Michigan hazing: the law, the cases, and what to do right now
If your son or daughter has been hurt, or you are the one it happened to, you need three things quickly. You need to know whether what happened is against the law in Michigan. You need to know how long you have — and in Michigan that answer is sometimes six months, not three years. And you need to know what the injury actually is, so that you can say the right word in an emergency room.
All of that is below. So is every hazing death Michigan has on record, and every organization a Michigan college has publicly found responsible for hazing, in the college’s own words.
My name is Ralph Manginello. I’m a trial lawyer, and I represent people and families in hazing cases. You do not have to call me to use any of this. If you read it, find one phone number that helps, and never speak to me, that is a good outcome.
If this is happening right now
Call 911. Now. Before you finish reading this sentence.
Not the chapter president. Not the advisor. Not a parent first. 911.
Nothing else matters more than that — not the organization, not whether anyone gets in trouble, not what it costs, not whether you’re overreacting.
What kills people in hazing is almost never the moment itself. It’s the delay. It’s the hour where everyone stands around deciding whether it’s bad enough to call. It’s somebody being put to bed to sleep it off.
A person who has passed out from drinking can die. Cold showers, coffee and walking do not reverse alcohol poisoning. Sleeping it off is not a plan.
If you cannot wake someone — if their breathing is slow or irregular, if their skin is cold or bluish or pale, if they are vomiting while unresponsive, or if they have a seizure — that is an emergency. Put them on their side so they cannot choke, and call 911.
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Understanding the Dangers of Alcohol Overdose
“He was fine when we put him to bed”
That sentence turns up in almost every one of these cases, and it is wrong in a specific, deadly way.
Blood alcohol keeps climbing after the last drink. Alcohol already swallowed is still sitting in the stomach and intestine, and it keeps entering the bloodstream long after the drinking stops.
When people drink fast on an empty stomach, blood alcohol peaks after they stop — in more than nine out of ten cases, within the hour after the last drink. And the biggest single jump comes in the first fifteen minutes after drinking ends.
So the moment everyone points to — he was talking, he was walking, he seemed okay — is the moment of least danger in the whole night. Not the most.
If someone drank heavily and is now asleep, they are not safe because they made it to a bed. Stay with them. Keep them on their side. If you cannot wake them, call 911.
Tell the paramedics everything
Say exactly what happened and what was taken — how much, how fast, what kind, what was done to them. Nobody is in trouble in that moment. Emergency crews are not there to punish anyone. They are there to keep somebody breathing, and they need the truth to do it.
Say it even if it’s embarrassing. Say it even if it involves you.
“Will we get in trouble for calling?”
Michigan has a 911 Good Samaritan law. Many Michigan campuses also have medical amnesty policies that protect students who call for help from conduct charges.
Look up your own school’s medical amnesty policy tonight, before you ever need it. But do not let the answer change what you do in an emergency.
A charge can be fought. A death cannot be appealed.
Numbers that answer, right now
- Medical emergency
- 911
- Suicidal thoughts, or you’re frightened for someone
- 988 — Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Call or text, any hour. 988lifeline.org
- You’d rather text than talk
- Text HOME to 741741. Text HOLA for Spanish.
- Poisoning advice when it is not an emergency
- 1-800-222-1222 — Poison Help. If the person is unconscious, not breathing, or seizing, call 911 instead.
- Sexual assault
- 800-656-HOPE (4673) — RAINN, any hour, free and confidential
- LGBTQ+ young people
- 1-866-488-7386 — The Trevor Project, or text START to 678-678
- Drinking or drugs, and you want help finding treatment
- 1-800-662-4357 — SAMHSA, free and confidential, any hour
- To report hazing anonymously
- 1-888-NOT-HAZE (1-888-668-4293). It’s a real channel. It’s funded by the fraternity industry, which you should know before you use it.
The Michigan cases
Almost every family I meet believes their child was the only one. They weren’t.
These are the young people Michigan has lost, going back to 1929. I’ve grouped them by what happened, and in each case I’ve said plainly what the courts and the schools actually found — because those are different things, and the difference will matter to you.
The two Michigan deaths prosecuted as hazing
Phat Anh Nguyen — 21 — Michigan State University — Pi Alpha Phi —
He died of acute alcohol intoxication in the basement of the Pi Alpha Phi house during a “crossover” event. Pledges were ordered to black out or die. They drank five shots each in rounds. Evidence suggested alcohol bottles may have been taped to pledges’ hands. Three other pledges were taken to Sparrow Hospital that night.
The criminal case. Ethan Tin Cao, the chapter’s pledge master, was charged with one felony count of hazing resulting in death — which carries up to fifteen years — plus three misdemeanour counts of hazing resulting in physical injury. Andrew Hoang Nguyen was charged alongside him. Charges against a third man were dropped in 2022. Among the evidence quoted by the Court of Appeals is a text from Cao telling others to “wait until I get there before they’re dead lmao.”
The appeal. The defence attacked the hazing statute itself. It lost, and the loss became the law of Michigan — see the case that settled the law.
The family’s civil case. Nguyen’s estate sued in Ingham County Circuit Court for wrongful death against nineteen named defendants — former fraternity members and people who were at the event. Filed June 2023, still active.
Court of Appeals opinion · the family’s complaint · WKAR
What alcohol poisoning does, and why nobody realises how fast it moves, is explained at what happens when someone is made to drink.
Stephen Petz — 19 — Ferris State University — 1999
He died of cardiac arrest from alcohol poisoning during a videotaped initiation run by the Knights of College Leadership, an unauthorised off-campus group that had been cut loose by a national fraternity. He drank twenty-seven shots playing what participants called the “wheel of torture” — they used a roulette wheel.
The criminal case. Members were convicted of serving alcohol to a minor. A 23-year-old was charged with involuntary manslaughter; a felony conviction was later thrown out by a judge.
Michigan had no hazing law when Stephen Petz died. His death is part of the chain of events that produced one five years later.
Hank Nuwer’s hazing-deaths database · Michigan News Source
Deaths after fraternity events
In these two, a young person died at or right after a chapter event. No court found that hazing caused the death. What did happen was institutional and civil consequence — a chapter permanently thrown off campus, a charter revoked, a university settlement.
Kevin Ajluni — 21 — Central Michigan University — Phi Sigma Phi — died
He was found unresponsive at the bottom of a stairwell at a house on South Main Street at 12:43 a.m. on April 29, 2018, after the fraternity’s “Senior Send Off.” Skull fracture and bleeding on the brain. Blood alcohol .242. He was airlifted to Saginaw and died four days later, two days before he was to graduate.
What the university did. In October 2018 CMU concluded the fraternity was a “significant threat” to student safety and stripped it of recognition — in the reporting at the time, “removed from CMU forever.” Behind that decision: fourteen incidents between 2015 and 2018, and six complaints including hazing, sexual misconduct and assault, going back a decade.
What his family did. They sued the owners of the house — Rentwood Management — in November 2018. Not the fraternity. Not the university. The landlord. That route is explained at who owns the house.
His family put it this way: “it’s not about the money… it’s about justice for Kevin.”
Courtney Cantor — 19 — University of Michigan —
She fell to her death from her sixth-floor window in Mary Markley Residence Hall, the night after a Phi Delta Theta party. Alcohol and GHB — a date-rape drug — were in her system. Nobody saw the fall.
Her father sued. George Cantor brought suit in Washtenaw County against Phi Delta Theta’s national organization and former members for buying and supplying alcohol to minors and for the GHB, and against the University of Michigan. The University settled for $100,000.
Phi Delta Theta’s national headquarters revoked the chapter’s charter that year for violating its alcohol-free housing policy.
Michigan Daily — the suit · Michigan Daily — the settlement
The people who died who weren’t the pledge
If you think hazing only endangers the person being hazed, read these two.
Bailey Broderick — Western Michigan University — 2021
She was struck and killed near WMU’s Fraternity Village by Hunter Hudgins, a 20-year-old Sigma Chi pledge who was drunk and out on pledge duties. Her parents publicly criticised Kalamazoo law enforcement for withholding his name.
Her mother said: “I not only lost my baby, but I also lost my mind.”
In June 2023 Hudgins was sentenced to 35 months to 15 years in prison.
Eric Scott Fillyaw — Eastern Michigan University — Kappa Phi Alpha — 1992
A pledge, killed in a car accident after leaving an event at the fraternity house. The university put the fraternity on two-year probation over it.
A note on the year: Eastern Michigan’s own archive dates the case file 1992. The archive’s written history says “mid 1990s,” and one national database lists 1991. The case file date is the most precise, so that’s the one I use.
The file still exists, and anyone can ask to see it. Eastern Michigan’s archive physically holds the Eric Fillyaw case series — correspondence, documents, Interfraternity Council hearing records, and police interviews from the investigation. The wider Kappa Phi Alpha collection runs from 1929 to 2011 and includes incident reports, house rules, meeting minutes and pledge letters. EMU Archives, Bruce T. Halle Library Room 117, 955 West Circle Drive, Ypsilanti MI 48197, 734-487-2673. Materials must be requested 24 hours before a visit.
Kappa Phi Alpha was founded at Ypsilanti in 1902 and never affiliated with any national organization. It came back after the Fillyaw probation, was suspended again in 2009 after further violations, and no longer exists.
Eastern Michigan archive record
Before there was a law
Matt Epling — 14 — East Lansing — 2002
Assaulted by high schoolers on the last day of eighth grade — held down, eggs smashed on him, syrup poured on him. He died by suicide.
His death produced the Matt Epling Safe School Law, Michigan’s anti-bullying statute. That’s a different law from the hazing statute, and I keep them separate here because families get confused between the two and it costs them time.
Merrill A. Putnam — 7 or 8 — Flint — 1929
He died of blood poisoning four days after two older boys, aged 11 and 14, repeatedly slammed him into the ground in a prank they called the “Royal Bumps.” The boys were exonerated.
This is the earliest hazing death on record in Michigan, and it is from 1929. If anyone tells you this is a modern problem, or a problem with this generation, they are off by about a century.
A death with no finding
Sean Thomas Murawske — 18 — Alma College — January 2014
A freshman from Harbor Beach, a town of about 1,700. An altar boy who played high school baseball and was thinking about becoming a teacher.
