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.
The university has a new dean of students and a renewed focus on curbing hazing. But a review of complaints submitted to the administration last year indicates just how overmatched Binghamton has been. While student deaths at Cornell and Florida A&M Universities last year have drawn widespread attention to dangerous behavior in student organizations, the reports, obtained recently by The New York Times, provide a rare look into the fraternity and sorority culture on an American campus.
Sunni Solomon, the university's assistant director of Greek life from 2010 until July, said in an e-mail, "My entire tenure from start to finish, I was scared to death that someone was going to die."
No one died. But the reports, mostly anonymous e-mails and phone calls, depict students, parents and alumni essentially begging the university to find a way to crack down on hazing.
One student said his friends seemed "always weary, anxious and even paranoid" as a result of the hazing. "I am worried about their safety as they seem to no longer care about what is done toward them," the student wrote.
One father cited text messages from his son, which could "only be interpreted as desperately reaching out for help." He said they included descriptions of being forced to stand out in the cold in his underwear, prevented from sleeping for prolonged periods of time and not being allowed to leave the fraternity all weekend. "To be frank, I am shocked and mortified that this is allowed to go on at your institution," he wrote.
One junior, who expressed great love for the university, relayed accounts from two pledges. One said her sorority threw pledges into a freezing shower where they had to recite the Greek alphabet. Another reported being forced to eat concoctions meant to make pledges vomit on one another and to hold hot coals from hookahs in their hands. The e-mail concluded: "Save the innocent and naïve who can't seem to save themselves."
Forced drinking, a staple of college hazing, comes up in a few reports. There also were reports of students' getting frostbite from walking barefoot in the snow. One said pledges, blindfolded, driven miles from campus and relieved of their phones, were expected to find their own way home. Another said a fraternity branded pledges on the leg, back or buttocks.
Several reports claimed that some of the hazing continued even after organizations received warnings or after the university suspended pledging.
Officials at Binghamton — part of the State University of New York system — declined to say whether individual students had been disciplined but said 3 of the 53 sanctioned Greek organizations were currently banned from recruiting members. The university's Web site says one sorority received a disciplinary warning, one fraternity was placed on probation and two fraternities remain under investigation.
Separately, two national sororities canceled charters of their Binghamton chapters in 2011 after a review of the sororities and the Greek culture on campus.
By an EMPLOYEE of THE NEW YORK TIMES in SYRIA and KAREEM FAHIM. 19 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/nyregion/amid-hazing-at-binghamton-university-cries-for-help.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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