In two separate hazing cases at universities this year, members of Sigma Gamma Rho, an African-American sorority, have been charged with beating their pledges with wooden paddles.
Courtney Howard says she was the victim of violent hazing by the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority at San Jose State University. She is now a student at the University of Southern California.
At Rutgers, six members of Sigma Gamma Rho were arrested in January and charged with aggravated hazing, a felony, after a pledge reported that she had been struck 200 times over seven days before she finally went to the hospital, covered with welts and bloody bruises.
Both the university and the national sorority suspended the Rutgers chapter. The charges were reduced to simple hazing, a disorderly persons offense. The trial, originally set for this month, has been delayed because of the prosecutor’s surgery.
In the San Jose State case, Courtney Howard, a former student at the university, charged in a civil lawsuit, filed Aug. 31, that over a three-week period in 2008 she was subjected to progressively more violent hazing from Sigma Gamma Rho members. Ms. Howard claims in her suit that they beat her and other pledges with wooden paddles, slapped them with wooden spoons, shoved them against the wall, and threatened that “snitches get stitches.”
“One of the girls who was a big sister told me it was supposed to be so you can feel what your ancestors went through in slavery, so you will respect what you came from,” Ms. Howard said.
In 2008, San Jose State suspended the sorority chapter until 2016. Four of the sorority members have pleaded no contest to misdemeanor hazing charges, and been sentenced to 90 days in county jail, two years of probation and barred from any further involvement in the sorority.
Ms. Howard’s civil suit charges that the university and the sorority were negligent in investigating and responding to her accusations of hazing.
Larry Carr, a spokesman for San Jose State, said he could not comment on pending litigation. But hazing is illegal, he said, and the university makes serious efforts to educate all incoming students — and their parents — about how to deal with it.
The Sigma Gamma Rho Web site, too, clearly states the sorority’s anti-hazing policy. “Hazing is wrong, prohibited and unauthorized,” it says. “Members found guilty of hazing will be permanently and irrevocably expelled from Sigma Gamma Rho.”
The two current cases are not the sorority’s only hazing violations. The Sigma Gamma Rho chapter at San Jose State was suspended — that is, stopped from recruiting new members or using university facilities — seven years ago for hazing violations. And two years ago, because of hazing activities, the sorority’s chapter at the University of Texas at Austin was penalized. The sorority has more than 500 chapters, but is the smallest of the four black sororities.
Jonathan Charleston, general counsel to Sigma Gamma Rho, said Tuesday that the sorority had not yet been served with a copy of the complaint, and that the sorority did not comment on pending litigation.
“Any allegations of hazing are taken very seriously and immediately confronted by Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority,” said a statement from the sorority.
Many white fraternities and sororities haze their pledges, too, but there are differences, according to Lawrence C. Ross Jr., author of “The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities.”
“Most predominantly white fraternities and sororities haze around alcohol, but African-American fraternities and sororities typically haze around something physical, violent,” he said.
After the 1989 death of Joel Harris, a Morehouse student, after being beaten on the chest and face — a ritual known as “thunder and lightning” — the nine African-American fraternities and sororities changed their process for taking in new members to try to stop hazing, said Mr. Ross, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. But the changes drove hazing underground, he said, where it has become more violent, giving rise to more criminal charges and lawsuits.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Wednesday, October 6th 2010 at 2:40PM
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