Dear Davidson College Archives and Special Collections,

As a student deeply engaged with ideas of justice and how it plays out in the face of adversity, I am interested to learn more about how higher education responds to instances of hazing. Who do they seek to protect? The noble option would be taking genuine accountability. This could be done through seeking out reforms in response to hazing episodes. However, some colleges may selfishly choose to focus their attention on their own public perception in order to protect their reputation. It would be foolish to say most responses to hazing instances are purely noble or purely selfish, opening up a moral grey area when it comes to institutions’ responses. This grey area is what I hope to study: what do colleges say they value, versus what they are found to actually value when students are harmed? How do institutions respond when tradition comes into direct conflict with students’ well-being?

To conduct this research, I will be looking into how Davidson responded to the hazing incident in the 1990s, which led to freshman Alfredo Urbino being injured. The event generated a large amount of negative press toward the school, making it imperative for the college to respond. I will explore how Davidson’s independent student newspaper, The Davidsonian, reported on the incident in the midst of the college receiving public scrutiny. Additionally, I will be scanning through the North Carolina State University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill archives to see how they respond to the hazing that has occurred at their universities. Doing so will allow me to compare the responses of state schools vs smaller private schools within the bounds of North Carolina universities. This will allow me to see what factors such as size or Greek Life prominence impact how institutions respond. 

Sincerely,

Noah Hawkins

Research Question: Did colleges seek out accountability and reforms for instances of hazing or focus on reputation and damage control in the 1990s?

As I searched through the Davidson archives from the 1990s, I found an article that piqued my interest. It discussed an example of a Greek-life organization at Davidson violating its anti-hazing policies, and how the college responded. After careful analysis of the article entitled “Sig Ep’s bring Eileen Stephens to talk about fraternity hazing,” the implicit bias toward protecting the College’s image becomes clear. This instance of hazing at Davidson is one in a long line of anti-hazing violations at a multitude of universities across the country. I hope to better understand how colleges responded when pledges were placed in dangerous positions. This can be done in part through analysis of the Davidsonian article. One of the Davidsonians main goals is “teaching students to think clearly, to make relevant and valid judgments.” I will be doing exactly this as I inspect the document and dissect its language, exploring what it says versus what it means. 

To understand whether or not Davidson’s response is the status quo, one must explore examples of instances of hazing from other schools in the same time period. To do so I will be looking into larger schools in the same state as Davidson. This way, data can be gathered on how different Universities respond, exploring variations based upon the size of the school, without confounding variables such as the different cultures which stem from separate regions. I will do said research by traveling to the schools, and asking the librarians which specific archives I should look through to see how they responded to hazing in the 90s. 

The research starts with the Davidson freshman, Alfredo Urbino, who was a victim of peer-inflicted harm, and how the college responded in both constructive and harmful ways. The way in which the harm that occurred is discussed in the article makes the bias toward protecting the college’s image plain to see. The first half of the article goes into specific detail about the death of the speaker’s son, a sophomore at Alfred University who died as a result of hazing in 1978. He did not attend Davidson, so details of the events of hazing could not reflect negatively on the college. The second half focuses on Sig Ep’s violence during pledging, and the article states that Urbino was “injured during an attempted road trip.” That tiny snippet of discussion is the only text dedicated to the actual event of hazing that occurred. There is no discussion of the specifics of what happened, and no accountability is placed on the members of the fraternity who harmed Urbino. When the topic of conversation had to do with hazing at a different school, no details were spared. The article outlines how pledges were forced into the back of a truck with vast amounts of alcohol; they were all found “vomiting or unconscious,” and “were left to sleep it off.” When it came to the Davidson hazing incident, the actual events of how Urbino was injured are left in the dark. There is a mention of a mysterious “road trip,” but there is no description of what happened or who was involved. 

Instead of further explanation of what happened, the article begins discussing the fact that the college “received a good deal of negative coverage in the local media,” shifting the focal point from student harm to reputational damage. The deflecting language used also attempts to protect Davidson’s image. The article admits the “college received” negative coverage, making it sound as if blame is being placed on the college instead of the college accepting its blame. It would have been far more appropriate to concede that Davidson was facing backlash for allowing hazing to occur on its campus and then explain the events that occurred. 

While there is some clear bias in favor of protecting Davidson’s image, it would be neglectful to disregard the meaningful parts of the article. There is a sense of accountability in the simple act of writing about the event. If the college was truly trying to sweep this under the rug, they would not allow the student newspaper to report on it. The Sig Ep house was required by the school to bring in Eileen Stephens to talk about the harmful outcomes of hazing, decreasing the odds of events like this from happening again. Additionally, the Dean of Students Office distributed “Pledge/New Member Activity Guidelines,” created a  review committee, and required “educational lectures and workshops on hazing.” These efforts by the school provided education surrounding the topic of hazing, making it less likely to occur in the future.

While it seems the guilty parties in the hazing incident at Davidson College in 1993 were not held accountable, the college did put efforts forward to keep these events from happening again.