The Stop Campus Hazing Act Changed Everything — What the New Federal Reporting Law Means for Your Family
If you are reading this page, someone you love was hurt by hazing — or you are afraid they will be. Maybe your son came home from a fraternity event and could not remember how he got the bruise across his ribs. Maybe your daughter told you, voice flat and strange, what her “sisters” made her do to earn her letters. Maybe you are sitting in a hospital hallway right now, or worse, planning a funeral, and you just learned that a federal law you never heard of might have prevented this.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, is currently lead counsel in an active $10M+ hazing lawsuit against the University of Houston and Pi Kappa Phi, filed in Harris County. We are inside this fight right now — not studying it from the outside. Everything on this page comes from that lived experience, the federal law that just reshaped it, and the specific knowledge we carry from years of holding universities and national fraternities accountable for the culture they build, the warnings they ignore, and the young people they break.
Here is the first thing you need to know: the Stop Campus Hazing Act, signed into law in December 2024, created something that did not exist before — a federal mandate that every college and university in the country publish a public log of substantiated hazing violations, naming the organizations involved. The inaugural Campus Hazing Transparency Report is due no later than December 23, 2025. Schools must begin tracking violations from July 1, 2025 forward, and the report must be updated at least twice a year, in a highly visible location on the institution’s website.
This is the first entirely new category of public reporting added to the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act in 17 years. And for families whose children have been hazed — or killed — it is a roadmap. It names who did it, what the school found, and when. That log is now a federal record the school cannot easily hide, edit, or explain away.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting our firm is free and confidential. We don’t get paid unless we win your case.
What the Stop Campus Hazing Act Actually Requires of Every School
The Stop Campus Hazing Act amended the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act — the federal law that already forced colleges to report campus crime statistics — to add a completely new reporting category: the Campus Hazing Transparency Report, or CHTR.
The Stop Campus Hazing Act (SCHA) and the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (20 U.S.C. § 1092(f)) serve as the primary federal regulatory regime governing campus hazing disclosure, with FERPA regulations balanced against the disclosure requirements when identifying involved organizations and substantiated findings.
Here is what the law requires, in plain English:
Every college and university that participates in federal financial aid programs must publish a Campus Hazing Transparency Report on its website. The inaugural report is due no later than December 23, 2025 — one year after the SCHA was signed into law. The report must include every hazing violation with a final finding on or after July 1, 2025, which is the date institutions were required to begin tracking this information.
The CHTR is not a crime statistic. It functions as a public log — a record of each substantiated hazing violation, with mandatory details for each entry: the organization involved, a description of the violation, the findings, and the dates of both the incident and its resolution. The report must also contain the institution’s full hazing policy, relevant state anti-hazing laws, and information on how hazing incidents are reported and adjudicated on that campus.
Schools must update the CHTR at least twice a year. It must be posted in a highly visible location on the institution’s website — not buried in a dean’s-office filing cabinet, not password-protected behind a student portal, not linked from a page nobody visits. It is designed to be one of the most prominent campus-safety disclosures a student or parent will see.
The SCHA takes a deliberate dual-track approach to the definition of hazing. The definition of “hazing” applied in the CHTR may legitimately differ from the one the same institution uses for its Clery crime statistics. This flexibility exists because institutions have longstanding conduct policies and state-law obligations that may use different definitions — but the trade-off is that the CHTR’s definition must still be meaningful, consistent, and transparent.
Here is the part that matters most for families: a school is not required to publish a CHTR until it has a substantiated hazing violation. But the law strongly recommends — and we argue requires, as a matter of smart compliance — posting a placeholder that says “No violations have been found since July 1, 2025” alongside the full policy and reporting instructions. A school that posts nothing at all is creating the appearance of concealment. A school that posts a “zero report” when it actually has violations is creating something far worse: a federal record of fraudulent concealment that can be used against it in court.
A “Dear Colleague Letter” from the U.S. Department of Education providing implementation guidance on the SCHA is expected by the end of 2025. But the law is already in force, and the compliance deadline is real. Schools that wait for the guidance letter before preparing are already behind.