He was last seen at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house on West Center Street at about 1:30 a.m. on January 12, 2014, in a dark polo and khakis, and left after campus security shut the event down. Classmates said he had been drinking there. He was found dead in a field about a mile from campus two days later, after more than 250 volunteers from Alma and Harbor Beach searched for him. The autopsy found no traumatic injuries, and the final cause of death was never published.
Alma College froze fraternity recruitment indefinitely and hired an outside investigator. Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s national organization said it “cannot confirm” he was ever at its chapter house.
No hazing finding was ever made, and I’m not going to call this a hazing death. But one fact belongs next to it: four years earlier, in 2010, Alma College disciplined that same chapter for violating its alcohol and hazing rules, and removed it from college-owned housing for the year.
Bloomberg News coverage · FOX 17
Michigan, on one timeline
- Merrill Putnam, 7–8, dies in Flint after the “Royal Bumps.”
- Eric Fillyaw, an Eastern Michigan pledge, killed in a car crash after a chapter event. Two-year probation.
- Jeffrey Greenfield sues Michigan State, its band director and its drumline instructor over Spartan Marching Band initiation rituals.
- Courtney Cantor, 19, falls from a sixth-floor U-M window after a Phi Delta Theta party. U-M settles for $100,000; the national revokes the charter.
- Stephen Petz, 19, dies at Ferris State. Twenty-seven shots, videotaped initiation.
- Matt Epling, 14, assaulted in East Lansing; dies by suicide.
- 2003
- Garret Drogosch, 12, has his leg broken in two places at Meads Mill Middle School.
- Garret’s Law takes effect.
- Alma College disciplines Sigma Alpha Epsilon for alcohol and hazing; removed from college housing.
- Winter 2016
- Grand Valley State — Kappa Alpha Psi hazing finding.
- Fall 2017
- Grand Valley State — Sigma Phi Epsilon suspended through 2022 for hazing and alcohol.
- The University of Michigan’s Interfraternity Council shuts down all Greek life activities.
- Kevin Ajluni, 21, dies after a fall at a CMU fraternity event.
- CMU permanently removes Phi Sigma Phi.
- Phat Nguyen, 21, dies at Michigan State. Three other pledges hospitalised.
- Bailey Broderick killed near Western Michigan’s Fraternity Village.
- Winter 2022
- Grand Valley State — Theta Chi hazing and alcohol finding.
- Hudgins sentenced. The Nguyen family files suit against 19 defendants.
- U-M Alpha Epsilon Pi — video of pledges being hit and kicked. National cease-and-desist; reported to Ann Arbor Police.
- Fall 2024
- Grand Valley State terminates Pi Kappa Phi through at least Fall 2026.
- Connor Mui sues Lambda Phi Epsilon, its Michigan State chapter and three named officers.
- Michigan State suspends Theta Chi during a hazing investigation.
- Michigan Tech — hazing finding against the Husky Pep Band.
- Garret’s Law is upheld on appeal.
- The first Campus Hazing Transparency Reports come due nationwide.
- The Michigan Supreme Court refuses to hear the challenge. Garret’s Law stands.
- Hazing becomes a reportable crime statistic at every college in the country.
Garret’s Law — Michigan’s hazing statute
Who Garret was
Garret Drogosch was twelve years old, a seventh-grade football player at Meads Mill Middle School in Northville. The school had an annual tradition called “eighth-grade hit day.” The seventh graders were told to stand still, arms at their sides, no pads, no blocking, no defending themselves, while an eighth grader ran at them and tackled them.
His right leg broke in two places. He was hospitalised, had two surgeries, and spent two months in a wheelchair.
The local police chief was quoted at the time as not considering it “hazing.”
The Legislature disagreed. Michigan’s hazing law took effect , and the statute names itself after him:
“This section shall be known and may be cited as ‘Garret’s law’.”
MCL 750.411t(8)
Every part of what follows exists because a twelve-year-old’s leg was broken and an official said it didn’t count.
If you’re searching for this law online, try both spellings. The statute spells it “Garret’s” with one T, but schools and news outlets often write “Garrett’s.”
What the law says
Who it binds
“a person who attends, is employed by, or is a volunteer of an educational institution shall not engage in or participate in the hazing of an individual.”
Not just students. Employees and volunteers too — which reaches coaches, advisors, band staff and alumni volunteers.
The three penalty levels
- If it causes physical injury
- Misdemeanour — up to 93 days in jail, a $1,000 fine, or both
- If it causes serious impairment of a body function
- Felony — up to 5 years, a $2,500 fine, or both
- If it causes death
- Felony — up to 15 years, a $10,000 fine, or both
A hazing charge is added to other charges, not instead of them
“A criminal penalty provided for under this section may be imposed in addition to any penalty that may be imposed for any other criminal offense arising from the same conduct.”
Assault, furnishing alcohol to a minor, manslaughter — hazing stacks on top.
If you were the one hazed, you cannot be charged under this law
“This section does not apply to an individual who is the subject of the hazing, regardless of whether the individual voluntarily allowed himself or herself to be hazed.”
The Legislature wrote that in deliberately. If part of what’s keeping you silent is fear that you’ll be prosecuted for what was done to you — under this statute, you cannot be.
Consent is not a defence
“It is not a defense to a prosecution for a crime under this section that the individual against whom the hazing was directed consented to or acquiesced in the hazing.”
Read that twice if you’re the person it happened to.
Hazing works by making you believe you agreed to it. That you chose it. That you could have said no, so whatever happened is partly yours to carry. Michigan wrote the opposite into law in 2004, and the Court of Appeals confirmed it in 2025.
You did not do this to yourself.
The one exception
“This section does not apply to an activity that is normal and customary in an athletic, physical education, military training, or similar program sanctioned by the educational institution.”
Expect to hear this one. Look at what it actually requires: the activity has to be both normal and customary and part of a program the school sanctions. A pledge ritual run by a chapter at 2 a.m. is neither.
It covers middle school and high school
“a public or private school that is a middle school, junior high school, high school, vocational school, college, or university located in this state.”
The felony penalties apply to what happens on a middle school football field. Most states cannot say that. Elementary schools are outside it.
What counts as hazing
“an intentional, knowing, or reckless act … that the person knew or should have known endangers the physical health or safety of the individual, and that is done for the purpose of pledging, being initiated into, affiliating with, participating in, holding office in, or maintaining membership in any organization.”
The law then spells out four kinds of conduct:
- Physical brutality — “whipping, beating, striking, branding, electronic shocking, placing of a harmful substance on the body, or similar activity.”
- Physical activity — “sleep deprivation, exposure to the elements, confinement in a small space, or calisthenics, that subjects the other person to an unreasonable risk of harm.”
- Being made to consume something — “a food, liquid, alcoholic beverage, liquor, drug, or other substance that subjects the individual to an unreasonable risk of harm.”
- Being made to commit a crime — any activity that “induces, causes, or requires an individual to perform a duty or task that involves the commission of a crime or an act of hazing.”
It isn’t only fraternities
“a fraternity, sorority, association, corporation, order, society, corps, cooperative, club, service group, social group, athletic team, or similar group whose members are primarily students at an educational institution.”
Athletic teams are named in the statute. And “similar group whose members are primarily students” is what brings in bands, club sports and spirit squads. Michigan campuses have published hazing findings against a men’s water polo team, a women’s gymnastics team, a pep band and a rowing club — 19 of the 43 organizations named in Michigan’s hazing record are not social fraternities or sororities at all.
“Serious impairment of a body function” — the phrase that decides felony or misdemeanour
That phrase is what separates a 93-day misdemeanour from a five-year felony, and Michigan defines it with a list. It “includes, but is not limited to”:
- Loss of a limb, or loss of use of a limb
- Loss of a foot, hand, finger or thumb, or loss of use of one
- Loss of an eye or ear, or loss of use of one
- Loss or substantial impairment of a bodily function
- Serious visible disfigurement
- A coma lasting more than 3 days
- Measurable brain or mental impairment
- A skull fracture or other serious bone fracture
- Bleeding on the brain — subdural hemorrhage or subdural hematoma
- Loss of an organ
Two things about that list matter enormously.
“Includes, but is not limited to” means it’s a floor, not a ceiling. An injury that matches none of the ten can still be a serious impairment of a body function. That matters for injuries the list never anticipated — kidney failure from muscle breakdown, brain swelling from being forced to drink water, brain damage from being left face-down.
Number 7 — “measurable brain or mental impairment” — is how psychological injury reaches the felony level. The word that does the work is measurable. There’s more on that at what it does afterward.
Read MCL 750.411t in full · the Legislature’s own analysis of the bill
When hazing isn’t a crime in Michigan
If a prosecutor tells you no charges will be filed, it does not mean nobody believed you. Very often it means the conduct fell into a gap in the statute, and you deserve to understand that gap before someone else explains it to you badly.
Michigan’s hazing law reaches conduct that endangers physical health or safety — and nothing else.
Michigan colleges have now published 35 hazing findings under federal law. Set each one against the statute and roughly 20 describe conduct the criminal law can reach. Thirteen describe conduct it cannot.
Inside the law
These findings describe conduct the statute covers — almost all of it involving alcohol, drugs, exposure or a required crime:
- Michigan, women’s gymnastics — new members blindfolded and driven to an undisclosed location where alcohol was present
- Michigan, Theta Xi — servitude and nicotine on demand; a member made ill from tobacco
- Michigan, Kappa Sigma — chili peppers or alcohol for wrong quiz answers
- Michigan, Pi Kappa Phi — Hell Week with forced alcohol, marijuana and mushrooms
- Michigan, Kappa Kappa Gamma — alcohol to new members on bid day, extreme intoxication
- Michigan, Alpha Sigma Phi and Alpha Chi Omega — “Shackles and Champagne”: new members handcuffed together and told to drink
- Michigan, Phi Gamma Nu — older members pressuring new members to drink
- Michigan — Delta Upsilon, Pi Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Phi and Lambda Chi Alpha — pledges required to hand over meal-plan credentials, leading to dining-hall theft. Four separate findings, and being made to commit a crime is written into the statute.
