A disturbing video showing an alleged hazing incident involving the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Miami is shining a light on Florida's anti-hazing laws.
In fact, a UM freshman's hazing death 20 years ago greatly impacted what the law is today.
What is hazing?
Hazing involves strenuous and often humiliating tasks and rituals that are imposed on college students looking to be a part of a fraternity or sorority.
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Chad Meredith, who was recruited from Indiana to play baseball in Miami, was interested in possibly joining the fraternity Kappa Sigma.
He was convinced to swim across Lake Osceola in the middle of the night — and ended up drowning.
"Following the jury verdict in that case — which was the largest jury verdict in a fraternity hazing case ever in the United States and it remains so to this day — I told the parents that I would do more for them than just collect money, I would try to change the law," said attorney David Bianchi, who represented Meredith's family.
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The Chad Meredith Act
The tragedy led to changes to Florida's existing law to a new anti-hazing bill, named the Chad Meredith Act, signed into law on the UM campus by then-governor Jeb Bush in 2005.
"It was a very significant change to the law because there was already a hazing law on the books at the time, but this made improvements to it," Bianchi said.
The first change made to the law was that the victim's consent is not a defense.
"In a lot of hazing cases, when the people do the hazing, their first defense is, 'Well, don't blame me — the victim willingly went along with what we were doing. We didn't put a gun to his head and make him do anything. He willingly participated,'" Bianchi said.
There are also provisions in the Chad Meredith Act that say the events do not have to happen at an official fraternity-sponsored event to constitute hazing.
"The fraternities would have a defense that said, 'Hey, we didn't sponsor this late-night swim at four o'clock in the morning. Therefore, it's not a fraternity event. Therefore, it should not be hazing,'" Bianchi said. "We took care of that by making a change to the law so that they can no longer raise that defense."
Sigma Alpha Epsilon's alleged hazing
The widely circulated video shows a supposed Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge sitting on a trash can, shirtless, with other young men standing around him pouring milk down his back and spitting on him.
Bianchi agrees what's happening in the video is hazing.
"But, in my opinion, it's not a violation of Florida's criminal hazing statute because in order to be a violation of the criminal law in Florida, what they do to someone has to result in either serious personal injury or death — that clearly did not happen here," he said. "So therefore, no one's gonna even think about criminally prosecuting anybody for what you see in these videos."
However, since the University of Miami and the fraternity itself do have anti-hazing policies, Bianchi believes they will undoubtedly take disciplinary action.
UM said in a statement Thursday that a "full investigation is underway." Bianchi said there's a slippery slope when it comes to hazing incidents.
"You need to send a message to the fraternities that hazing, even in mild forms, will not be tolerated because if this had happened at night, rather than during the daytime, I'll bet you the milk would have been alcohol and the alcohol would have produced bad results, and then it would be a violation of Florida's criminal statute," he said. "... You can quickly have these things devolve into something much worse and somebody will be seriously injured or die."
According to Bianchi, since the year 2000, 65 fraternity pledges have died during hazing-related incidents in the United States.
"And all of those incidents started as innocuous events that got worse as the night went on, and 65 deaths since the year 2000 is one about every four months," Bianchi said. "So the time to stop it is before it gets to that level."
