Stop Campus Hazing Act

Hazing on college campuses continues to pose a persistent challenge, despite the implementation of stringent regulations. This episode delves into the enduring nature of these incidents and the obstacles administrators encounter as the Stop Campus Hazing Act merges with the Cleary Act. Furthermore, we explore the evolving landscape of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) executive orders and examine the complexities posed by foreign institutional programs under the new administration. With insights into Title IX, accreditation, and legal implications, this episode provides a comprehensive overview of the future of higher education. We encourage you to engage with us as we offer a roadmap for proactive involvement and awareness in this rapidly changing educational environment.

Chapters

• 0:03 Higher Education Conference and Safety Mandates
• 13:58 Understanding Hazing on College Campuses
• 20:28 DEI Executive Orders and Higher Education

Transcript

Eric: 0:03

This is Higher Education Renaissance with Peter Lake. I'm your host, Eric Seaborg, and thank you for tuning in. Before we get started on today's topic, I wanted to take a few minutes to have Peter talk a little about the upcoming Stetson Law Conference.

Peter: 0:28

Stetson Law Conference. We are coming together March 5th through the 10th at Clearwater Beach at the Wyndham Hotel, which is the premier property in the chain and just a delightful conference location For folks that are buried in snow. I can guarantee you that you will not be shoveling snow or ice at the Wyndham in March and the good news, jenge, is that most of the beach is back in that area. That clear water has made a remarkable comeback. Can't wait to get it off. Our registration numbers are looking to be somewhat record-breaking. I suspect we're going to have to close registration fairly soon, probably in February. We've actually had such an interest that we've had to contract with an overflow hotel. Already we have over 60 confirmed speakers, a record number of sponsors, both number and the generosity that we've seen. Our speaker lineup is just exactly what people need at a moment like this. We have Jim Moore coming from Department of Ed. I assume he'll have a job in March. If not, he's still coming.

Eric: 1:27

He'll have stories to tell, if not.

Peter: 1:29

Yeah, I mean, I think getting inside the department is going to be massively interesting because of how quickly things are moving at the federal level. We have a top person from ACE coming in to give us an overview on the state of the field. Deloitte will be coming to also do their magic in terms of predictions as to what's happening. Lots of discussion about First Amendment, particularly stuff related to October 7th, Title IX, Title VI, Title VII, employment, mental health, college safety, Clery Act, compliance. I think this could be the one conference that you just can't miss. I don't usually say it this directly, but I don't think the membership organizations alone can really create the dialogue that people need right now. In other words, they can do some of it, but what you really need to hear is what are the lawyers doing? What are the mental health professionals doing? What are the presidents doing? You know you need to hear from different interdisciplinary perspectives and, of course, we have the usual compliment of top academics coming as well. The one that's missing is Bill Kaplan, passed away last year. He's the namesake of our Kaplan Scholarship Award and we'll be doing a little bit to honor him. His memory really the in many ways the founder of the field.

Peter: 2:49

You're going to find that our speakers typically are not just speakers, they also attend Mingles. So one leading writer for a national publication that people would recognize I don't want to quote her without her permission, but she said it's like being in a living magazine and it's exactly what it is said. It's like being in a living magazine and it's exactly what it is. And the thing is, our hallmark brand is interdisciplinary, academic slash, practical. We're not just ivory tower, a lot of practical training.

Peter: 3:17

Some of the sessions actually are styled as training sessions, but the thing that we do that really no one else does is we're interdisciplinary. But the thing that we do that really no one else does is we're interdisciplinary. I have found over the years that a lot of people use the conference as a platforming experience to think about what's next to meet interdisciplinary, speaking, human, not talking over people's heads or talking down to them and there's a certain kind of energy that you don't necessarily find at other types of conferences. This is a carefully constructed program and our sponsors are also hand-selected. We don't simply take a sponsorship because someone offers to do it, and so we curate a list of sponsors that we feel are the ones that people are looking to for leadership in the field in various ways.