How the CHTR Differs From the Clery Act — and Why That Difference Is Your Case
The Clery Act has been around since 1990. It forces schools to report crime statistics — arrests, disciplinary referrals, hate crimes — in an Annual Security Report. Those are numbers on a page, aggregated by category, stripped of names and context.
The CHTR is fundamentally different. It is not a number on a page. It is a public log that names the specific student organization involved in each substantiated hazing violation, describes what happened, and records when the incident occurred and when the school resolved it. It is closer to a disciplinary court record than a crime log.
That distinction is the spine of a hazing lawsuit. Under the old Clery regime, a family could learn that a school reported “12 liquor law violations” in a given year, but they could not learn which fraternity produced those violations, what the school did about it, or whether the same chapter had been cited before. The CHTR changes that. Now, for the first time at the federal level, the school must name the organization, describe the conduct, and date the finding.
This creates three things a hazing plaintiff did not have before:
First, a public record of prior bad acts by the specific organization. If a fraternity chapter appears in the CHTR multiple times across reporting cycles, that pattern is now a federal document — not a hearsay rumor, not a sealed disciplinary file, but a public record the school itself certified.
Second, a documented timeline of what the university knew and when. The gap between the incident date and the resolution date in the CHTR shows how long the school sat on the problem. A six-month gap between a hazing report and a final finding is six months during which the next victim was recruited, pledged, and hazed.
Third, a standard against which a “zero report” can be tested. If a school posts “no violations” and a family can show through internal disciplinary records, social media evidence, or witness testimony that hazing was occurring during the same period, the “zero report” becomes evidence of fraudulent concealment — an intentional misrepresentation designed to induce students to enroll and parents to pay tuition under the belief that the campus was safe.
The discovery process in a hazing lawsuit should focus relentlessly on the delta between what the school’s internal incident reports show and what its public CHTR discloses. That gap is where liability lives.
Who Can Be Held Liable When Hazing Causes Injury or Death
A hazing case is rarely one defendant. The harm is usually produced by a stack of institutions, each of which had a duty and each of which points at the others. Here is the map:
The University or Educational Institution. The school owes its students a duty of reasonable care — including supervision of recognized student organizations, enforcement of its own anti-hazing policies, and response to reports of hazing. When a university grants official recognition to a fraternity, permits it to recruit, assigns it housing, and turns a blind eye to traditions that every Greek-life coordinator in the country knows involve hazing, the university is not a bystander. It is a participant in the system that produced the harm. The CHTR now creates a federal record of whether the school was doing its job.
The National Fraternity or Sorority Organization. The national organization charters the local chapter, collects dues, sets risk-management policies, provides insurance, sends leadership consultants to inspect chapters, and — critically — decides whether to revoke a charter. It cannot claim ignorance of hazing traditions that its own publications, training materials, and prior disciplinary actions across other chapters have documented for decades. The national org’s liability runs through vicarious responsibility for the local chapter’s actions and through its own negligent supervision of known hazardous traditions.
The Local Chapter House Corporation. Many fraternity chapters operate through a separate house corporation — an LLC or nonprofit that owns or leases the physical property where hazing occurs. This entity owes premises-liability duties to the people inside its building. If the chapter house has a basement where pledges are forced to drink, a dark room where they are blindfolded and struck, or a backyard where they are made to exercise until they collapse, the house corporation is the premises defendant.
Individual Perpetrators. The members who planned and carried out the hazing — the pledge educator, the chapter president, the brothers who bought the alcohol or swung the paddle — are individually liable for intentional torts including assault, battery, and false imprisonment. Many states have elevated hazing from a misdemeanor to a felony when it results in serious bodily injury or death, which both raises the criminal stakes and lowers the bar for establishing civil liability.
The corporate-structure shell game in these cases mirrors what we see in franchise litigation. The national fraternity — like a hotel brand — will argue it merely licensed its name and collected dues, that the local chapter is an independent entity it does not control. But the control facts tell a different story: the national org dictates the recruitment calendar, approves the pledge program, requires risk-management compliance, and can revoke the charter at will. That level of operational control is the bridge from “they just licensed the name” to “they are responsible for what the chapter did.”