- Michigan State, Sigma Tau Gamma — new members required to spend a night outdoors, allowed to leave only for class
- Central Michigan, Chi Phi — a rigged puzzle designed to force drinking, and carrying progressively heavier rocks
- Michigan Tech, Sigma Pi — beer games with minors present, drink incentives, marijuana-infused baking
- Grand Valley State — Pi Kappa Phi, Theta Chi and Sigma Phi Epsilon — hazing involving alcohol
- Alma College, Sigma Alpha Epsilon — alcohol and hazing violations
Outside the law
Every one of these was investigated by a university, substantiated, and sanctioned. None of it endangers physical health or safety, so none of it is a crime under Michigan’s hazing statute:
- Michigan, men’s water polo — first-years walked around campus singing at sorority houses in Speedos
- Michigan, Kappa Omega Alpha — assigned tasks, public singing and hand-holding, led with eyes closed to an undisclosed location
- Michigan, Theta Delta Chi — derogatory names during a “lineup”
- Michigan — Kappa Kappa Gamma, Delta Delta Delta, Tau Kappa Epsilon, Alpha Phi, Sigma Chi and Sigma Kappa. Six organizations in one case: sororities requiring new members to receive lap dances from fraternity new members, and fraternities scheduling their new members to give them.
- Michigan Tech, Husky Pep Band — an eleven-floor climb with instruments under “implicit social pressure”
- Ferris State, Phi Sigma Kappa — TikTok videos of new members in degrading skits; the school’s report records no alcohol or drugs
- Detroit Mercy, Kappa Beta Gamma — a new member taken to an isolated part of the city and told she might be left there
- Michigan State, Zeta Sigma Chi — candidates asked to consent to blindfolds and share location tracking
Two further Grand Valley State findings are published simply as “hazing” with no description, so there’s no way to place them either way.
More than one in three hazing findings at Michigan colleges describe conduct that is not a crime under Michigan’s hazing law.
The statute reaches physical health or safety and stops there. It does not criminalise humiliation, degradation, sexual coercion by ritual, servitude, or psychological pressure. The largest single group of organizations ever sanctioned together in this state — six of them, in one case at the University of Michigan — falls entirely on the far side of that line.
A civil case is a different question
The criminal statute is not the measure of what you can bring.
Negligence, assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, premises liability, Title IX where sexual conduct was involved — none of those require the conduct to be a crime under the hazing statute. All thirteen of the findings above could support a civil claim.
So if you were told “there’s no crime here,” the honest translation is usually: not this crime. That is not the same as no case, and it is nowhere near the same as nothing happened.
The case that settled the law
For twenty-one years after Garret’s Law passed, no Michigan appeals court had ever interpreted it. Then Phat Nguyen died at Michigan State, the pledge master was charged, and his lawyers attacked the statute itself — arguing it was unconstitutional and should be thrown out.
On , the Michigan Court of Appeals rejected every argument.
What the court decided
- Garret’s Law is constitutional. The challenges — freedom of association, equal protection, vagueness, overbreadth — all failed.
- Consent is no defence. In the court’s own words, it is no defence to fraternity hazing that the pledges consented to the activity.
- Hazing includes the “collective pressure to drink to excess.” A leader does not have to personally hand anyone a drink. This is the holding that matters most in practice, because it defeats the defence you will hear most often: I never poured anything, I never touched him.
- The athletic and military exception is valid, and does not swallow the statute.
- The prosecution goes forward.
Then the Michigan Supreme Court closed the door
“the application for leave to appeal … is considered, and it is DENIED, because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court.”
Michigan Supreme Court,
Garret’s Law survived its only real constitutional challenge, all the way to the top. If anyone tells you Michigan’s hazing law is untested or shaky, that stopped being true in March 2026.
Read the opinion · Michigan Public · Bloomberg Law · FOX 47
A student who lived, and sued
In October 2024, Connor Mui, a former Michigan State student, filed suit in federal court in the Western District of Michigan. He used Garret’s Law himself — not as a prosecutor, as the person it happened to.
He named: Lambda Phi Epsilon, the national organization · its Michigan State chapter · the chapter president · the pledge master · and his assigned “big brother.”
What he alleges was done to him: forced to smoke a dangerous amount of marijuana during pledge activities; weeks later, made to do calisthenics all night with no sleep.
What happened to him: weakness that stopped him walking · repeated hospital admissions over the space of a week · nausea, vomiting, severe headaches · hearing voices · diagnosed with altered mental status and with rhabdomyolysis — muscle breaking down and poisoning his blood.
His case shows the same statute working from the other direction: a national organization and three named officers, including the pledge master, sued by the pledge.
And one from 1993, because it says something about institutions
In May 1993, Jeffrey Greenfield, then 20, sued Michigan State University, its band director and its drumline instructor over what happened at Spartan Marching Band drum camp.
He alleged veterans exposed their genitals and coerced newcomers into doing the same; that members who made mistakes were disciplined with rituals involving nudity; and that lewd nicknames were written onto official Michigan State forms and printed in the official band directory at the end of the year.
“It was horrible … degrading, disgusting and one of the filthiest things.”
Jeffrey Greenfield
A Detroit News investigation independently confirmed the exposure and coercion. Band leadership later acknowledged “distasteful, deviant and sophomoric” behaviour and ordered the nicknames stopped.
That was eleven years before Michigan had a hazing law, and thirty-two years before a Michigan pep band was formally found responsible for hazing. If you are wondering whether a university can know and still do nothing — here is one that printed it in its own directory.
Who can be held responsible
Most families assume the answer is either “the boys who did it” or “the school.” In Michigan, both of those assumptions cause problems — in opposite directions.
There are usually five separate people or entities who can be held responsible, and the ones with money are rarely the ones you’d guess.
1. The chapter itself — even though it isn’t a company
A fraternity or sorority chapter usually isn’t incorporated. People assume that means you can’t sue it as a thing, only the individual members. In Michigan that’s wrong.
“any unincorporated voluntary association having a distinguishing name may sue or be sued in its … association name, or in the names of any of its members designated as such or both.”
MCL 600.2051(2)
A chapter with Greek letters on the door has a distinguishing name. That’s all the statute requires.
2. The house corporation — usually the one with money
Nearly every established chapter has a separate corporation behind it, often called a house corporation or alumni corporation, which owns or holds the property. It is a different legal entity from the chapter, it files with the IRS, and it is generally where the assets are. See below.
3. The national organization
Nationals are not bystanders in Michigan’s record. Phi Delta Theta revoked the University of Michigan chapter’s charter after Courtney Cantor died. Pi Kappa Phi’s national office is what closed a chapter. Delta Upsilon’s national revoked a Grand Valley State charter outright. Sigma Gamma Rho’s national imposed its own suspension. And in Connor Mui’s case, the national organization is a named defendant.
4. Individual members
Officers, pledge masters, big brothers, people who were simply there. Phat Nguyen’s family named nineteen. Connor Mui named the chapter president, the pledge master and his big brother.
5. Whoever owns the house
This is the one almost nobody thinks of, and in Michigan it is often the most important.
When Kevin Ajluni died after a fall at a fraternity event in Mount Pleasant, his family sued the company that owned the house. Not the fraternity. Not the university. The landlord.
Here is why that matters so much in this state.
- Adrian College — private
- The college owns all nine chapter houses. Its own student handbook says so: “All nine sororities and fraternities currently reside in College-owned houses.” Because Adrian is private, there’s no government immunity and no short notice deadline. The college is the landlord, and it can be sued like any landlord.
- Alma College — private
- All ten chapters live in houses marked “College-Owned Housing” on Alma’s own campus map. Same position.
- Albion College — private
- Every fraternity has a campus-owned house, and every member is required to live in it. Required residency is about as direct as institutional control over a building gets.
- University of Michigan — public
- The university does not own Greek Row. The houses on Washtenaw, Hill, Tappan and Geddes belong to private house corporations. Government immunity protects the university and does nothing at all for those corporations.
- Central Michigan University — public
- Same structure. The South Main Street houses are registered to private chapter entities, not the university.
- Grand Valley State and Western Michigan — public
- These two are different, and harder. GVSU owns the sorority housing complex at 5050 Pierce Street. Western Michigan owns Fraternity Village. Here the immunity and the ownership sit in the same hands — which makes the six-month deadline the most urgent thing in your case.
The short version. At Michigan’s private colleges, the school often owns the house — and a private school has no immunity. At Michigan’s big public universities, the school is immune but doesn’t own the house — private corporations do, and those corporations are worth millions.
Either way, there is usually someone solvent who can be held responsible for the building.
“Is there even any money?”
Families ask me this and usually apologise for asking. Don’t. It’s a fair question and it has an answer.
Fraternity and sorority corporations file with the IRS, and those filings are public. Here is what Michigan’s largest ones report holding.
Over $2 million
- Alpha Chi Omega Theta Corp — Ann Arbor
- $3,852,742
- Sigma Chi Residence Inc — Ann Arbor
- $2,926,131
- Kappa Kappa Gamma Beta Delta House Corp — 1204 Hill Street, Ann Arbor
- $2,817,308
- Grand Lodge of Theta Delta Chi — Ann Arbor
- $2,363,419
- Alpha Mu Sigma Kappa House Management — Ann Arbor
- $2,360,842
- Chi Omega Eta Building Association — 1525 Washtenaw Avenue
- $2,300,277
- Pi Beta Phi Michigan Beta — 836 Tappan Avenue
- $2,290,948
- Sigma Alpha Epsilon Michigan Iota Beta — 1408 Washtenaw Avenue
- $2,240,032
- Delta Gamma Association of Kappa Kappa Gamma — East Lansing
- $2,191,652
- Zeta Psi Kappa Chapter Corp — Ann Arbor
- $2,091,294
Over $1 million
- Alpha Phi International — East Lansing — $1,956,567
- Delta Kappa Epsilon — Ann Arbor — $1,783,081
- Gamma Phi Delta Sorority — Detroit — $1,201,734
- Alpha Gamma Delta house association — Oakland University — $1,037,191
And beyond Ann Arbor and East Lansing
Kappa Alpha Theta house corporation, Oakland — $965,288 · Delta Service Through Detroit Foundation — $960,678 · Phi Kappa Tau, Michigan Tech — $627,955 · Lambda Chi Alpha, Flint — $588,545 · Sigma Rho Inc, Michigan Tech — $420,583 · Sigma Delta Tau, East Lansing — $388,061 · Delta Sigma Phi, Michigan Tech — $387,190 · Eta Phi Beta Sorority, Detroit — $361,686 · Alpha Delta Corp of Flint — $306,061 · Gamma Phi Beta, Grand Valley State — $303,086.
