In 2003, I started doing research on hazing. Ten years later, I became an expert in my first hazing, court case. A plaintiff’s lawyer contacted me and wanted my assistance as a trial consultant. He needed insight into how to litigate a case against a particular fraternity. A few months later, another plaintiff’s lawyer contacted me, this time seeking my expertise as a testifying witness. Between those two cases, as well as my presentations and writings, I likely got the reputation as a “plaintiff’s” expert. Needless to say, fraternities and sororities were wary of me, particularly African American ones.
Then in 2015, I received a call from a lawyer representing a group of defendants—mainly sorority chapter members—in a case where two sorority pledges were killed in a hazing incident at the same chapter on the same evening. Months later, with some hesitance, the national sorority—through its outside, legal counsel—contacted me to inquire about my willingness to serve as their expert. In time, I discovered that their initial call was an effort to conflict me out of the case. Believing that I wouldn’t serve as an expert for a national fraternity or sorority, this organization hoped that I’d review some of their records but then decline to work with them. The process would, then, not permit me to serve as the plaintiff’s expert, either. Based on the facts of the case, I didn’t see any moral dilemma with working with the national sorority.
Some months into the litigation, I found myself at an event with an expert witness on the opposite side of the case. During a break, she cornered me and said something quite striking: “I thought you were an anti-hazing advocate! How could you serve as an expert witness for a defendant in a hazing case?” I’m not sure if she fully grasped my brief words to her in those moments. I responded: “I’m a researcher before I’m an advocate. In fact, I believe the best solutions we can find won’t come from hunches or feelings, but sound research.” I imagine that one could wonder what research has to do with offering expertise to people who, or organizations that, seem responsible for harm or death that befalls a young person. As I’ve told every litigant who, or that, has retained my services, plaintiffs and defendants seek to tell the story as they see it. My goal is to tell a broader story about hazing as it is.
According to systems theory, a system is an entity with many different parts that are often interrelated and interdependent. Developmental psychologist, Urie Bronfenbrenner, applied systems theory to human development. He saw human development as being shaped by the interaction between the individual and his or her environment. According to his ecological model, one must consider the individual, the microsystem (institutions and groups that immediately and directly impact development), the mesosystem (interconnections between the microsystems), the exosystem (links between a social setting where the individual doesn’t have an active role and the individual's immediate context), and the macrosystem (the culture in which individual lives). This model has been conceptualized in many ways. In the public health community, the focus is on the interrelationship between the individual, dynamics at the interpersonal, organizational, and community levels, as well as public policy at the most macro level.
In the context of hazing, if the goal is to eradicate it, we must consider the fullest range of factors that undergird and propel it at every level. What are the attitudes, beliefs, biases, cognitions, and knowledge-level—vis-à-vis hazing—among members, aspiring members, and parents of aspiring members? What are the interpersonal dynamics between members, between aspiring members, and between members and aspiring members? What are the broad organizational dynamics at play—e.g., leadership, operations, organizational behavior, marketing, strategy? What are the community dynamics—e.g., notions of masculinity or experience with being disciplined as a child? Lastly, to what extent does law and public policy shape hazing or fail to do so? These questions, understandably, in the context of litigation, beg the question: “Who’s to blame?” However, and more importantly, they also call for a broad body of disciplinary approaches and theories to unpack hazing’s root causes. They pinpoint sites of intervention. Therefore, only through such a nuanced and sophisticated analysis can meaningful solutions come to fruition.
Gregory S. Parks is currently working on a book about hazing in African American fraternities and sororities, tentatively titled Death March.