Poll Results: Hazing Within Greek Life

Over the last several months GreekRank has conducted polls of its visitors that focus on topics surrounding hazing within Greek Life. We all know that universities, national headquarters, and the media are increasing serious about eradicating hazing on college campuses. Those institutions have ensured that their stance on the issue is being heard loud and clear. We saw the opportunity to poll our visitors, who are primarily in fraternities and sororities, so they could share their experiences and insights on the current state of hazing within modern-day Greek Life.

It seems like every week a new Greek Life hazing or racism scandal is being reported by the national news. With individual members facing legal punishments and whole chapters facing ridicule and likely expulsion from campus, we wanted to see how the individual fraternity and sorority chapters were responding to the high publicized incidents.

Our first question:
Have the recent Hazing and Racism scandals had an effect on your chapter?
Over 3,700 visitors responded to this question.
23% reported that “Absolutely, we are much more aware of our actions” and 11% admitted that “Yes, we're a bit less tolerant to bad behavior”. 17% shared that the subjects were only discussed “a few times” while 25% polled claimed that their chapters “didn't even talk about it”.

Now that we had a clearer picture of how proactive the chapters were being about hazing, we wanted to try to understand just how common hazing was within these organizations.

Our second question:
Have you ever been hazed before?
We received close to 10,000 (9990) responses to this question.
53% responded that they’ve never been hazed before. 13% reported to have experienced “possibly some light hazing”, while 17% claimed they were hazed, but “they didn’t think much of it”. The remaining 17% disclosed that there were hazed and it was bad.

With 83% of the respondents either not experiencing hazing or “not thinking much of it” it led us to dig deeper into whether or not hazing has a place in Greek Life.

Our third question:
Is hazing a necessary part of Greek life?
Just over 4600 responded to this question.
32% reported that they felt hazing wasn’t a necessary part of Greek Life and that they were “totally against it”. 17% reported answered “No, not really” while 6% responded “Maybe, I’m not sure”. 20% shared that they did feel hazing was a necessary part of Greek Life, but “only a very small amount”. The remaining 25% steadfastly affirm that hazing was “definitely” a necessary part of Greek Life.

With nearly one-half of all students polled responded that hazing needed to continue (to some extent” within Greek Life, we wanted to inquire just what the average fraternity brother or sorority sister would do if they witnessed hazing in front of them.

Our final question:
Would you stop a serious hazing incident happening in front of you?
Nearly 7,000 (6,948) visitors responded to this question.
32% made it clear that they would absolutely stop an incident of serious hazing and that they have “zero tolerance for it”. Just under that amount, at 31% reported that they would only stop it if it was “extremely bad”. 6% admitted that they would stop it, but “only if others stopped it with me”. 7% were indecisive about how they’d handle the situation by responding “Maybe, I'm not sure”. Another 7% would stand by and not stop it because they felt “it wasn’t their place” to do so. Lastly, 17% actually selected “No way, I'd probably join in”.