Eight of Michigan’s ten wealthiest fraternity and sorority corporations are in Ann Arbor, clustered on and around Washtenaw, Hill and Tappan.
One more detail worth knowing: three of the largest — holding $6.2 million between them — are all registered to the same office suite on Jackson Road in Ann Arbor, a professional management company that acts as agent for several chapters at once.
The six-month deadline at Michigan public universities
If you read one legal section here, read this one. It is the single most common way a Michigan hazing case dies, it runs out in six months instead of three years, and nobody is going to call and remind you.
Why suing a public university in Michigan is different
Michigan’s public universities are legally the State. The law says so directly — “State” includes “a public university or college of this state.” That covers all fifteen of them, and the constitutional independence those universities have does not get them out of it.
Being the State means immunity. A government agency is immune from being sued for injury when it’s carrying out a government function. There is an exception for gross negligence — conduct “so reckless as to demonstrate a substantial lack of concern for whether an injury results” — but the exception is narrow, and it requires the gross negligence to be the cause of the injury, not merely a cause.
You also can’t sue them in the ordinary court. Claims against the State go to the Michigan Court of Claims, and only there. Filing in the wrong court does not stop the clock running.
And then there’s the deadline. For a personal injury claim against the State, you must give written notice:
“within 6 months after the event that gives rise to the claim”
MCL 600.6431
And it is not a letter. The notice must state when and where the claim arose, give a detailed statement of the claim and the damages, name the state entity involved, and be signed and sworn before someone authorised to administer oaths.
So: a hazing claim against any of Michigan’s fifteen public universities has to clear immunity, go to a special court, and be preceded by a sworn written notice within six months.
A claim against a Michigan private college — Adrian, Albion, Alma, Baker, Calvin, Cornerstone, Hillsdale, Hope, Kalamazoo, Kettering, Lawrence Tech, Northwood, Olivet, Siena Heights, Spring Arbor, Detroit Mercy — has none of that.
The same facts produce two completely different cases depending on which side of that line the campus falls.
Why this matters so much in Michigan specifically
Look at where Michigan’s hazing actually shows up on the record:
- Hazing findings at public universities
- 33 of 35
- Hazing findings at private colleges
- 2 of 35 — Detroit Mercy and Alma
- College hazing deaths at public universities
- 6 of 6
Almost every documented hazing finding in Michigan, and every single college hazing death, happened at a school protected by immunity, a special court, and a six-month clock.
Which is exactly why the chapter, the house corporation, the national organization and the property owner matter so much here. None of them is a government agency. None of them gets the six months.
What to do with this today: if a Michigan public university had any role in what happened, treat your deadline as six months from the date it happened, and talk to someone this week. Not necessarily me — anyone competent. The notice can be prepared and filed long before anyone decides whether to actually sue. Filing it costs you nothing and preserves everything.
Every Michigan deadline, in one place
- Injury or death
- 3 years — MCL 600.5805(2)
- Assault, battery, false imprisonment
- 2 years — MCL 600.5805(3). Shorter than the general injury deadline, and hazing very often is a battery.
- Claims involving alcohol sold by a licensed business
- 2 years, plus a written notice within 120 days — MCL 436.1801(3)
- Any claim against a Michigan public university
- 3 years — but only if you file a sworn written notice within 6 months. See above.
If the person hazed was under 18
Michigan gives someone who was a minor when it happened one year after their eighteenth birthday to bring a claim, even if the ordinary deadline has already run.
Two limits matter. They had to be under 18 at the time it happened, and you cannot stack this on top of another delay. A college pledge who was already 18 gets nothing from this rule. In practice it protects middle school and high school families — which matters, because Garret’s Law reaches middle school.
If the organization covered it up
Where someone “fraudulently conceals the existence of the claim or the identity of any person who is liable,” you may bring the case “within 2 years after” you “discover, or should have discovered” the claim — “although the action would otherwise be barred.”
MCL 600.5855
Chapters close ranks. Group chats get deleted. Members are told not to talk. Nationals decline to confirm anything.
If you have spent years being told nobody knows what happened, that may not be the end of your case. It may be the beginning of a different one.
Alcohol — and one thing that surprises people
Michigan’s dram shop law lets you sue a business that sold alcohol to a minor or to someone visibly drunk. It carries two traps: written notice to every defendant within 120 days of hiring a lawyer, and a requirement that the drinker themselves be named as a defendant and kept in the case until it ends.
But that law does not reach a fraternity. It applies to licensed retailers — bars and stores. A chapter that supplied alcohol is reached a different way: through ordinary negligence as a social host, and through the hazing statute itself, which lists being made to consume alcohol as hazing.
How Michigan splits up the blame
Michigan doesn’t make defendants share a total. It assigns each one a percentage, and each pays only their own percentage. Fault also gets assigned to people who were never sued at all — absent chapter members, anyone who contributed — which can reduce what any single defendant ends up paying.
And there is a hard line: if the injured person is found more at fault than everyone else put together, they get reduced economic damages and no compensation at all for pain and suffering.
This is the one place where consent comes back.
In a criminal case it is irrelevant — the statute says so and the Court of Appeals confirmed it. In a civil case, the other side will argue that your son chose to be there, chose to drink, chose to keep going.
That is why what you preserve in the first forty-eight hours should include everything showing pressure — the texts, the threats of being cut, the rules, the punishments — and not only the injury.
MCL 600.5805 · MCL 600.5851 · MCL 600.5855 · MCL 436.1801 · MCL 600.6304 · MCL 600.2959
What hazing does to the body
You don’t need to become a doctor. You need enough to recognise that something is wrong, enough to say the right word at an emergency room desk, and enough to know that what happened has a name.
Below is what turns up in these cases. The two that matter most are written out first. After that, everything else is grouped by what caused it, so you can go straight to the part that fits.
Rhabdomyolysis — the one almost nobody has heard of
Say it out loud once so it stops being frightening: rab-doe-my-OL-uh-sis. In hospitals they just say “rhabdo.”
This is the injury that turns up in hazing case after hazing case. It’s what a Michigan State student was diagnosed with after being made to do calisthenics all night. It’s in matters my own firm is handling right now.
What it is. When muscle is pushed far past its limit — hundreds of squats, endless push-ups, wall sits held until collapse, being beaten, being tied up — the muscle fibres tear apart and dump their contents into the bloodstream. The kidneys try to filter that out. Sometimes they fail.
What actually happens inside. The muscle cell runs out of energy. The pumps that keep its chemistry in order shut down. It swells, calcium floods in, and enzymes start eating the cell membrane from the inside. Once that happens the fibre is gone. It releases a protein called myoglobin into the blood, the kidney filters it, and in the kidney that protein does four destructive things at once — it clogs the tubes, it releases iron that damages tissue, it chokes off the blood supply, and it sets off inflammation.
Here is the part that matters most, and it’s the part nobody explains.
All four of those happen faster and worse when the person is dehydrated.
So when a ritual combines forced exercise with withholding water, that isn’t two separate cruelties. It’s one injury with two halves — and the second half is what takes the kidneys.
What to watch for
- Pain far worse than ordinary soreness. People describe it as their legs being on fire, or not being able to stand the weight of a bedsheet.
- Weakness. Can’t get up off the floor, can’t lift their arms, has to be helped to a car. That isn’t someone being dramatic. It’s muscle that no longer works.
- Dark urine — tea-coloured, cola-coloured, brown. This is the sign families remember. Photograph it. It clears in a few days and then it’s gone.
- Swelling and rock-hard tightness in whatever was worked — thighs, backside, shoulders, forearms.
- Nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, fever, a racing heart.
- Confusion or agitation. That’s a 911 sign, not a sleep-it-off sign.
- Not having urinated since it happened.
Two things that fool people — including doctors
Most patients don’t have all three classic symptoms. Pain shows up in about half of adults; dark urine in only a third to 40%. “He wasn’t complaining that much” has never ruled this out.
It can look fine at first. The blood marker doctors test for doesn’t start rising for two to twelve hours and doesn’t peak for one to five days. Someone who seems okay the morning after can be in serious trouble by the second day.
The clock
In almost every one of these cases, the problem isn’t that the injury happened. It’s that nobody called.
- Right away
- Muscle is already dying. He’s in pain and weak. Blood tests would still look normal.
- 2 to 12 hours
- The blood marker starts to climb. The damage is already reaching the kidneys.
- The first 6 to 12 hours
- This is the window. Fluids started here largely prevent kidney damage. Every hour of waiting turns something reversible into something fixed.
- 12 to 24 hours
- Kidney numbers start to move if the kidneys are failing.
- 1 to 5 days
- The muscle marker peaks.
- 1 to 3 days
- Swelling can trap the blood supply in a limb. This is a surgical emergency — and it often gets worse after the person is admitted, not before.
- 3 to 10 days
- If the kidneys are going to fail, this is when dialysis gets decided.
In plain terms: the difference between a pledge driven to a hospital at 11 p.m. and one “kept an eye on” at the chapter house until noon the next day is often the difference between two days in a bed with normal kidneys and two weeks on dialysis.
Why pledges are the highest-risk group there is
The closest thing to a pledge, medically, is a military recruit — and the military tracks this.
- Recruits in training
- 410 cases per 100,000 people per year
- Everyone else in uniform
- 24 per 100,000
More than thirteen times the rate. Same reasons apply to a pledge: young, newly arrived, not conditioned for what’s being demanded, and under someone who has removed their ability to stop. Under-20s are hit hardest, and three-quarters of cases happen between April and September, when heat is added on top.
There are two things that make hazing exercise more dangerous than hard training. The amount is decided by someone else, not by the person’s own pain — so the body’s natural brake is gone. And it’s usually unfamiliar exercise done by someone out of shape, which is exactly the combination that destroys the most muscle.
There’s also a reason calisthenics get chosen over paddles: they’re free, they need no equipment, they leave no marks that look like a beating, and everyone involved can call it “just working out.”