The Evidence Clock: What Records Exist and How Fast They Disappear
If there is one section of this page you read carefully, make it this one. Hazing cases are won or lost on evidence that disappears on a clock — and the clock is faster than most families realize.
Internal Disciplinary Records. The university’s Dean of Students office, Greek Life office, and conduct board maintain files on every hazing complaint, investigation, and disciplinary proceeding. These files prove the school had notice of prior bad acts by the specific organization — the single most powerful fact in a negligent-supervision case. These records are at high risk of deletion during academic breaks, staff transitions, or “file purging” cycles. A preservation letter has to go out before the next semester ends, not after.
Social Media and Group Chats. The planning phase of hazing lives in group texts, Snapchat threads, Instagram direct messages, and chapter email lists. These messages contain contemporaneous evidence of what the perpetrators intended, what they told pledges to expect, and how they coordinated the events. Digital evidence is the most fragile category — it can be deleted with one tap, encrypted, or lost when a phone is replaced. The preservation demand to the chapter members, the national organization, and the university must specifically name all electronic communications platforms.
CHTR Logs. The newly mandated federal logs are the one record that should persist — they must be updated at least twice a year and remain publicly visible. But the internal records behind the CHTR (the investigation files, witness statements, and hearing records that produced each entry) are governed by the school’s own retention policies and may be purged. The CHTR tells you a violation was found; the internal file tells you what the school actually knew and when. Demand both.
Security Footage and Card Swipes. Campus security cameras, building access logs, and student ID card-swipe records establish who was present, when they arrived, and when — or whether — they left. This evidence is critical: it places the victim and the perpetrators at the scene and creates a timeline. Security footage is often overwritten on a rolling cycle, sometimes as short as 30 days. Card-swipe data may persist longer but is controlled by the university’s IT department and subject to its retention schedule.
Medical Records. Emergency room records, toxicology screens, blood-alcohol levels, trauma-surgery reports, and neuropsychological evaluations are the medical proof of harm. These are created at the moment of treatment and are generally retained by hospitals for years — but they must be requested formally and completely, including the EMS run sheet, the emergency-department triage note, and all subsequent treatment records.
The National Organization’s Risk-Management File. The national fraternity keeps its own records: incident reports from chapters nationwide, risk-management audits, insurance claims, consultant visit notes, and disciplinary actions against other chapters for similar conduct. This file is the proof that the national org knew hazing was a systemic problem, not a local aberration. It lives at the national headquarters and must be subpoenaed — it will not be produced voluntarily.
The single most important step in a hazing case is the preservation letter. It goes out the day you call us — not the month after, not the semester after, not after the school has had time to “clean up” its files. That letter, sent to the university, the national fraternity, the local chapter, and the house corporation, demands that all relevant evidence be frozen. If any of those entities then destroy evidence after receiving that letter, the law answers: a judge can instruct the jury to assume the lost evidence was as damaging as the plaintiff says it was.
The Medicine of Hazing: What Happens to the Body
Hazing is not a prank that went too far. It is a documented mechanism of injury — sometimes fatal, sometimes permanently disabling, always foreseeable to anyone who understands what these organizations actually do to their pledges.
Acute Alcohol Poisoning. The most common hazing mechanism is forced or coerced consumption of large quantities of alcohol in a short period. The blood-alcohol level climbs past 0.30, 0.40 — levels at which the brain stem’s respiratory drive suppresses and the person simply stops breathing. A young man who “passes out” on a fraternity basement floor may not be sleeping. He may be dying. The medical record that proves this is the blood-alcohol level drawn at the ER, the time stamp showing when he was found, and the gap between when he consumed the alcohol and when someone called 911 — if anyone called 911 at all.