Eric: 4:15

This is an excellent conference for anyone. I've attended it several times and registration most likely is filling up, as Peter said, so you'll want to go online to wwwstetsonedu. Backslash law, backslash conferences, backslash higher ed, backslash home. From the MC1R group. This is Higher Education Renaissance with Peter Lake.

Peter: 5:00

Look what the cat dragged in today.

Eric: 5:02

Hey, look at that, how are we, I'm here. Hey, look at that, how are we, I'm here. Yeah, good, good, gee. I haven't talked to you since before the holidays. Everything go okay.

Peter: 5:14

Yeah, for the most part. Yes, Ever been in the ocean and the waves just keep hitting you.

Eric: 5:19

And you can't do anything about it. Nope, just kind of go over top of it right.

Peter: 5:24

You just do what you can.

Eric: 5:26

Stop Campus Hazing Act. So let's start from. You know what this bill, this act, is all about, my friend.

Peter: 5:38

Well, I mean, I wasn't one of its sponsors and didn't have a direct hand in pushing it through Congress, but I know the people that are kind of behind this and the long story that's there. And one of the things that's been somewhat fixatious for people that work on hazing law is that until now we've never had a national anti-hazing bill. Anti-hazing has been state to state and lots of variations in the states. At one point there were still states holding out to even have the kind of bills that are now essentially required to have, and I think for a long time advocates for anti-hazing had been pushing for a national standard. I was pleased to see that there was the energy behind it. I think there have been a lot of continuing high-profile incidents. That it's you know. Every couple of months you read something somewhere and this is one way for Congress and the national government to speak on the continuing problems associated with hazing.

Eric: 6:43

It amends the Gene Cleary Act. Give me a narrative about that, what that means.

Peter: 6:49

Well, it's very historically significant because it also times out with my entry to the field, because I came in in 1990. Honestly, there wasn't much focus on college safety, certainly at the national level, but even at the state level. I mean, at about that time you had colleges arguing that students in residence halls rode less safety responsibility by their institution and low-income housing tenants I mean it was the police forces protected buildings and grounds, not people. I mean it's a little hard to imagine because it just seems so foreign to the way people think today, but it wasn't that long ago that there wasn't a safety consciousness. Now Gene Cleary suffered the ultimate crime, raped and murdered, and the Cleary family got the attention of Congress and they basically could have asked a genie for anything and their instinct was to ask for a campus crime reporting bill. But what's begun to happen with the Cleary Act is it's become kind of a catch-all for national college safety mandates.

Peter: 8:01

Slowly but surely, we've added things to Clery, one at a time, that are going beyond a mere reporting obligation into actually creating safety standards for colleges. Clery non-compliance can cost a campus dearly. I mean we saw that with Liberty and some others getting major fines. So you know from a boots on the ground level it's as much of an attention getter as just about any standard in federal law. But yeah, but backtracking, you know you watch the Clery Act and it slowly but surely has added safety features. For example, after Virginia Tech we added emergency and timely warnings.

Peter: 8:46

Um, and I will tell you, there was debate, because it happened at my conference. Literally, the standard was hammered out at one of my conferences. There was debate about having a shot clock, a specific time limit, and the standards didn't go that direction. I think cooler heads prevailed. But you now have a mandate for emergency and timely warnings safety. Then comes VAWA SAVE, and you know we talk about Title IX a lot, but people sometimes forget that the Clery Act supports VAWA SAVE amendments that have specific requirements for campuses related to sexual assault and sexual violence, and that it's mirrored and even complimented by Title IX. But it stands on its own. And then now, as of 2024, we've added another piece to the puzzle anti-hazing law, and of course it requires campuses to have programs and policies to train and culturalize around it and report on it. So this is a very clear safety mandate that goes beyond simple reporting requirements, and SubRosa, the Clery reporting mechanism, asks campuses to report on campus care, safety and threat assessment teams, essentially, and it doesn't mandate them.

Eric: 10:11

That's what I was going to ask you.