When drinking is part of it
Alcohol isn’t a bystander here. It damages muscle cells directly, strips out the minerals muscle needs to work, and dehydrates — which is the thing that takes the kidneys. It also numbs the pain that would otherwise make someone stop.
If someone brings up sickle cell trait
You may be told that a young Black man’s sickle cell trait is the real cause, and that this is nobody’s fault.
The largest study — nearly 48,000 Black Army soldiers — found sickle cell trait raised the risk of this injury by about 50%, roughly the same as smoking, and did not raise the risk of dying at all.
Sickle cell trait is real. It is not a reason someone had to keep exercising until they collapsed.
Under Michigan law
Forced calisthenics are written into the statute by name. Where this caused kidney failure needing dialysis, that is loss of a bodily function — the felony level. Where it needed emergency surgery and left permanent nerve damage, that’s the felony level too.
One last thing. If the hospital chart doesn’t say “rhabdomyolysis,” that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Plenty of these get written down as “exhaustion” and “dehydration” because nobody ordered the blood test.
So: if you see dark urine after extreme exercise, a beating, or being tied up — go to an emergency room and say the word “rhabdomyolysis” out loud. You are allowed to. It tells the triage nurse exactly what to check. Ask for a CK and a creatinine, and ask them to write down what time the blood was drawn.
What happens when someone is made to drink
This is what killed Phat Nguyen at Michigan State and Stephen Petz at Ferris State, and it’s what put Kevin Ajluni at a blood alcohol of .242 before the fall that killed him.
It’s about speed, not just amount
Alcohol is absorbed slowly from the stomach and fast from the intestine. How hard it hits depends mostly on how quickly the stomach empties — and that one fact explains why hazing rituals are built the way they are.
- Drinking fast overwhelms the system. A large amount swallowed quickly sits in the stomach until it all moves at once, and then most of it is absorbed together. Measured in the lab, that can push blood alcohol up by nearly 290 mg/dL in an hour.
- Spirits are not the same as beer, and this is the answer to “he only had a few drinks.” Given the exact same amount of alcohol, peak blood levels were 77 for vodka, 62 for wine, and 50 for beer. The same alcohol hits about 54% harder as a shot. Hazing rituals almost always use shots.
- An empty stomach makes it worse. A ritual that involves not eating and then drinking isn’t doing two unrelated things.
Meanwhile the liver clears alcohol at a fixed speed no matter how much is in there — roughly 15 mg/dL an hour. Absorption can outrun that by nearly twenty times. And an 18-year-old who has barely drunk before has none of the tolerance an older drinker has.
What it does to the brain, in order
Alcohol shuts the brain down from the top: judgment first, then balance and speech, then memory — and then the parts that keep you breathing and keep vomit out of your lungs.
That memory stage is why nobody’s story matches. A person in an alcohol blackout can hold a conversation and remember none of it. If your child can’t tell you what happened, that is not them hiding something. It’s a documented effect of the amount they were given.
Alcohol also crashes blood sugar, and it makes the body lose heat while feeling warm — which is how an intoxicated young person left outside in Michigan becomes a hypothermia case.
One thing to watch for in the hospital chart
There are two different ways this gets written down, and they tell opposite stories.
One set of codes describes a poisoning inflicted by another person. The other set describes a patient’s own drinking problem.
Hospitals very often use the second. It isn’t malice — it’s the fastest box to tick. But it reframes a young man who was ordered to drink until he blacked out as a young man with an alcohol habit, and the other side will use it exactly that way.
Say clearly, at the desk and to every doctor: he was made to drink this. It was not his choice. Then get the records and read what they wrote.
Two numbers you’ll see quoted that I won’t repeat
You will find websites saying that 69%, or 82%, or 96% of hazing deaths involve alcohol. Those numbers can’t be traced to anybody’s actual count. They appear in three different versions on aggregator sites, and the main national database of hazing deaths publishes no such percentage at all.
What’s true is simpler and stronger: alcohol is documented in case after case, including nearly every one in Michigan — Nguyen, Petz, Ajluni, Cantor, Broderick, and most of the campus findings.
Similarly, you’ll see “55% of college students are hazed.” The real figure is 55% of students who join a club, team or organization — from a survey of 11,482 students at 53 schools. Still enormous. Just not what people say it is.
Everything else, by what caused it
From being made to drink
Breathing slows and the airway stops protecting itself
The stage between “passed out” and dying. The reflexes that keep vomit out of the lungs switch off before breathing stops. This is why an unconscious person is put on their side and never left alone, and why “we put him to bed” appears in so many of these files.
Under Michigan law: if a machine had to breathe for him, that is loss of a bodily function — the felony level.
Vomit in the lungs
Not just choking. Stomach acid chemically burns lung tissue, and over the following days that can turn into full respiratory failure needing a ventilator.
Brain damage from lack of oxygen
When breathing stops, the brain starves. This is the injury that turns a survivable night into a lifelong one.
One caution: you may be told this kind of brain injury is always worse than a blow to the head. The research is genuinely split on that, and anyone who states it as settled fact will be contradicted.
Blood sugar collapse, acid build-up and dangerous cold
Alcohol stops the liver making sugar, which is worse in a young person who hasn’t eaten. It also builds up acid in the blood and makes the body shed heat.
Death from alcohol poisoning
Michigan: Phat Nguyen at Michigan State, 2021. Stephen Petz at Ferris State, 1999.
Under Michigan law: the top level. A felony, up to 15 years.
From being made to drink water
Water intoxication
Forcing someone to drink large amounts of water dilutes the salt in their blood, and that kills people. Forced water is not a gentler ritual than forced alcohol. It is a different way to make a brain swell.
Brain swelling from low blood salt
Where water intoxication goes when it goes wrong. The brain swells inside a skull that can’t expand — headache, confusion, seizures, and then it becomes life-threatening.
Brain damage from correcting the problem too quickly
Bringing blood salt back up too fast can itself cause a devastating brain injury. It raises a genuinely unsettled legal question in Michigan — whether a mistake in treatment breaks the chain of responsibility, or whether it stays with whoever caused the emergency in the first place. There is no clear Michigan answer yet.
From being hit, paddled or restrained
Deep bruising and bleeding from paddling
The most common physical hazing injury there is. It looks like a bruise, which is exactly why it gets underestimated.
What matters isn’t the bruise. It’s what the beating set off underneath — muscle breakdown, kidney damage, trapped blood supply, infection, fracture. Those are the next four entries, and they are the reason a paddling case is a real case.
Muscle breakdown from being beaten
Same mechanism as rhabdomyolysis, arriving by blunt force instead of exercise. Where a pledge was both beaten and made to exercise, it’s both at once.
Trapped blood supply in a limb (compartment syndrome)
A surgical emergency. Swelling inside a muscle cuts off its own blood. The warning sign is pain far worse than the injury should cause, especially when the limb is moved.
The trap: it often gets worse after the person is admitted and given fluids — so the limb can be tightest hours into the hospital stay, not on arrival. If the pain is escalating in hospital, say so loudly.
Flesh-destroying infection after a beating
Damaged tissue can get infected in a way that spreads through the body fast. It is fatal without emergency surgery.
Concussion and lasting symptoms afterward
Symptoms can appear hours or days later, not immediately.
Under Michigan law: reaches the felony level as “measurable brain impairment” where testing documents it. The key word is measurable — which means someone has to actually do the testing.
Bleeding on the brain
Michigan: this is what killed Kevin Ajluni — skull fracture and a brain bleed after a fall at a fraternity event, with a blood alcohol of .242.
Under Michigan law: the statute names this injury by name in its felony list. One of the few it matches word for word.
Torn wiring inside the brain
Rotational force shears the connections between parts of the brain. Often invisible on the first CT scan, which is why people get sent home.
Torn spleen or liver
The bleeding can be delayed by days. Pain in the left shoulder or upper-left belly after being struck is not “just a bruise.” A spleen can rupture after someone has already been sent home.
Under Michigan law: losing an organ is on the felony list — and losing a spleen is a lifelong change to the immune system, not a one-time surgery.
A torn bowel, and the infection that follows
Blunt force to the abdomen can perforate the intestine, spilling contents into the belly and causing overwhelming infection.
Skull fractures, broken bones, facial and dental injuries
If a tooth is knocked out, this is worth knowing tonight: the tissue that lets a tooth be put back dies within 30 to 60 minutes. Put the tooth in milk, not water — water damages it — and get to a dentist or an emergency room immediately.
Under Michigan law: “a skull fracture or other serious bone fracture” is named in the felony list. Garret Drogosch’s own injury — a leg broken in two places — is that category. The law is named after a fracture.
A second head injury before the first has healed
Catastrophic brain swelling that happens when someone takes a second blow while still concussed. It mostly affects teenagers and young adults, and it is frequently fatal. There is no such thing as a minor second head injury.
Testicular injury from blows to the groin
Severe blunt force can rupture a testicle. It is a surgical emergency and delay costs the organ.
Kidney injury from blows to the back
Strikes to the flank can bruise or tear a kidney. Blood in the urine after being hit in the back needs a hospital, not ice.
From being made to exercise, or left in heat or cold
Heat stroke with organ failure
Core temperature climbs past what the body can shed. Cooling comes before everything else — before transport, before anything.
Under Michigan law: the athletic exception only covers activities that are normal and customary in a program the school actually sanctions. A 5 a.m. pledge workout is neither.
Permanently losing the ability to handle heat
A real, permanent injury. Some people who survive heat stroke never regulate their body temperature properly again — which ends athletic careers and outdoor work.
Under Michigan law: temperature regulation is a bodily function. Losing it reaches the felony level.
Collapse in someone with sickle cell trait
Discussed above. It raises risk by about half. It does not raise the risk of dying, and it is not an excuse.
Cardiac arrest during forced exercise
A young, healthy heart can stop under extreme exertion, especially combined with heat, alcohol or an undiagnosed condition.
Under Michigan law: the death level — a 15-year felony.
Potassium released from destroyed muscle stopping the heart
Muscle that breaks down dumps potassium into the blood, and potassium stops hearts. This is how muscle breakdown kills before the kidneys ever fail.
Dangerous cold, indoors or out
Core temperature dropping to a dangerous level. Alcohol is a leading contributor in young adults because it opens up the blood vessels in the skin and shuts down shivering. And the person often can’t recognise their own danger — confusion is a symptom, and so is taking clothes off.
