ROCHESTER N.Y. — Cornell University is moving to eradicate risky pledging practices at campus fraternities and sororities to avert hazing mishaps like the one in February in which a New York City sophomore died after an induction ritual involving coerced drinking.
Another Ivy League school, Princeton, is banning Greek societies from recruiting first-year students starting in the fall of 2012 to help curtail student drinking.
Cornell’s president, David Skorton, said Wednesday he had directed Greek chapters to develop a recruitment and initiation system that did not involve students having to perform “dangerous or demeaning” acts as a condition of membership.
While hazing has been formally banned at Cornell since 1980, Skorton said it still occurs under the guise of pledging, often perpetuated through traditions carried across generations. He urged national fraternities and sororities to end pledging across all campuses and said Cornell can help lead the way.
Nearly 2,000 college students in the United States die annually from alcohol-related injuries, and about 600,000 are injured, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
In the elite Ivy League, fraternities and sororities already have some strict controls. They are not officially recognized at Harvard and Princeton. Students cannot join until the spring semester of their first year at Penn or until they are sophomores at Dartmouth.
At a meeting of Greek student leaders Tuesday, Skorton gave few specifics of how pledging should be replaced but emphasized that “degrading, humiliating and dangerous” actions could not continue.