Traumatic Brain Injury. Paddling, blindfolded falls, being struck with objects, or being forced into physical combat with other pledges all produce head trauma. A “mild” traumatic brain injury — the kind the ER sends a patient home for — can come with a perfectly normal CT scan, because the damage is microscopic tearing of the brain’s white-matter tracts, not a visible bleed. More than a third of people who score a 13 on the 15-point Glasgow Coma Scale — the high end of “mild” — have life-threatening intracranial lesions. Roughly one in seven people with a “mild” TBI still has symptoms three months later: headaches, lost words, personality changes, a short fuse that was never there before. If your child came home from a fraternity event “different” — angrier, quieter, more forgetful, unable to focus — that is not a character flaw. It may be a brain injury.
Rhabdomyolysis and Kidney Failure. Forced calisthenics — push-ups until the arms give out, wall sits until the legs shake, “pledge runs” in the heat — can break down muscle tissue fast enough to flood the bloodstream with a protein called myoglobin. The kidneys cannot filter it. They clog and fail. The diagnostic marker is creatine kinase — a blood enzyme that keeps climbing for 24 to 72 hours after the exertion stops. A single early “normal-ish” CK does not rule it out. The serial trend tells the truth.
Psychological Trauma. The betrayal aspect of hazing — being harmed by the very people who promised to welcome you, in service of an organization you sought out and trusted — produces psychological injury at rates that exceed almost any other traumatic event. Rape carries the highest conditional probability of producing PTSD of any measured trauma. The mechanisms overlap: social isolation, degradation, loss of bodily autonomy, and the freezing response that leaves survivors unable to fight back or call for help. A survivor who “didn’t scream” or “didn’t fight” is not a survivor who consented. The body locks. The voice goes. That is a reflex, not a choice.
Hypothermia and Environmental Exposure. Pledges forced into cold water, ice baths, or outdoor exposure without adequate clothing can develop hypothermia severe enough to cause cardiac arrhythmia. The core temperature drops, the heart’s electrical system destabilizes, and the person can die in water that looked shallow and harmless.
Sexual Assault. Hazing rituals frequently cross into sexual contact — forced stripping, simulated or actual sexual acts, penetration with objects. These are not “traditions.” They are crimes, and they produce injuries — physical and psychological — that are compensable under both civil tort law and, in some cases, federal anti-trafficking statutes.
What a Hazing Case Is Worth
Hazing cases span an enormous range of value, driven by the severity of harm, the defendant’s resources, and the gap between what the institution knew and what it did about it.
At the low end — a survivor with treatable injuries, no permanent disability, and a school that took prompt corrective action after a single incident — a case may resolve in the $500,000 range. At the high end — a wrongful death or permanent neurological injury involving a university that ignored years of warnings and a national fraternity whose risk-management files show the same conduct at chapters nationwide — cases can reach $15,000,000 or more. Wrongful death and permanent neurological damage cases in this space frequently settle in the eight-figure range, often because the university and the national fraternity cannot afford the optics of a public trial that exposes the campus culture that produced the harm.
The money in these cases comes from several sources, layered like a tower:
The University’s Coverage. Public universities may invoke state tort-claims-act limitations or eleventh-amendment immunity defenses, but many carry commercial general liability policies and self-insured retention layers that reach well into the millions. Private universities typically carry large CGL towers. The university’s coverage is usually the first deep pocket.
The National Fraternity’s Insurance. National fraternities carry insurance — often a layered tower of primary and excess policies — designed to cover chapter misconduct claims. The national org’s insurance is the second deep pocket, and it is often the larger one. But these policies frequently contain assault-and-battery exclusions that the insurer will argue bar coverage, which is why pleading negligent supervision (not just intentional torts) matters so much.
The Local Chapter and House Corporation. These entities may be thinly capitalized, but they often carry their own insurance, sometimes through the national org’s master program. Coverage here can be thin, but the premises-liability theory against the house corporation can open a separate policy.
Individual Perpetrators. Individual members may have homeowners insurance that provides some coverage, but intentional-tort exclusions often apply. The individual perpetrators are rarely the source of significant recovery — but naming them creates leverage, forces depositions, and breaks the code of silence.