Under Michigan law: “exposure to the elements” is written into the statute. Michigan State’s own 2026 finding — new members made to spend a night outdoors at the rock — is this exact thing.
Frostbite and lost tissue
Under Michigan law: this is where the statute is most precise. Its felony list names loss of a limb, a foot, a hand, a finger or a thumb — exactly what frostbite destroys.
Drowning and near-drowning
Cold water triggers an involuntary gasp within seconds of going in. A strong swimmer can drown in water they could otherwise handle, because the first breath is taken underwater and is not a choice.
From being held down, tied, wrapped or confined
Suffocating because of the position they were left in
Nothing covers the airway. The body position alone stops them breathing. This is the mechanism behind “we just left him there.”
Suffocation from restraint, wrapping, taping or being shut in
Under Michigan law: “confinement in a small space” is named in the statute. Blindfolding and transport rituals — which show up repeatedly in Michigan’s campus findings — sit right next to this.
Strangulation
Losing consciousness from strangulation is a marker of serious injury even with no mark on the neck, and it carries a risk of stroke days later. Anyone who was choked to the point of blacking out needs to be seen.
Coma and states of reduced consciousness
Under Michigan law: this is the injury the statute is most precisely drawn for. Its felony list names “a comatose state that lasts for more than 3 days” outright.
Brain death
Under Michigan law: the death level. 15 years.
From burns, branding, chemicals and shocks
Branding
Not a tattoo and not a scar — a deliberate third-degree burn. It destroys skin all the way through, including the nerve endings, which is why it can hurt less in the moment than a lesser burn and why it never heals normally.
Under Michigan law: “branding” is named in the statute as physical brutality.
Permanent scarring and disfigurement
Disfigurement is its own injury, separate from whatever caused it.
Under Michigan law: “serious visible disfigurement” is on the felony list by name.
Swallowing something corrosive
A corrosive burns the food pipe, which then scars and narrows. The consequence is a lifetime of repeated procedures to keep it open.
Under Michigan law: swallowing is a bodily function. Losing it reaches the felony level.
Chemical burns to skin and genitals
Under Michigan law: “placing of a harmful substance on the body” is written into the statute.
Chemicals in the eyes
An emergency measured in seconds. Flush the eye with water immediately and keep flushing — before transport, before assessment, before anything. That is what saves sight. Alkalis (drain cleaner, lye, bleach-type products) are worse than acids because they keep burning deeper.
Under Michigan law: loss of an eye, or loss of the use of an eye, is on the felony list.
Electric shock
The visible burn is the least of it. Current travels through the body and can destroy deep muscle, throw the heart out of rhythm, and injure nerves with almost nothing to see on the skin.
Under Michigan law: “electronic shocking” is named in the statute.
From being made to eat or swallow things
A tear where the food pipe meets the stomach
Caused by violent, repeated vomiting — which is what forced drinking and forced eating produce. It bleeds.
A rupture right through the food pipe
The force of vomiting tears the food pipe open, spilling stomach contents into the chest. Historically one of the deadliest emergencies in medicine, and frequently missed, because it looks like chest pain in a young person who has been drinking.
Choking on food or vomit during forced eating
Material forced down and then breathed in. Same lung damage as with alcohol, without any alcohol involved.
Nicotine poisoning from forced tobacco or pouches
Michigan: the University of Michigan published a finding against Theta Xi for servitude and nicotine on demand — with a member made ill from tobacco.
Being made to swallow things that aren’t food
Petrol and other fuels, detergents, urine, animal products, live animals, concentrated chilli, spoiled food.
Michigan: Central Michigan’s Chi Phi finding involved a puzzle rigged with missing pieces so that pledges had to drink; Michigan’s Kappa Sigma finding involved chili peppers or alcohol for wrong answers.
Swallowed objects blocking or tearing the gut, and choking
Objects forced down can block or perforate the intestine, or lodge in the airway.
A severe allergic reaction to something they were made to eat
If the organization knew about the allergy, this stops being carelessness. Save every document where the allergy was disclosed — the membership form, the medical form, the group chat where someone mentioned it.
From being kept awake
What no sleep does to thinking
Attention, memory and judgment measurably fall apart.
Michigan: a Michigan State student alleges he was made to do calisthenics all night with no sleep.
Under Michigan law: “sleep deprivation” is written into the statute by name.
Losing touch with reality from being kept awake
Sustained forced wakefulness can cause hallucinations and psychosis in someone with no history of mental illness whatsoever.
Michigan: the same Michigan State student alleges hearing voices, and being diagnosed with altered mental status.
How no sleep makes everything else worse
This is the multiplier. Sleep deprivation deepens alcohol’s effect on breathing, drains the fuel muscles need, wrecks the body’s ability to handle heat and cold, and blunts the person’s own ability to notice they are in trouble and say so.
The car crash afterward
Michigan, twice. Eric Fillyaw, an Eastern Michigan pledge, was killed in a car accident after leaving a chapter event — the fraternity got two years’ probation for it. And Bailey Broderick was killed by a drunk Sigma Chi pledge who was out on pledge duties.
If anyone tells you the harm ended when the pledge walked out the door, those two Michigan deaths are the answer.
Sexual violence and forced nudity
If this is what happened, RAINN’s line is 800-656-HOPE (4673) — free, confidential, any hour. You do not have to have decided anything to call it.
Internal injury from penetration or inserted objects
Needs immediate medical attention even where there is no visible bleeding.
Permanent damage to bowel control
An injury survivors almost never disclose, and one that changes work, relationships and dignity for life.
Under Michigan law: continence is a bodily function. Losing it reaches the felony level.
Genital injury from forced acts, chemicals or blows
Infection risk, and the medication that has to start fast
Preventive medication after a sexual assault has to begin within hours, not days. If that applies here, that alone is a reason to go to an emergency room tonight, whatever else you have or haven’t decided.
Lasting trauma and sexual difficulty afterward
Both are common, both are treatable, and neither means anything is permanently wrong with the person it happened to.
Forced nudity and sexual humiliation — including of young men
This runs straight through Michigan’s record. The University of Michigan case where six organizations were found responsible over lap dances required of new members. Michigan’s men’s water polo finding. And the 1993 Michigan State band lawsuit, where veterans exposed themselves and coerced newcomers.
And here is the hard part. Every one of those falls outside Michigan’s criminal hazing statute, because the statute requires danger to physical health. The injury is real. The school found it happened. The criminal law does not reach it. A civil case does.
One more thing, because men in particular are told otherwise: being made to strip, or to perform sexually, in front of people you wanted to belong to is a sexual assault, and what you feel afterward is not an overreaction.
What it does afterward
This is the part people skip, and it’s the part that lasts longest.
Hazing isn’t only an injury. It’s an injury delivered by people you chose, who you wanted to belong to, in a group you were proud to be joining. That combination does something particular. It doesn’t just hurt. It changes how a person decides who is safe.
Things survivors describe, that they think only they feel
- “I should have said no.” Almost everyone says this. Michigan law says the opposite — your consent did not make it lawful.
- Shame that outlasts the injury. The body heals faster than this does.
- Still feeling loyal to the people who hurt you. That is not weakness and it is not stupidity. It is exactly what the process was built to produce.
- Grief for the friendship you thought you were getting. Real, and almost never said out loud.
- Not being believed, or being told to move on.
- Retaliation — from the chapter, from mutual friends, sometimes from a whole campus.
Signs that matter
Trouble sleeping · nightmares or flashbacks · panic · avoiding places, people, or campus altogether · numbness, or feeling far away from themselves · anger out of nowhere · drinking or using to sleep or to stop thinking · pulling away from people who love them · talking about being a burden · giving things away · sudden calm after a long low stretch.
Those last three are suicide warning signs. If you see them, ask directly, and stay. Call or text 988.
Asking someone plainly whether they are thinking about killing themselves does not put the idea in their head. It is one of the most protective things one person can do for another.
It does get better, and that isn’t a platitude
Trauma treatment works, and there are specific, well-studied therapies for exactly this. People who couldn’t walk across their own campus have gone back, finished, graduated and built lives — not by “getting over it,” but by getting real treatment from someone who knows this territory.
When you look for a therapist, ask for “trauma-informed” or “trauma-focused” care. That one phrase changes what you get.
The VA publishes a free treatment decision aid that walks you through each therapy and builds a comparison, and a guide to what to ask a trauma therapist before you hire them. Both are free and neither requires any military connection.
How Michigan law treats psychological injury
Michigan’s felony level turns on “serious impairment of a body function,” and the list of what counts includes “measurable brain or mental impairment.”
That is the doorway through which psychological injury reaches the felony level in Michigan. Plenty of states have nothing like it.
The word doing the work is measurable, and it’s an instruction as much as a definition. A diagnosis written in a chart is a start. Formal testing that produces actual numbers is what satisfies it. If this applies to your child, ask about neuropsychological testing early, not eventually.
What shows up afterward
Acute stress in the first month
The first four weeks have their own diagnosis, and it is not just “being upset.” Treating it early materially changes whether it turns into PTSD. This is the most important month there is, and it is the month most people spend deciding whether they’re overreacting.
PTSD
PTSD after hazing has something PTSD after a car crash doesn’t: it was done by people your child picked, wanted, and trusted, inside an institution that was supposed to be safe. That shapes the symptoms and it shapes recovery.
Under Michigan law: it can reach the felony level through “measurable mental impairment” — but the underlying conduct still has to be the kind the statute covers. A civil case has no such limit.
Trauma from something that went on for months
Where the harm was repeated over a long stretch rather than one night — which describes a pledge semester exactly. It tends to affect a person’s sense of who they are, not just their memory of an event.
Suicidal thinking, and suicide
Michigan: Matt Epling was 14. He was held down, had eggs smashed on him and syrup poured on him by high schoolers on the last day of eighth grade, and he died by suicide. His death produced a Michigan law.
Under Michigan law: this is the strongest psychological claim there is — the felony level through measurable impairment for someone who survives.
If you are reading this about yourself: 988. Call or text. Right now, before you finish this page.
Drinking or using afterward
Two things happen here that have nothing to do with anyone’s character. The hazing itself introduced the substance and the quantity. And treating the physical injuries it caused can start someone on prescription painkillers.
