In the Media · America at Night with McGraw Milhaven
Doug Fierberg on why fraternity hazing keeps happening
Forty years ago, insurers ranked fraternities a worse risk than hazardous waste disposal. On America at Night, Doug Fierberg explained why the industry still hasn't fixed what put it there, and what universities still aren't telling students.
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It’s a shocking fact, and it’s true: by 1986, the insurance industry ranked men’s national fraternities as a worse risk than hazardous waste disposal companies, and many insurers walked away from them entirely. That isn’t an outside critic’s claim. It’s in the fraternity industry’s own risk-management manual.
Forty years later, the headlines keep coming. After recent incidents at Cornell, the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Penn State, host McGraw Milhaven asked Doug whether any of them were one-offs.
Doug said no.
Fraternities answered the insurance crisis by insuring themselves, not by changing how chapters operate. Pledging still puts life-and-death decisions in the hands of untrained 18- and 19-year-olds. Universities promote Greek life while burying what students need to know about the risks.
And when a chapter carries out a ritual passed down for years, the organization that let it continue shares the responsibility.
Transcript
The full conversation.
Welcome to America at Night with McGraw Milhaven.
If you've been paying attention over the last couple of weeks, we had that unbelievable story coming out of Penn State, where some fraternities, as part of a hazing, were cutting up cocaine and fentanyl. And you think to yourself, boy, you don't hear that story very often.
Then a couple of weeks later, you heard a story out of Wisconsin, about a fraternity where 30 pledges were found last week in the basement, filthy, half naked, three-quarters naked, filled with condiments.
Then you heard the story the other day about this Cornell fraternity, where there was alleged harassment by a young woman, which has now taken the country by storm.
To talk about all of this and put it into perspective is Douglas Fierberg. He's the founder of The Fierberg National Law Group. And Douglas, you apparently specialize in holding fraternities, national headquarters, and universities accountable for these hazing injuries.
Douglas Fierberg, welcome to America at Night. Thanks for joining us.
Well, thank you very much. I'm glad to be here, and I hope to be able to convey the truth about fraternities.
Yeah, take me through this. It seems like every couple of weeks there's another story where fraternities are behaving badly.
Is this a one-off, or does this continue to be a major problem?
No, it is anything but a one-off.
You have to go back in time a little bit. In the 1980s, fraternities were so dangerous, and this continues to the present, that they were ranked by the insurance industry as toxic waste dumps.
Okay, so think about that for a minute.
In the 1980s, they began losing their access to commercial insurance. That's because of the number of sexual assaults, the number of hazing incidents, the number of injuries and deaths.
So the fact that we're focused on three incidents right now is just a matter of the public having a difficult time catching up to what the fraternity industry has known for decades and refused to address. And it's what universities, in their infinite wisdom, pretend to know but don't ever actually convey to students accurately.
So yes, you've heard about three incidents. But the fraternity industry is rife with injury and death, and has been for decades.
And the fact that the public has an opportunity to focus on it now is only an indication of what the fraternities have been hiding for so long.
Have we not grown from the '80s? Were things not transformed? Hasn't there been some sort of transformation of these fraternities, bringing them up to 21st-century standards?
Well, you'd like to believe that, right?
But if you actually study what fraternities have done since they began losing access to commercial insurance, they've just indemnified themselves against the risk. They've not substantially changed their policies, nor the means by which they enforce those policies.
So, for example, take pledging and hazing right now. Why on God's green earth do we not even begin to address the question of who pledges to join organizations in this country?
I'm sure, as a successful person in your industry, you've joined numerous organizations, professional and personal. Have you ever had to submit to an eight-week period where individuals can subject you to various tests to see if you're worthy of becoming a member of that organization?
It's ludicrous.
Back in 1990, the African American fraternities recognized that they didn't have the ability to prevent serious incidents of injury and death in connection with pledging, and they banned the practice.
The majority of white fraternities still want to convince you that it's some incredibly valuable thing, that students who are taking classes full time should be engaging in it for an 8- to 10-week period in the middle of a semester. It's ludicrous.