Peter: 10:12

Yeah, that's probably next, jenji. We felt that. I hate to say it, but sooner or later there'll probably be a violent incident on a college campus and I think it will stir up. The debate that occurs around that time is should there be a national mandate for care and threat assessment teams? That time is should there be a national mandate for care and threat assessment teams? And I wouldn't be surprised to see a Congress line up to do that at some point. So I think some point in our lifetimes we'll likely see a national mandate on that. The way the department operates this, their attitude, is well. We ask you to report on it Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, right.

Peter: 10:53

You don't have one, you don't have anything to report on. So we're kind of giving you a little push in the back, gently, to say get your threat assessment teams operating, which people do, so they do report on the activities they have.

Eric: 11:06

A couple of things about the definitions that I wanted you to kind of elaborate a little bit more on is I? You know, I read through the bill, which isn't that long, you know, and it's it's pretty, it's pretty basic. Now, this is the amended, you know, but one of the things I and maybe I'm misreading this, but as far as policy regarding prevention and awareness, that kind of section, there you know a lot, a lot written, but I don't see the words mandated attendance, you know, and I guess that's very difficult to do anyway, but mandatory attendance, and by whom? Unless I'm missing it, I think, like you're saying, it sounds like what they're saying is get ready, you know're pushing you, you got to get these policies and these, these prevention classes and things and all the stuff getting, you know, rolling forward, but they don't go as far as saying you must have these people trained by that type of thing. Um, am I missing that or is that a?

Eric: 12:07

little bit too much of an extreme I honestly think it's.

Peter: 12:10

Am I missing that, or is that a little bit too much of an extreme? I honestly think it's sort of a non-accidental oversight, because here's the reality is that you don't get perfect attendance on this thing? No, no, no. And what's even more disturbing, because I do a lot of work in this field this area is that you will routinely see people who did receive extensive training and they learned nothing from it.

Peter: 12:38

I mean they'll admit in a deposition. Yes, I went to the training and they signed a form that they went to it. And, by the way, campuses and Greek organizations offer often overlapping training, so it's not like this training doesn't exist.

Eric: 12:52

Right, it's there.

Peter: 12:53

Yeah, yeah. You'll ask the person well, you know, you did this. Now here's the definition of hazing. That's in your policy. It was in the training. Is that hazing? No, I don't think so. Never did you know. Like you realize, they're just not no-transcript.

Eric: 13:32

As funny as it is when you look at a character like Flounder, they weren't going to take Flounder, but he was a legacy right, so they took Flounder. But yet what did he experience during that whole time Abuse? They took his car and they wrecked it. So that's a whole different topic. I understand that, but breaking this cycle, that's what this is trying to do. This is just trying to break that cycle. I would think.

Peter: 13:58

I think we've evolved to a place where your typical campus has strong rules, the state has laws, the administrators are looking to enforce those rules, they're training widely on them, and yet the phenomenon still continues. And I think one thing that's helpful for the listeners to realize too is that hazing is truly an anomalous behavior. Most college students do not get involved in any way, shape or form with hazing. It's still a rare event statistically among a large population of students. But it does seem like the students that do engage in hazing are almost impervious to the pesticides that are sprayed on them. They just completely wipe it off and keep going forward.

Peter: 14:46

And it's been my consistent experience that the students will often deliberately, in a very calculated ways, hide the behavior. In other cases just won't accept that what they're doing is problematic, wrong or against the law. I mean, it's really kind of remarkable when you sit boots on the ground with some of this stuff and realize you know what is out there. I've come to the opinion, Jen, so I think that there may be a developmental issue here and I'm starting to think that's the future of this. I'm hoping that the research starts moving more in that direction. But I noticed something Bullying happens at any age. You know grade school all the way to the 80s and 90s, but hazing pops up. It's almost age-specific. You rarely see hazing really early on and by 30, you stop seeing organized hazing.

Eric: 15:38

The way they define a student organization. It says, quote, whether or not the organization is established or recognized by the institution. Am I reading that right? That what they're saying is it still could be considered a liability to the institution, even though they did not recognize it or, in this case, know about it. And let's say, it's off campus?