If your child is drinking differently since it happened, that is a symptom of the injury, not a separate failing.
What happens to someone who was made to do it to somebody else
Some of the most damaged people in a hazing case were coerced into hurting the person below them, or watched and did nothing. That has a name, it’s real, and it’s one of the least discussed injuries in this whole area.
If that’s you: you were also inside the same machine, and you are allowed to get help.
When the school makes it worse
There is a specific additional harm when the institution that was supposed to protect you minimises it, drags it out, or protects the organization instead. It is associated with worse outcomes, and survivors describe it as a second injury on top of the first.
What it explains is why families are often angrier at the university than at the boys.
What a brain scan can and cannot show
Families sometimes ask whether an MRI can prove hazing changed their child’s brain.
The honest answer is no, and pushing for one can backfire. The differences that show up on scans in trauma survivors are far too small to say anything about one individual. Worse, studies of identical twins suggest those differences often exist beforehand — so a scan can be turned around and used to argue that whatever is there predated the hazing.
There is a much better way to prove it, and it’s the next one.
School falling apart — and the record that proves it
A GPA that falls off a cliff in the semester it happened. A withdrawal. A leave of absence. Switching out of a hard major. A degree delayed or abandoned.
The transcript is the strongest proof of “measurable” impairment there is. It’s objective, it was created by somebody else, it was written down at the time — and it is already sitting in the university’s own files. It costs nothing to request.
Beyond the case, this is also often the largest actual loss. A young person who doesn’t finish the degree they were on track for carries that for forty years of earnings.
Why hazing happens at all, and why decent people take part
Everything survivors describe at the top of this section — the loyalty, the reluctance to report, the sense of having agreed — is the intended output of a process, not a flaw in your child.
Groups that make membership painful produce members who value it more and defend it harder. That is why the people who went through it hardest are often the ones most opposed to changing it, and why “why didn’t he just leave” is the wrong question.
Shame and damage to how someone sees themselves
Humiliation is not a lesser injury than a beating. It is a different injury with its own path and its own permanence. This is the answer to “it was just embarrassing.”
Anxiety, and never joining anything again
One of the cruellest outcomes: a young person who joined because they wanted to belong somewhere ends up unable to join anything, ever.
Under Michigan law: these conditions have proper measurement tools, which makes them unusually well suited to satisfying the word measurable.
The people around the person it happened to
The ones who watched
The other pledges. The roommate who found him. The member who tried to stop it and got overruled. These people are injured too, and they are almost never counted, treated or compensated.
Three pledges besides Phat Nguyen were taken to Sparrow Hospital that same night. They lived. They were there.
Grief after a hazing death
Grief that stays severe for a long time is a recognised condition, not a failure to cope. And grief after a hazing death carries things ordinary bereavement doesn’t: it was preventable, it was done to them, there is usually a public process, and there is often an organization actively minimising it.
Bailey Broderick’s mother said it as well as anyone has: “I not only lost my baby, but I also lost my mind.”
The Compassionate Friends — peer support for families after the death of a child, 500+ chapters in all 50 states. 877-969-0010 · compassionatefriends.org
What a wrongful death case is actually made of
Families ask where a number comes from. It isn’t plucked out of the air. It is built from: medical and end-of-life costs; the funeral; what your child consciously suffered before they died; the earnings and the help around the house they would have provided over a lifetime; and the loss of their company for each family member the law recognises. Where the conduct was bad enough, additional damages meant to punish can be added.
In Michigan that total then runs through the way this state splits up blame — which is why the fight over percentages matters as much as the fight over the total.
Every Michigan campus
For each school: what it has published about hazing, what it has found, who died there, and who owns the chapter houses — because that last question often decides whether there is anyone to hold responsible.
These pages change. If a school’s report matters to you, screenshot it the day you find it.
Adrian College
Private · Adrian · roughly 20% of students are in a fraternity or sorority — almost 300 people, by the college’s own count.
- Hazing report
- None found. An independent national database also lists Adrian as having no report, no published policy and no reporting form.
- Policy
- ⛔ The full hazing policy is not public. The student handbook has one paragraph and says the real policy lives in a guide that appears nowhere on the college’s website. What is published is also narrower than federal law — it leaves out athletic teams, performance groups and residence hall communities.
- Something worth knowing
- The fraternity and sorority councils are allowed to run their own judicial boards, which means a chapter can be disciplined without it ever appearing in the Dean of Students’ records.
- 🔑 Who owns the houses
- The college owns all nine. Its own handbook: “All nine sororities and fraternities currently reside in College-owned houses.” Adrian is private, so no immunity and no six-month deadline. The college is the landlord.
- The nine chapters
- Alpha Tau Omega · Pi Kappa Alpha · Sigma Alpha Epsilon · Tau Kappa Epsilon · Theta Chi · Alpha Phi · Alpha Sigma Alpha · Chi Omega · Delta Nu Kappa
Albion College
Private · Albion · 150 years of fraternity and sorority life.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — no findings. “No student organizations have been reported or found in violation of the College’s Anti-Hazing Policy during the three most recent complete academic years.” Read it
- Policy
- One of the strongest in the state. Covers recognised and unrecognised groups, on campus and off. Applies whether or not the person went along with it. States that “the College may treat the hazing action of even one member of a group as constituting hazing by the group.” Reaches study abroad, team travel and online conduct. Requires every member of the community to report, and holds officers personally responsible for allowing it.
- 🔑 Who owns the houses
- Every fraternity has a campus-owned house and every member is required to live in it. Sororities have lodges but members live in dorms. Fraternity row is East Erie Street.
- An oddity
- Sigma Phi Epsilon appears on no Albion council, no chapter page and no current roster — while its housing corporation remains an active registered organization. A live housing entity with no visible chapter is worth asking about.
Alma College
Private · Alma · about 1,400 students, 27% in a fraternity or sorority.
- Hazing report
- ⛔ None published — and Alma’s own federally required security report spells out the obligation in its own words: “Colleges must create a hazing transparency report. This includes a spot on the website that lists which organizations have been found responsible for hazing… including but not limited to clubs, fraternities, sororities, academic interest groups, band, and athletics.”
- Policy
- Strong, and notable for what it rules out: “The implied or expressed consent of any person toward whom an act of hazing is directed is not a defense. Assertions that the conduct or activity was not part of an official organizational event or was not officially sanctioned or approved by the organization are also not a defense.” Extra sanctions apply if an organization refuses to identify who was involved or retaliates against whoever reported it. Alma also states it is required by state law to report hazing to the police.
- Alcohol rules
- “Only Greek houses are allowed to have registered alcohol-related events.” Sober hosts required, events registered in advance with a safety plan, BYOB only, no hard liquor, six drinks maximum per person, capped at 100 people and four hours.
- 🔑 Who owns the houses
- All ten chapters live in houses marked “College-Owned Housing” on Alma’s own campus map. Sorority row is West Superior Street; fraternity row is West Center Street. Private college — no immunity, no short deadline.
- Prior discipline
- In 2010 Alma disciplined its Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter for violating alcohol and hazing rules and removed it from college housing for the year. That chapter operates today as a local group with no national organization behind it — meaning no national risk-management rules and no outside oversight at all.
- Death
- Sean Murawske, January 2014 — with the caveat that no hazing finding was ever made.
Central Michigan University
Public · Mount Pleasant · 31 chapters.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — ⛔ one organization found responsible. Read it
- The finding
- Chi Phi. Incident February 2024; decided March 2026. What the university found: unrestricted alcohol for new members regardless of age, one instance of which cost a member his job; a 1,000-piece puzzle rigged with only 700 pieces so that pledges would have to keep drinking; required daily video weather reports with penalties for missing one; and carrying progressively heavier rocks, also with penalties. Sanction: probation through Spring 2028.
- Death
- Kevin Ajluni, Phi Sigma Phi, 2018.
- Earlier discipline
- Phi Sigma Phi — suspended August 2018, permanently removed that October, on 14 incidents between 2015 and 2018 and six complaints including hazing, sexual misconduct and assault. Phi Kappa Tau — suspended February 2018 over a new-member scavenger hunt with shots of alcohol in a computer lab. Sigma Lambda Gamma — suspended February 2018. Pi Kappa Phi — suspended November 2017 for hazing at a Big/Little reveal involving bricks, pencils and blindfolds, and for lying to investigators.
- Also on the record
- Eight unrecognised fraternities and one sorority were operating at CMU as of 2019, four of them suspended in the previous two years. Unrecognised does not mean gone.
- 🔑 Who owns the houses
- CMU is public and immune — but the South Main Street houses belong to private chapter entities, not to the university.
Eastern Michigan University
Public · Ypsilanti · 21 chapters.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — no findings for 2024–25. Read it
- Policy
- Cites Garret’s Law directly and adopts the federal definition. Its own definition reaches conduct that may “demean, degrade, or disgrace any person” — so EMU’s policy covers emotional harm even where the criminal statute does not.
- Death
- Eric Scott Fillyaw, Kappa Phi Alpha, 1992 — and the university archive still physically holds the investigation file, including hearing records and police interviews.
- Later
- Kappa Phi Alpha got two years’ probation after Fillyaw’s death, was suspended again in 2009 after more violations, and no longer exists.
Ferris State University
Public · Big Rapids · 23 chapters.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — ⛔ one organization found responsible. Read it
- The finding
- Phi Sigma Kappa. An anonymous TikTok account posted videos of new members in dances and skits, using the word “pledgemaster,” including grinding on objects and acting like animals. Found responsible October 2025. The report records no alcohol or drugs. Sanction: probation plus hazing training.
- Note
- Because there was no alcohol and the conduct was degradation, this one falls outside the criminal statute. It is still a finding and it is still evidence.
- Policy
- Ferris publishes three definitions side by side — federal, Michigan’s statute quoted in full, and its own. Consent is not a defence, employees must report, and the policy expressly covers student organizations, athletic teams, bands and theatre groups.
- Death
- Stephen Petz, 19, 1999. Michigan’s hazing law traces back to a death at this university.