And their means for enforcing policies is sort of ridiculous. Universities will say, and fraternities will say, "We don't condone hazing." Well, of course not. It's illegal. So it's a throwaway sentence.
The question is, what do they do to enforce prohibitions on hazing?
And the fact is that the means of implementation rests in the hands of untrained 18- and 19-year-olds, who are essentially holding their first full-time job, to make life-and-death decisions.
It has failed for decades, and they don't change it.
How responsible are the universities for allowing this to continue?
Well, that's a huge issue. We just recently, in the death of Sam Martinez at Washington [State] University, held the university liable for failing to protect Sam.
One of the central issues with universities, and it's true with the Wisconsin fraternity, is that universities actively promote fraternities and commit substantial resources to convincing students of all their good qualities, why they should join, and how it's going to improve their lives, without accurately disclosing the risks to them.
Any of your listeners can go onto the University of Wisconsin–Madison website right now and find the section for fraternity and sorority affairs. And you will see numerous pages, which reflect a lot of financial resources the university has paid into them, stating the benefits of joining, telling students how to join, and indicating how many students are members of fraternities.
And if you somehow want to find out about chapters that have been closed, the risks of hazing, the risks of sexual violence, or the truth about the fraternity industry being rated as dangerous as toxic waste dumps, you have to click seven, eight, nine pages to get to something called a scorecard, which first focuses on grades. Then you have to find another site that might tell you about incidents that have happened.
That's just a refusal to accurately tell students about the risks they face on campus, so they can take actions to protect themselves.
When I did the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, that was one of the central premises that came out of the investigation that took place: students are entitled to know the truth.
And universities do not do that. Almost across the board.
We're spending a lot of time on fraternities. Do sororities have this problem, or is this not a problem with sororities?
Oh, hey, by the way, one could say women are smarter than men at this age. And I'm happy to say it.
Back in the 1980s, sororities banned the presence of alcohol in sorority houses. Why? Because they couldn't manage it, and it was resulting in numerous sexual assaults.
If you take a look at some of the recent examples you've referenced, alcohol is often involved in the injuries and deaths. Why?
Well, it's something that 18- and 19-year-olds are prohibited from consuming. But the Greek industry and universities have as their policy "self-management," which has those same 18- and 19-year-olds managing the availability and service of alcohol in fraternity houses when they can't legally consume it.
So why does it fail again? Eighteen- and 19-year-olds whose previous job was cutting lawns are now managing the provision of alcohol, unlike any bar or restaurant in the country.
So it fails.
Sororities at least realized that the presence of alcohol was harming them. And again, that's another policy that fraternities have chosen not to change, knowing that time and again they don't manage it safely.
Douglas Fierberg is our guest, founder of The Fierberg National Law Group, talking about fraternities.
I get the insanity of taking your shirt off and being covered in condiments, or cutting up cocaine at Penn State. These are each more bizarre than the last.
But whatever happened to, "Hey, carry my books to school"? Or freshmen have to clean the bathrooms on Saturday, or cook dinner on Saturday night, or clean the kitchen?
Are those considered hazing? And why aren't those acceptable as some type of bonding effort, so that they can be part of the group when it's all said and done?
Well, typically the definition of hazing varies from state to state. But it's generally activities that threaten physical or emotional harm to someone in connection with seeking membership.
Carrying somebody's books to class, doing some of those ministerial or menial tasks, that doesn't percolate up to what universities get centrally concerned about. That stuff happens.
The issue, though, is that that is not what so many of the traditions in fraternities are based upon. They're based upon humiliating people. They're based on the misuse and misprovision of alcohol, and on dangerous activities that have historically resulted in serious injury and death.
Take any of the states. I presume you may be located in California: multiple students killed in fraternities in the last few years. That's true in many of the states across the country, as a result of hazing.
So let me put it this way, too. The fraternities have known the pledge period is so dangerous that two decades ago, one of the senior representatives in the fraternity industry called it "three deadly nights."