Our firm’s verified results include a $5M+ brain-injury settlement, a $3.8M+ amputation settlement, a $2.5M+ truck-crash recovery, and $50,000,000+ in aggregate recoveries. We are currently litigating a $10M+ hazing lawsuit. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but those numbers tell you what the architecture of a serious injury case looks like, and they tell you we know how to build one.
The University and Fraternity Playbook: What They Will Do to Defeat Your Case
If you are reading this page, the other side may have already started. Here is what they do — and here is what we do about it.
Play 1: The “Consensual Activity” Defense. The fraternity and the university will argue your child consented to participate, that he “knew what he was getting into,” that pledging is voluntary. Counter: many states have enacted anti-hazing statutes that expressly abolish consent as a defense — Florida’s Chad Meredith Act is the leading example, allowing civil action regardless of the victim’s consent. Even in states without that statutory bar, the law of undue influence and coercion defeats “consent” obtained under conditions of social pressure, sleep deprivation, and group dynamics specifically designed to strip individual judgment.
Play 2: The “Rogue Chapter” Defense. The national fraternity will argue the local chapter acted outside its rules, that the national org’s risk-management policy prohibited hazing, and that this was an aberration. Counter: the national org’s own files — incident reports from other chapters, insurance claims, consultant visit notes — show the same hazing patterns recurring at chapters across the country. One chapter’s “rogue” conduct is a national organization’s documented pattern. The national org wrote the playbook. The local chapter followed it.
Play 3: The Recorded Statement Trap. Within days, someone from the university’s risk-management office, the fraternity’s claims administrator, or an insurance adjuster will call to “check on your child” and ask for a statement about what happened — on a recording built to be quoted against you. They will ask leading questions designed to minimize the harm: “He’s doing better now, right?” “He chose to join, didn’t he?” Counter: never give a recorded statement without counsel. The first call should be to us. If they have already recorded your child, we can still manage the damage — but the recording exists, and the insurance company will use it.
Play 4: The Quick Settlement Offer. A check may arrive fast — sometimes before the medical results are in, sometimes before the full extent of a brain injury is diagnosed. It comes with a release printed on the back or attached as a separate document. Counter: a check that arrives before the MRI is the insurer’s cheapest move. The full cost of a hazing injury — the neuropsychological testing, the years of therapy, the lost earning capacity, the wrongful death claim if the child did not survive — is never visible in the first week. Never sign a release before a lawyer has reviewed it. A release signed in the hospital is the insurance company’s dream and your family’s worst mistake.
Play 5: The “No Notice” Defense. The university will argue it had no prior notice of hazing by this organization — that this was the first time, a surprise, an unforeseeable event. Counter: the CHTR itself may show prior entries for the same organization. The university’s internal disciplinary files — which the preservation letter demands — may show complaints, reports, or investigations that never made it into the public report. The gap between the internal record and the CHTR is the gap between “we didn’t know” and “we knew and didn’t act.”
Play 6: The “Boys Will Be Boys” Voir Dire. At trial, the defense will try to seat jurors who believe fraternity hazing is a normal rite of passage, that the victim assumed the risk by joining, that “it happened to me and I turned out fine.” Counter: jury selection in a hazing case is its own discipline. We screen for these biases in voir dire — carefully, respectfully, and with questions designed to reveal the juror who thinks a paddle is tradition, not a weapon.
How We Build a Hazing Case: The Proof Story
Here is how a hazing case is actually built — from the first phone call through the number at the end.
Week One: The Preservation Letter. The day you call, we send preservation letters to the university, the national fraternity, the local chapter, the house corporation, and any third-party vendors (campus security contractors, alcohol vendors, event venues). Every letter names the specific evidence categories: disciplinary records, social media and electronic communications, security footage, card-swipe logs, medical records, risk-management files, insurance claims, and the CHTR itself. These letters freeze the evidence. If anything disappears after that letter is on file, the jury can be told to assume the worst.
