More Hazing Accusations Against Sigma Gamma Rho

This time, in California.  Here’s what the NY Times reports:

In the San Jose State case . . . a former student at the university, charged in a civil lawsuit, filed Aug. 31, that over a three-week period in 2008 she was subjected to progressively more violent hazing from Sigma Gamma Rho members.  [The plaintiff] claims in her suit that they beat her and other pledges with wooden paddles, slapped them with wooden spoons, shoved them against the wall, and threatened that “snitches get stitches.”

“One of the girls who was a big sister told me it was supposed to be so you can feel what your ancestors went through in slavery, so you will respect what you came from,” Ms. Howard said.

In 2008, San Jose State suspended the sorority chapter until 2016. Four of the sorority members have pleaded no contest to misdemeanor hazing charges, and been sentenced to 90 days in county jail, two years of probation and barred from any further involvement in the sorority.

Ms. Howard’s civil suit charges that the university and the sorority were negligent in investigating and responding to her accusations of hazing.

See the NYT full coverage here.  The Root covers the story here.

Wake up, national office.

-Bridget Crawford