Caitlin Flanagan has written a fantastic and disturbing piece for the Atlantic entitled Death at a Penn State Fraternity.
This line really jumped out at me:
Fraternities do have a zero-tolerance policy regarding hazing. And that’s probably one of the reasons Tim Piazza is dead.
The official policy of the fraternities is that hazing is forbidden. Because this is the official policy, it is the individuals in a particular frat house that are held responsible if hazing happens, not the national fraternity organization.
This policy has had the effect of insulating the organizations from being liable, but it hasn’t stopped hazing from being widespread: according to Flanagan, 80% of fraternity members report being hazed.
Because individual fraternity members are the ones that are on the hook if something goes wrong during hazing, reporting an injury carries risk, which means the member must make a decision involving a tradeoff. In the case documented above, that tradeoff led to a nineteen year old dying of his injuries.
This example really reinforces ideas around systems thinking: the introduction of the zero-tolerance policy did not have the intended effect. Because the culture of hazing remains, the policy ended up making things worse.
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