Three deadly nights. Is there another industry where they identify that there are three deadly nights?
Well, in fraternities, it's when students get their bid, then it's when they meet their big brothers, and then it's when they cross over into membership. Those three nights have gotten the phrase, internally, from fraternity leaders: three deadly nights.
And let me suggest that those three deadly nights exist on virtually every college campus in every state in this country.
And that I might be saying it to you and you're hearing it for the first time? It's criminal that universities have not made that truth known to their students when they're making decisions about whether or not to seek membership, or when women are deciding to go to a fraternity house to party without knowing how dangerous it is with respect to sexual assault.
Let me make sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying that fraternities are so dangerous that insurance companies across the board refuse to insure fraternities?
Yes. That started at the end of the 1980s.
Just think about that for a minute. Why are insurance companies pulling out of California for homeowners insurance policies? Because the risk of fire is so high that their obligation to indemnify homes could make them bankrupt.
Well, the same was true in the 1980s, because of the risks to the commercial industry of backing up fraternities.
So what many of them have done is go to self-insured situations, where they actually decide what the coverage will be, how it will be handled, and what the exclusions are.
And if you look at that carefully, the way fraternities have managed it is with exclusions and other policy protections that protect their own assets and cast the blame and the indemnification on other insurance industries.
So, for example...
We're short on time. Let me ask you this question, because with this latest incident, Cornell is saying that they did everything right. They suspended these boys, they kicked them out, and so on and so forth.
But is it the individual in the fraternity, or is it the whole fraternity? Is there a distinction?
Well, yeah, there is a distinction. Well, yes and no, on a lot of the issues.
Look at Wisconsin, which supposedly is prosecuting two of the individuals, the president and the vice president, for what happened at that fraternity. It's ridiculous, because the ritual that must have taken place is a ritual that had been passed on.
This is what discovery or an investigation would show: these guys didn't just make it up. It had happened year in and year out. And the ritual was probably discussed at a chapter-wide meeting the weekend before, and everybody agreed to do it.
So you have multiple people who agreed to do something that was dangerous.
That's why at Michigan State University, when our client was killed as a result of the hazing incident, dozens of people at the chapter were criminally charged. Because everybody knew it was going to happen. Everybody had the obligation to intervene and stop it. And everybody had the obligation to rescue our client as he was lying there, en route to death.
So again, yes, it involves the individuals. But it also involves the organizations.
Because if you've known this is happening, for decades, in the organizations you have formed and you control, and you have not acted reasonably to stamp it out, then it's on you.
Douglas, I've got one minute left. Are there any universities that have closed up shop and said, "We're kicking all the fraternities out. This is just too much. It's too much to deal with. It's not part of our academic situation"?
Are universities turning to that alternative?
Some have done that. Years ago, Alfred University realized that they could not safely manage the fraternities on campus, and they kicked them all off. That happened with a lot of complaining by the fraternities about their freedom of association and everything else.
Part of the issue, though, is not whether you let them operate on campus, because maybe they have a right to do that in some part. It's whether you actively promote them and tell students that these organizations are the greatest thing since sliced bread, while withholding accurate information about the risks students face.
Look, I've talked to young people, women in particular, and told them: if you're going to go to a party at a fraternity house, this is exactly what you need to do in order to dramatically reduce the risk of sexual assault. And with that information, they've been able to avoid it.
Well, the same should be true for universities.
Yes, you're making money on them, because they're active alumni and they contribute more than the general student population. But it's not just about money, and it's not just about throwaway statements saying hazing is not condoned.
Those are just stupid, meaningless, throwaway statements. What do you do to stop it?
Douglas Fierberg is the founder of The Fierberg National Law Group, a trial attorney specializing in holding fraternities, national headquarters, and universities accountable for hazing injuries and deaths.
Douglas, good stuff. Thanks for checking in.
Hey, you take care. Thanks a lot for having me on.
America at Night. Back in a moment. From the heart of America, this is America at Night with McGraw Milhaven.
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