Thursday, September 22, 2022

National Hazing Prevention Week at Lehigh University

    This week is National Hazing Prevention Week and campuses across the nation are holding events to educate their students and raise awareness. National Hazing Prevention Week started in 2007 and was founded by HazingPrevention.org. Every year the website has a new theme and this year's theme is, “Stronger Together”. The website wanted to focus on the importance of mental health issues related to hazing. The Office of Sorority and Fraternity Affairs hosted a lecture given by Michelle Guobadia. Michelle Guobodia is the director of Sorority and Fraternity Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Guobadia titled her lecture, “Hazing makes you a better greek, and other stupid myths.” 

     Guobadia, a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. at the University of Delaware, explained how, during her time as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, she had not only experienced hazing during her pledging period, but she also became a perpetrator  (Chierchio). “No one joined my chapter for two years because people were literally afraid of my organization,” Guobadia said. “Hazing doesn’t eliminate the bad apples, it actually keeps the bad apples in,” Guobadia said. “When you pit one class against another, you aren’t unifying them, but you’re creating cliques and cracks in your organization.” Guobadia discussed ten myths about hazing as an attempt to educate students (Chierchio).

    Other campuses such as Cornell are also taking action to educate their students. Cornell also hosted speaker Michelle Guobodia. This year’s National Hazing Prevention Week at Cornell was in honor of Antonio Tsialas, who died during an unofficial rush event for Phi Kappa Psi in 2019. Tsialas was found at the bottom of Fall Creek Gorge with a fractured skull, broken ribs and an alarmingly high blood-alcohol level. (Chierchio) On Wednesday, The three councils, (Panhellenic, Inter Fraternity Council and the Cultural Greek Council) had students take an oath not to haze. They held a table at the flagpole on the front lawn where students painted their hands and left their mark on a poster. The three councils continue to educate students on and around campus this week in hopes of making a difference.