Weeks One Through Four: The Evidence Pull. We open formal records requests — FERPA-qualified requests for your child’s educational records, public-records requests for the university’s incident reports and CHTR filings, and subpoenas for the national fraternity’s risk-management files. We pull the security footage before the 30-day overwrite cycle kills it. We image the social media and group-chat evidence before accounts are deleted. We obtain the medical records — the ER triage note, the blood-alcohol level, the CT scan, the neuropsychological evaluation.
Months One Through Three: The Medical Foundation. We connect your child to the right specialists — neurologists, neuropsychologists, trauma therapists, life-care planners. The medical record is built from day one forward, with diagnostics that match the injury mechanism. If the injury is a brain injury, we pursue the imaging that actually shows the damage — diffusion tensor imaging, susceptibility-weighted MRI — not just the standard CT that was never designed to see microscopic axonal tearing.
Months Three Through Six: The Depositions. We depose the Greek-life coordinator, the Dean of Students, the chapter president, the pledge educator, the risk-management consultant from the national fraternity. The questions are designed to break the code of silence: What did you know? When did you know it? What did you do? Who told you to stop? Who told you to keep going? The delta between what the witness says and what the documents show is where the case turns.
Months Six Through Twelve: The Experts. We retain experts in campus-safety standards and fraternity risk management — professionals who can testify that the harm was foreseeable, that the national organization’s own training materials identified this exact hazard, and that the university’s failure to act fell below the standard of care. We build the life-care plan: the year-by-year cost of every surgery, therapy, medication, caregiver hour, and lost wage your child will need for the rest of their life. A forensic economist reduces that stream to present value. That number — not the insurance company’s first offer — is the demand.
Trial or Settlement. Most hazing cases settle before trial because the university and the national fraternity cannot afford the public spectacle of a jury hearing what their organizations actually did. But we prepare every case as if it will be tried, because the willingness to try a case is what creates the leverage to settle one.
Can I Sue a University for Hazing? The Theories of Liability
Yes — and the theories are more varied and more powerful than most people realize.
Negligence Per Se. Violation of a federal statute (the SCHA, the Clery Act) or a state anti-hazing statute can be treated as negligence per se — meaning the violation itself establishes the standard of care and the breach, and the plaintiff does not have to prove separately that the defendant acted unreasonably. Many states also elevate hazing to a felony when it results in serious bodily injury or death, which further strengthens the negligence-per-se argument. The specific treatment of statutory violations varies by jurisdiction — we confirm the controlling rule in the state where the hazing occurred.
Negligent Supervision. The university and the national fraternity each had a duty to supervise the organizations under their control. When a university grants official recognition to a chapter, assigns it housing, and receives reports of hazing — or when a national fraternity charters a chapter, collects dues, and sends consultants to inspect it — each has undertaken a supervisory duty. Failure to enforce their own anti-hazing policies despite actual or constructive knowledge of violations is the breach.
Premises Liability. The house corporation — the entity that owns or controls the physical property where the hazing occurred — owes a duty to protect invitees from foreseeable harm. If the chapter house has a basement used for “pledge line” activities, a backyard used for forced exercise, or rooms where pledges are confined, the premises defendant is liable for harm that occurred on its property when it knew or should have known of the dangerous use.
Fraudulent Concealment. If a university posted a CHTR “zero report” — or failed to post a report at all — while internal disciplinary records show hazing was occurring, the family may have a claim for fraudulent concealment. The theory is that the school intentionally omitted or misrepresented its hazing history to induce students to enroll and parents to pay tuition, and that the student was harmed as a direct result of relying on that misrepresentation. This is one of the most powerful theories the new CHTR regime creates — because the CHTR is a federal record, and a false CHTR is a documented lie.
Vicarious Liability. The national fraternity is vicariously liable for the acts of its chartered chapters under theories of agency, enterprise liability, or alter-ego depending on the jurisdiction and the control facts. The more the national org dictates the pledge program, the recruitment calendar, the risk-management standards, and the disciplinary process, the closer the local chapter is to an agent of the national org rather than an independent contractor.
How Long Do I Have to File a Hazing Lawsuit?
