses, even that have suffered a hazing death that said, “Oh, that would never happen here.” “ Oh my gosh, it happened here.” And so I really want to call the attention to, this is one of those topics that I think we have to be ever vigilant of, and when we do it, there’s some really big payoffs, because hazing prevention literally starts to look like really good prevention in hazards — drinking and violence and other perennial issues that affect college students.

Kollinger: Those are all really helpful examples. And Steve, you’ve talked to doing a landscape analysis. Patrick, you’ve talked about doing bystander training. I’m thinking of where are all the places a risk manager can engage in hazing prevention?

Veldkamp: Yeah, great question Justin. And for the risk management folks here, I think number one is the communication and bringing up the topic if it hasn’t been brought up yet. And then, addition to that, I would say potentially some trainings so that everyone’s kind of on an equal playing field of, Hey, this is what we’re talking about and this is how we’re defining it on our college campus, and/or bringing in some experts to have everyone have a level set perspective on what we’re discussing here, and what are the research and informed practices that we need to be thinking about. So I’d say that’s definitely number one.

A close number two, reviewing policies. I think there’s a lot of policies that we’ve developed over time for these types of things, but are they engineered? I frame it as: Are we being serious about the topic versus effective? And so what are effective strategies and where’s the conversation and who’s starting the conversation around are our policies actually effective? And this is where we get into organizational amnesty policies. We get into, what are our policies around conduct and our codes, as well as the transparency pieces, and thinking about who are the stakeholders that are involved in those conversations.

I think ultimately, I know we’ve already talked about the landscape analysis and the data, something that I’ve mused about, especially the compliance function within risk management, if you can move past compliance and actually start to think about the data collection and analysis being the effectiveness of the prevention program, so that it’s not just an accountancy, are we doing these things, right, are we doing something that we can report to Clery? Are we doing something to report that here we have a list of things that we can point to in policies and programs? Are they effective?

And if the risk manager can help facilitate that conversation, especially with our compliance folks, I like to think that we can really start to frame this work that is happening over here in risk as a championing of effective practices that leads to cultural change, that insurance carriers can say, yes, I can see why we’re going to think differently about what you’re doing, because we have risk going in a good direction here. And hopefully not Pollyanna, but I really think there’s some amazing conversations that can be happening from the risk perspective, with the risk owners on the campus, to facilitate conversations about what is the effect of policies and strategies to really start to address students changing their behaviors, versus just accepting it as standard,”Oh, boys and girls are going to be boys and girls at this age.” The science is really clear that prevention works, and it reduces hazardous drinking, it reduces violence, and it can reduce hazing.

Biddix: Yeah, I would add there, I’m going to cover, sort of say a couple of the same things as to reemphasize a few of the same things Steve had. This was a response I had some time to think a little bit more about. Certainly I would echo policy development and enforcement, and by enforcement I mean just understanding that a campus needs clear specific policies that explicitly prohibit hazing. And then ensuring a risk manager could help ensure those policies are well publicized and that all students, faculty, and staff are educated. So, that’d be one of the first questions I would ask; What is our campus policy, and hey, do we have a full campus policy? How do we know that our students, faculty, and staff are educated?

And then the enforcement side: What happens when these policies are violated? Are we clear on that piece of it, all the way down through crisis management? So, when an incident of hazing does occur, that’s an opportunity perhaps a risk manager to help coordinate an appropriate response. Maybe that’s working with campus leadership, law enforcement, legal team, and so forth to manage the situation. Being prepared for those kind of situations is incredibly important.

Kollinger: When you were talking about crisis management I was reminded of some of what I’ve learned in student suicide response, and having a postvention plan ready to go in case there is an incident. You know what your role is on campus, whether you’re the risk manager, the director of student affairs, director of communications, whoever it is. This is a sensitive time on campus when there is an incident, and knowing your role is going to be really important for how not only does the institution respond, but how do students feel. How do community members feel about the incident afterward too? Before we go here, can you share some of the resources and services the Piazza Center has available?

Veldkamp: Yes. I’m very proud of Dr. Biddix’s and colleagues’ work in the Hazing Prevention Strategies Playbook for Research-Informed Practice. We just finished it. It’s about a six-year project that we crossed the finish line just a couple of weeks ago and so we’ll share that resource with you, Justin. It is literally 300 research articles and prevention science that we’ve distilled down into a list of environmental strategies and individual strategies that campuses can be looking at to employ on their campus.

I cannot stress enough that that needs to be data-driven for each campus, and they shouldn’t just use that as: Oh, we need to implement all of those things. It really needs to be right size for campus communities and campus issues. So really want to ... Which actually then really tees up our other major project: We’re recruiting our third cohort of the What Works for Hazing Prevention Project. And that is a deep dive working with campuses to build out their comprehensive choices as well as individual program improvements for hazing prevention. And we frame that as campuses who really want to become pacesetters in prevention are joining that project and then our research team is working intimately with them to make some great choices and to create effective programs.

Kollinger: Thank you, and we’ll include links to those resources in the episode notes. I’ll also just put in a plug: I saw the Hazing Prevention Playbook not long ago, and it is a really helpful tool for anybody to be reading on campus, but if you read it and you get some ideas, it’s also a great thing to hand off to a colleague too. It distills so much information down into, what is it, I think it’s 12 or 13 pages and I recommend that anybody listening to this pulls that up after this conversation. In addition, UE has a few hazing resources for its members, including a report on hazing prevention, an article on the Stop Campus Hazing Act, and student trainings on hazing prevention and bystander intervention. We’ll link to all of those as well in the episode notes. Steve, Patrick, I want to thank both of you for joining us today.

Veldkamp: Thank you, Justin. Thank you to United Educators.

Biddix: Agree, thank you all very much.

Host: From United Educators Insurance, this is the Prevention and Protection Podcast. For additional episodes and other risk management resources, please visit our website at www.ue.org.