Peter: 16:01

Yeah, this comes up all the time. Of course, liability is one thing being sued for money damages but being responsible for compliance with this act is a slightly different requirement. But one of the constant debates is is this activity part of fraternity, sorority or registered student organization behavior or not? And I'll be very clear about this is that people who engage in hazing very often deliberately blur that line, try to make it more difficult for administrators to intervene. So you know what do you do if 20 members of a group go to a private home that's not the house of the registered student organization and have a private function but then engage in behavior that looks like hazing.

Peter: 16:54

The issue of reaching into activities by students that are at the penumbra of formal or otherwise recognized events is a major issue around hazing.

Peter: 17:07

It's like is this even a hazing incident or is it one that's connected somehow to a recognized or established group in some way? And among the other things that people deal with on college campuses, if you de-recognize a group, they may just reform and continue their behavior outside the purview of recognized organization structure, and often that's more dangerous or at least as dangerous as stuff that occurred before, and you don't want to be oblivious to that either. And I should point out that hazing can occur in any group, whether it's established or recognized and still criminal and problematic. I had a little issue in one of my law school classes of some bullying behavior that was going on and some of it actually arguably could have started to trail into being identified as hazing. So I gave my class the new Florida hazing statute just to consider it and behavior stopped. I think some of the people read the statute but I don't think it applies to us. But I'm not going to take the chance.

Eric: 18:12

Seems like a lot of that probably would crop up in this day and age the way you described it.

Peter: 18:17

It does. Yeah, frustration with the pace of other learners is a consistent issue in classes because if you have a large group of people, people some are moving a little more quickly, some know how to use class time more effectively than others and some classes have patience and support for that. Some do not. Um, I do think because the k-12 system has been designed to be more collaborative and supportive. It's that helpslevel teachers. But you still run into some folks that just they want to be on top gunfighter deck and they don't want to be out with Orville and Wright and the gang.

Eric: 19:00

Peter, let me get your thoughts on the transparency reporting process.

Peter: 19:06

They have to have things in place. But they'll have to report on those things and the reporting cycle will follow the Clery reporting cycle, so it'll be part of that October cycle. But to be able to have something to report on, you have to get moving on it, to get it into place, and fully expect that institutions will be reporting on a lot of this in october 2025 and it and it says here also um twice a year they'll have to update it regardless.

Eric: 19:36

Okay, is that the process now two times?

Peter: 19:39

a year for query no, it's usually an annual report that's what I thought yeah, so, and I think the thinking there is that they want parents to have information on a semester basis. The goals there is if you notice the way it was articulated is that parents could make a decision about where they send their kids to school and then whether they should join an organization or not. Kids to school and then whether they should join an organization or not. So you know if you're on an October 1 reporting cycle, for example. You're getting data now, but you've already made a choice to pledge.

Peter: 20:16

Yeah yeah, so I think that's the thinking is to give people a chance to preview what they're purchasing ahead of time in terms of student organization behavior.

Eric: 20:28

And foreign institutions that are exempt, meaning institutions that are tied to a sister school here. So for example, a school in Italy that maybe Stetson is a sister school to that school in Italy would be exempt.

Peter: 20:44

Well, I think you're back to having a debate about exactly what foreign institution means and who's programming. This has been. Another problematic issue for both Title IX and even hazing laws is if you have some connection to a foreign program, whose program is it? Is this the other institutions or ours? And do the articulation agreements control whether something is a foreign program or not, or is it more difficult than that? So I think that I think it's designed to limit the responsibility of institutions.

Peter: 21:22

So for example, you know you send students to a school in in italy, um, you don't have to police their hazing rules. But do you depend? I mean, I think it depends on the nature of the program and the articulation and how it's arranged and supervised. So I I don't know that that's as easy as it seems on its face. Yeah.

Eric: 21:42

Yeah, it seems like all these. I mean it's on its own. It's a wonderful thing, obviously, to have this going forward and you can pick it apart all day long if you want. People love to do that and I only did it just glancing at it, but it's a wonderful thing to have it and I guess it's really case law that will dictate how certain gray areas end up being interpreted. I would imagine going forward.