The statute of limitations for a hazing case depends entirely on the state where the hazing occurred. There is no single federal deadline. Most states set personal-injury deadlines between one and three years from the date of the injury, and wrongful-death deadlines on a similar or shorter timeline.
Here is the critical wrinkle: in hazing cases, the statute of limitations may be tolled — meaning the clock pauses or does not start running — when there is evidence of a “conspiracy of silence” or active concealment by the university or the fraternity. If the school suppressed hazing reports, told witnesses not to talk, posted a false CHTR, or otherwise concealed what happened, the clock may not start until the family discovered — or reasonably should have discovered — the true cause of the harm.
This is not a reason to wait. Tolling is a legal argument, not a guarantee, and the burden of proving concealment falls on the plaintiff. The safer course is always to act early: preserve the evidence, build the medical record, and file within the standard limitations period. If concealment extended the deadline, that is a backup argument — not a primary strategy.
We handle cases across the country, working with local counsel where required. The specific deadline that governs your case is the one in the state where the hazing occurred, and we will tell you that date during your free consultation.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
Do seek medical treatment immediately. If your child was injured — physically or psychologically — get them to an emergency room or a specialist now, not next week. The medical record created in the first hours is the most powerful evidence of harm. If your child has a head injury, insist on a CT scan and, if symptoms persist, a referral to a neurologist. If your child is showing signs of psychological trauma — nightmares, withdrawal, panic, flashbacks — get them to a trauma-informed therapist. The diagnosis is the proof.
Do document everything. Photograph every bruise, every injury, every screenshot of a group chat, every text message from a fraternity member. Save everything. Do not delete anything. Write down what your child tells you, in their words, with dates and times. Memory degrades; a contemporaneous note does not.
Do not give a recorded statement. To anyone. Not to the university’s investigator, not to the fraternity’s risk-management consultant, not to an insurance adjuster, not to the school’s lawyer. Anything you say will be transcribed, taken out of context, and used to minimize the harm. If they call, take their name and number and tell them you will have your attorney call them back.
Do not sign anything. Not a medical release, not a settlement offer, not a “general release of all claims,” not an agreement to participate in the school’s “internal investigation.” These documents are drafted by the other side’s lawyers to protect the other side, not your child.
Do not post on social media. Do not write about the hazing on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or any other platform. Do not have your child post about it. The defense will mine every public post for anything that can be twisted into “he was fine” or “she consented.”
Do not confront the fraternity or the university yourself. Do not go to the chapter house. Do not call the national organization. Do not send an angry email to the Dean of Students. Everything you say to them will be used against you. Let your lawyer do the talking.
Do call us. The preservation letter — the single most important document in the first 72 hours — goes out the day you call. Every day you wait is a day the security footage overwrites itself, the group chats get deleted, and the university’s internal files get “purged” in a routine records cycle. 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. 24/7 live staff — not an answering service.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Stop Campus Hazing Act?
The Stop Campus Hazing Act is a federal law, signed in December 2024, that amended the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act to require every college and university receiving federal financial aid to publish a Campus Hazing Transparency Report — a public log of substantiated hazing violations that names the organizations involved, describes the conduct, and dates the findings. The inaugural report is due by December 23, 2025, and must be updated at least twice a year in a visible location on the school’s website.
Does the new law apply to my child’s school?
If the school participates in federal student financial aid programs — which covers virtually every accredited college and university in the United States — then yes. The SCHA reaches public universities, private colleges, community colleges, and any institution subject to the Clery Act.
Can I sue a university for hazing?
Yes. Universities owe a duty of reasonable care to supervise recognized student organizations and enforce their own anti-hazing policies. When a school grants a fraternity official recognition, permits it to recruit and house students, and fails to act on reports of hazing — or posts a CHTR that conceals violations it knew about — the school is liable under theories of negligent supervision, negligence per se, and potentially fraudulent concealment. We are currently litigating exactly this kind of case.
Can I sue the national fraternity, not just the local chapter?
