To Blake Adam Hammontree, he was just a Sigma Chi pledge going through pledgeship. However, Hammontree probably never thought that joining a fraternity would cause his death.

On September 30, 2004, Hammontree was announced dead due to alcohol poisoning. Furthermore, his death was the result of peer pressure his fraternity placed upon him during a fraternal ritual.

It was big bro night. A time that members take a little brother, a pledge, under their wings to be a mentor during college and pledgeship. This should be a time for brotherhood; however, for the OU fraternity, it was a time to influence young pledges to drink a liter of liquor.

To learn more about this story, visit DEATH AT OU.

Hazing happens around campuses across the nation. It happens in sororities, fraternities and athletic programs. To many, it is just stupid a sense of silly pranks with little harm. What happens when hazing goes to far?

Recently, at Chico State University, the Chi Tau fraternity took hazing to far. A future member who was being hazed did not just end up in the hospital but instead his own grave.

Matthew Carrington was going through Chi Tau hell week, this is referred to many fraternity as initation week. Carrington was forced down stairs to a basement and was made to do calisthenics in raw sewage for hours while interrogated and taunted. Carrington was forced to chug gallons of water of gallons of water while still being force to do calisthenics. Fans blasted ice cold air onto his wet body along with the other pledges. They urinated and vomited onto themselves.

Then something went wrong and Carrington started to seizure. Frighten, the fraternity members hesitated to call an ambulance. When an ambulance was called, it was too late. Carrington died from water intoxication, which caused the swelling of his brain and lungs.

Please read more about Carrignton death at the NPR.

Hazing is just not wrong but it can kill.  Every year, you hear of students who died on other campuses from hazing.  Recently, I attended a national Greek leadership development college and one of the hot topics was hazing. I heard of horror stories of other chapters hazing by forcing pledges to drink mass amounts of water with intensive physical work outs. This puts extreme amounts of stress on the pledges bodies and could kill them, which recently occurred at Chico State. Also, students have died from fraternity members forcing pledges to drink alcohol, which recently occurred at Oklahoma University.

At Oklahoma State University, we do our best to keep hazing at the minimum.  We strive to eliminate hazing as a whole and have made huge strides in the past ten years.  Today, we do random alcohol/hazing checks to make sure there is no drinking  and to ensure that there is no hazing. These checks are done weekly and on random. At Oklahoma State, we strive for exllence in our Greek community.

Check out Oklahoma State’s HAZING POLICY.

One of the biggest stereotypes in fraternity life is hazing. I’ve heard so many FALSE rumors on Oklahoma State’s campus about my fraternity and other fraternities hazing pledges. I will list so the rumors that I have heard and I know to be false. I was the external vice president of the interfraternity council; in other words, I governed over 19 of the OK State’s fraternities. My job was to make sure there was no hazing and no drinking in the fraternity houses.

1. I once heard that my own fraternity lined pledges up in a row. We then would hit golf balls at them with a driver and would hit them with the golf club. NOT TRUE. Hitting a golf ball at another person would cause serious damage to their body. I’m pretty sure the entire campus would notice that 30 plus men had severe bruises across their body. I would be willing to say that a direct blow from a golf in point blank range could almost kill someone.
2. I once heard that one fraternity would make there pledges swim across Theta pond when it snowed outside. Once when they got out of the water, they would hit them with paddles. NOT TRUE. I’m pretty sure that campus police patrol this area. Someone would notice that an entire fraternity was outside beating their pledges with paddles. Not forgetting, how sick kids would be from swimming across Theta pond.
3. I once heard that one fraternity would make their pledges have intercourse with a goat. This is just sick. I know over 300 guys in fraternities. Not one of these guys I know would ever do such a sick act.

These are rumors I have heard overtime at Oklahoma State University and I’m sure many more will come.