Peter: 22:09

It'll fall to the federal agency that is supervising, and that backtracked to another conversation we had about….

Eric: 22:16

Yes, yes, I was going to ask you about that.

Peter: 22:18

Yeah, will we have a DOE or not? And if not, where will clarity enforcement land? And it could be. You're going to have to ask Pam Bondi what it means. You know it could end up in justice. So it's a little early to see where that's all going to go, but it's one of the things I think that everyone will be talking about in higher ed is where will core supervision of certain acts that have traditionally been really mostly DOE-driven when they move to other agencies? And if they do, what will that look like if it is moved to different agencies? So wait and see.

Eric: 22:55

To me. I would think, peter, that most institutions are going to be better prepared to be able to move forward and handle this thing in a more productive way and not be scrambling. It shouldn't require that, should it?

Peter: 23:09

I don't see people jumping off the ship into the icy waters because the ship's on fire. It's very methodical, Like some of the first webinars are up already. People are methodically moving, but I'm not getting a. Oh my gosh. April 5th 2011 was the big day, because that's when everybody's like what just happened. They were just completely overwhelmed by that. I think probably the one thing that I suspect will come out of this is a little more effort of real-time reporting to students and families about current organizational misbehavior, so that if people want to know more about a particular organization and whether it's had a hazing incident or not, they'll be able to get that information closer in real time.

Eric: 23:53

In the next couple of months. What are you looking at? Are you looking at anything, waiting on anything? In particular? I know we're just into the new administration. Is there anything in the spring?

Peter: 24:02

Well, the thing that has my attention today is where we're going with DEI executive orders and enforcement efforts. We've already got one that came out that deals with federal employees, but I am convinced that there will be more and that they will have a more direct impact on colleges and universities, and particularly privates maybe, and for a bit of a surprise as to what the executive orders might push for. So I think we're all watching that and it's very connected to the other very related issues of accreditation. So I'll take you into law school, for example. I mean, we have a professional competency standard for accreditation and one of the interpretations requires us to do work on topics which, frankly, I think could easily be categorized as DEF, dei efforts. So what's a law school supposed to do? Are we going to desist in overt work that's connected to an accreditation standard, that we could lose our federal funding? And we're not alone.

Peter: 25:03

Law is not the only profession that has that, but a lot of private schools too have taken the position that, well, there are state mandates anti-DEI, but they don't apply to the privates. But I suspect that the Trump administration is going to link Title IV funding and grant other type work to anti-DEI efforts and that could be challenging. So I'm watching that one like a hawk, that accreditation DEI line. It's connected to Title IX and not only who will enforce it but how it will be enforced and we're kind of watching some of the maneuvering right now to see where that may go If there's a potential dismantling of the Department of Ed. We don't have a secretary yet so we're waiting, but I would expect as soon as the secretary is confirmed we'll see movement somewhat in that direction, if not dramatically. So these are things that are definitely on my radar screen. And of course you know Loper Bright still out there, because we now have a national vacatur on Title IX regulations by Biden that came out of that Kentucky case.

Eric: 26:07

Yep.

Peter: 26:08

Where it relied on Loper Bright. So we've now seen exactly how impactful that case can be in terms of regulatory law. We'll see where that goes, but we're watching that one.

Eric: 26:19

Well, on that note, you look the same, which means you look good as always. I'm just thinking about you by semesters.

Peter: 26:27

And I appreciate your support. Well, I'll say goodbye and we'll talk soon. Gents, you be good, you too Take care now Peter. Bye-bye, bye.

Eric: 26:42

Higher Education Renaissance is a product of the MC1R Group with unscripted content by Professor Peter Lake and myself, Eric Seaborg, Edited and distributed by Gingy Pop Production through Buzzsprout. Be sure to check out our website, including past episodes at higheredrenaissancebuzzsproutcom. We welcome your comments at ericseaborg at gmailcom and thanks for listening.