Yes — and you should. The national fraternity charters the local chapter, sets the rules, collects the dues, provides the insurance, and can revoke the charter. It cannot claim the local chapter is an independent entity it does not control when it dictates the pledge program, the recruitment calendar, and the risk-management standards. The national organization’s own files — incident reports from chapters nationwide, insurance claims, consultant visit notes — often prove the same hazing patterns existed across the country, not just at one school.
How much is a hazing lawsuit worth?
Hazing case values range from approximately $500,000 on the low end to $15,000,000 or more on the high end, driven by the severity of the harm, the resources of the defendants, and the gap between what the institution knew and what it did. Wrongful death and permanent neurological damage cases frequently reach eight figures because universities and national fraternities will pay to avoid a public trial that exposes campus culture. The specific value of your case depends on its facts.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit?
The statute of limitations depends on the state where the hazing occurred — most states set deadlines between one and three years for personal injury and wrongful death. In some cases, the deadline may be extended if the university or fraternity actively concealed the hazing, but tolling is a legal argument you should not rely on as a substitute for filing on time. We will tell you the exact deadline during your free consultation.
What if the school says my child consented?
Consent is not a defense to hazing in many states. Several states have enacted anti-hazing statutes that expressly abolish consent as a defense — meaning the fact that a pledge “agreed” to participate does not bar a civil claim. Even where the statutory abolition is not explicit, the law of coercion and undue influence defeats “consent” obtained under conditions of sleep deprivation, social isolation, and group pressure specifically engineered to suppress individual judgment.
What should I do if the university offers a quick settlement?
Do not sign it. Do not cash the check. Do not return the release. A settlement offer that arrives before the medical evaluation is complete is the insurance company’s cheapest move. The full cost of a hazing injury — brain damage, PTSD, years of therapy, lost earning capacity — is never visible in the first weeks. Bring the offer to us. We will tell you whether it is fair or whether it is a fraction of what your child’s case is actually worth.
What evidence disappears fastest in a hazing case?
Security camera footage can overwrite itself in as little as 30 days. Group-chat messages can be deleted with one tap. The university’s internal disciplinary files can be purged during staff transitions or academic breaks. The national fraternity’s risk-management records can be “archived” and made difficult to retrieve. The CHTR itself persists, but the internal files behind it may not. The preservation letter we send the day you call is what stops this clock — and if evidence is destroyed after that letter is on file, the jury can be told to assume the worst.
Does it cost anything to talk to Attorney911 about a hazing case?
No. The consultation is free. We work on contingency — we don’t get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. You pay nothing out of pocket. We serve families fully in English or Spanish — Hablamos Español.
Why Attorney911: The Firm Currently Litigating a $10M Hazing Case
Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — is a Houston-based trial firm with offices in Houston and Austin, Texas, and 27+ years of fighting for injured people. We are not a general practice that occasionally takes a hazing case. We are currently in the trenches of one.
Ralph P. Manginello, our managing partner, is lead counsel in the active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit, filed in Harris County in November 2025. He has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the other side buried, and he knows how to tell it to a jury. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas. He is lead counsel on your case because he has been in this exact fight before.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the other side prices a hazing injury, how they pick their medical experts, and how they design their delay tactics, because he used to design them. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations without an interpreter.
We work on contingency. We don’t get paid unless we win. The consultation is free, and you will speak with an attorney, not a screener. The preservation letter goes out the day you call — not the week after, not the month after. Every day that passes is a day the security footage overwrites itself and the group chats disappear.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the $50,000,000+ our firm has recovered, the $5M+ brain-injury settlement, the $3.8M+ amputation settlement, and the $10M+ hazing lawsuit we are fighting right now tell you what kind of firm you are calling.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different. The specific statute of limitations, the governing state law, and the defendant structure in your case depend on where the hazing occurred and what happened. We will tell you all of that during your free consultation.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. 24/7 live staff — not an answering service. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.
The Stop Campus Hazing Act was written because families spent twenty years demanding transparency after their children were hazed. The law gives you the record. We give you the fight. Call us today.