Amid Hazing at Binghamton University, Cries for Help

SigEp does not have a chapter on this campus. Nevertheless, as we are starting the school year each chapter should review its own "local practices" and consider whether this article could apply to you. If so - what are you going to do about it?

Amid Hazing at Binghamton University, Cries for Help - NYTimes.com

Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

The police visited the Alpha Pi Epsilon fraternity amid hazing 
reports in April but could not enter without a sworn complaint.

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — One student said she feared for her boyfriend’s health and ability to do his schoolwork because he was coming home from fraternity pledging around 4 a.m. with gashes and cuts on his hands and elbows that reopened daily.


A parent said her son returned home with a shaved head and injuries, from running barefoot on a bed of rocks, that required an emergency room visit and subsequent treatment.

Another student said he was hazed night after night, until right before morning classes. He wrote in an anonymous e-mail to the university, “I was hosed, waterboarded, force-fed disgusting mixtures of food, went through physical exercises until I passed out, and crawled around outside in my boxers to the point where my stomach, elbows, thighs and knees are filled with cuts, scrapes and bruises.”

It is a new school year at Binghamton University, one of the most prestigious public institutions in the Northeast. But the most urgent order of business is one left over from the last school year — a hazing scandal that forced the university to suspend pledging and induction at all fraternities and sororities.