Grand Valley State University
Public · Allendale · 31 chapters, over 1,000 members.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — and Grand Valley goes further than any other school in Michigan. It keeps a standing public register of organizational discipline going back to 2016 — the most complete record any Michigan school publishes. The register · Hazing page
- Five hazing findings
-
- Pi Kappa Phi, Fall 2024 — hazing and alcohol. Registration terminated through at least Fall 2026.
- Rowing Club, Spring 2025 — hazing. Probation and a safety review. A club sport, not a fraternity.
- Theta Chi, Winter 2022 — hazing and alcohol.
- Sigma Phi Epsilon, Fall 2017 — hazing and alcohol. Suspended through Fall 2022.
- Kappa Alpha Psi, Winter 2016 — hazing. Suspension, later reduced.
- Also on the register
- Delta Upsilon, 2016 — “Charter revoked by national organization. Ineligible for return until all former members have graduated.” Sigma Pi appears in four different terms. Alpha Sigma Phi suspended through 2023.
- Policy
- Covers recognised and unrecognised organizations, visitors, volunteers, faculty and staff, on campus, off campus and online, and expressly prohibits sexual coercion. Findings stay public for at least five years.
- 🔑 Who owns the houses
- ⚠️ Grand Valley is public and owns the sorority housing complex at 5050 Pierce Street. Immunity and ownership in the same hands — the hardest combination there is. If your case involves GVSU housing, the six-month deadline is the most urgent thing on this page.
Hillsdale College
Private · Hillsdale · 31% of students in a fraternity or sorority, 7 chapters.
- Hazing report
- None — and none is required. Hillsdale takes no federal funding, so the federal reporting law does not apply to it. Its silence is not non-compliance.
- What that means for you
- There is no federal transparency mechanism here at all. The only routes into what happens at Hillsdale are the courts, local news, and the student newspaper.
Hope College
Private · Holland · 12 chapters.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — no substantiated reports for 2025–26. Read it
- Worth knowing
- Hope runs one of Michigan’s last all-local fraternity and sorority systems. Most of its chapters have no national organization at all — Chi Phi Sigma, Phi Kappa Alpha, Phi Tau Nu, Alpha Gamma Phi, Alpha Phi Zeta, Delta Phi, Kappa Beta Phi, Sigma Iota Beta and Sigma Sigma are all local.
- Why that matters to a family
- A local chapter means no national organization to sue and no national safety rules that were broken — but also no national lawyers and no national insurance standing behind it. The local group and the college carry everything.
Kettering University
Private · Flint · more than 40% of students are in a fraternity or sorority — the highest share in Michigan.
- Hazing report
- ⚠️ Policy published, no findings page found. The policy promises a public report with the organization, the conduct, whether drugs or alcohol were involved, the dates and the sanctions. It covers any group of two or more students whether or not the school recognises it. The policy
- Note
- The highest fraternity participation in the state, and no findings published. That combination is worth a direct question to the university.
Lake Superior State University
Public · Sault Ste. Marie.
- Hazing report
- None found.
- Organizations
- A small system with no fraternity housing. Tau Kappa Epsilon, a local sorority founded in 1997, and one other active chapter.
Lawrence Technological University
Private · Southfield · 11 chapters.
- Hazing report
- None found.
- Note
- Several chapters here are local, with no national organization behind them, and most are registered at the campus address itself.
Michigan State University
Public · East Lansing · 58 chapters, more than 5,000 members.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — ⛔ two organizations found responsible. stophazing.msu.edu
- ⚠️ If you couldn’t find it
- That’s not you. MSU’s report is on a completely separate website, so a search of
msu.edunever turns it up. It isn’t linked from the Dean of Students page, and the student-conduct office’s own hazing resources page returns an error. - The findings
-
- Sigma Tau Gamma — “New members asked to stay a night at the rock and only allowed to leave for class,” with required clothing and items. Probation plus educational sanctions.
- Zeta Sigma Chi Sorority — “Candidates were asked to consent to blindfolds” and to share location tracking, with restrictions. Probation.
- Death
- Phat Anh Nguyen, Pi Alpha Phi, November 2021 — and the appeal that settled Michigan hazing law comes out of this death.
- Lawsuits
- Connor Mui’s federal suit against Lambda Phi Epsilon, its MSU chapter and three named officers. And the 1993 marching band case.
- Also
- Theta Chi — suspended during a hazing investigation, November 2024.
- Worth requesting
- MSU keeps a separate chapter status list going back to 2021 — deeper than federal law requires.
Michigan Technological University
Public · Houghton.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — ⛔ two organizations found responsible. Read it
- Sigma Pi
- Found responsible February 2026. Alcohol and drugs: yes. What the university found: “piss calls” requiring campus walks and karaoke; being dropped off campus with things to memorise; beer games with minors present; recorded pledge tests with drinks as incentives; marijuana-infused baking; blindfolded transport up Mt. Ripley with questioning; and initiation involving blindfolds and mystery buckets. Sanction: a ten-month deferred suspension plus six months’ probation, alcohol-free common areas and restricted social events.
- Husky Pep Band — read this one
- In February 2025 members climbed eleven floors of a campus building carrying their instruments during the Winter Carnival parade and played the fight song at the top. The university found “implicit social pressure” despite an elevator being available, and unauthorised building access with no safety protocols. Sanction: written warning, hazing education, and the tradition eliminated.
- Why the band matters
- A marching band, formally found responsible for hazing, in Michigan. If anyone tells you these laws are about fraternities, that finding is the answer.
Northern Michigan University
Public · Marquette · 5 chapters.
- Hazing report
- None found. There is a published policy and a reporting form, but no findings report.
Northwood University
Private · Midland · 6 chapters.
- Hazing report
- None found.
- Chapters
- Kappa Sigma · Alpha Sigma Phi · Tau Kappa Epsilon · Delta Zeta · Alpha Chi Omega · Alpha Gamma Delta
Oakland University
Public · Rochester Hills.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — no findings. Updated at least twice a year and kept for five years. Read it
- A policy line worth noting
- “Outside organizations initiating hazing incidents on campus render the OU chapter responsible.” That closes the “it was the alumni, not us” excuse on paper.
- Unusually useful
- Oakland publishes cases where an organization was found not responsible, which almost no school does. That still shows a report was made and investigated — which is proof the school knew something.
Saginaw Valley State University
Public · University Center.
- Hazing report
- None found.
- Chapters named
- Phi Kappa Tau · Sigma Pi · Tau Kappa Epsilon · Kappa Alpha Psi · Alpha Phi Alpha · Phi Beta Sigma · Omega Psi Phi, plus sororities.
Siena Heights University
Private · Adrian · 2 chapters — Pi Lambda Phi and Phi Sigma Sigma.
- Hazing report
- None found.
University of Olivet
Private · Olivet · local Greek societies dating to the 1800s.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — no substantiated violations for 2025. Read it
- Policy
- Covers clubs, honour societies, fraternities and sororities, athletic teams and unrecognised groups.
- Reporting
- Anonymous hazing hotline: 269-749-7142. Campus Safety: 269-749-7911.
University of Detroit Mercy
Private · Detroit · 10 chapters.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — ⛔ one organization found responsible. Read it
- The finding
- Kappa Beta Gamma. Concluded October 2025. What the university found, in its own words: “During an off-campus activity, a new member was taken to an isolated area of the city and told they might be left there without transportation or knowledge of how to return.” Sanctions: a warning through May 2026, rewriting its new-member process, a meeting with the Captain of Public Safety, and a written reflection.
- Policy
- Cites Michigan’s statute. Requires hazing education for incoming students, returning students and all employees. Employees and volunteers who suspect hazing must report it immediately. Applies to fraternities, sororities, athletic teams and other organizations “regardless of their own organization policies.”
University of Michigan — Ann Arbor
Public · Ann Arbor · around 60 organizations, 6,000 members.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — ⛔ 22 findings across 20 organizations. By far the largest set at any Michigan school. Covering incidents from September 2025 to March 2026. Read it
- ⚠️ How to actually open it
- The report only exists as a spreadsheet you have to download from a landing page — there is no version you can read on the website — and the dates inside it are stored as raw numbers rather than dates.
- What the university found
-
- Men’s water polo — first-years walked around campus singing at sorority houses in Speedos.
- Women’s gymnastics — new members blindfolded and driven to an off-campus “trivia” event where there was alcohol.
- Theta Xi — servitude, nicotine on demand, a member made ill from tobacco.
- Kappa Omega Alpha — assigned tasks, public singing and hand-holding, led with eyes closed to an undisclosed location.
- Kappa Sigma — chili peppers or alcohol for wrong quiz answers, and demeaning comments.
- Pi Kappa Phi — reported by a parent. Hell Week: tasks, paying for members, and forced alcohol, marijuana and mushrooms.
- Delta Upsilon — early-morning quizzing, cleaning the house, serving at parties, handing over meal-plan logins.
- Theta Delta Chi — derogatory names during a “lineup.”
- Kappa Kappa Gamma — alcohol given to new members on bid day; extreme intoxication.
- Alpha Sigma Phi and Alpha Chi Omega — an event called “Shackles and Champagne”: new members handcuffed together and told to drink.
- Six organizations in one case — Kappa Kappa Gamma, Delta Delta Delta, Tau Kappa Epsilon, Alpha Phi, Sigma Chi and Sigma Kappa. Sororities required new members to receive lap dances from fraternity new members; the fraternities scheduled their new members to give them.
- Four organizations in another — Delta Upsilon, Pi Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Phi and Lambda Chi Alpha. Pledges required to hand over their unlimited meal-plan credentials, which led to theft from dining halls.
- Phi Gamma Nu — older members pressuring new members to drink.
- ⚠️ Errors in the university’s own report
- One entry lists an investigation as starting in 2029 — three years after the incident and after the investigation supposedly ended. Four more show the investigation finishing after the organization was told the outcome. Worth knowing if you are relying on those dates.
- Also on the record
- Alpha Epsilon Pi, February 2024 — a video showed pledges sitting on the ground being hit and kicked by members. The national organization ordered all chapter activity to stop; the university reported it to the national and to the Ann Arbor Police. And in November 2017 the Interfraternity Council shut down all Greek life activities at Michigan amid hazing and sexual misconduct allegations.
- Death
- Courtney Cantor, 19, October 1998. The University settled for $100,000.
- 🔑 Who owns the houses
- The university does not own Greek Row. The houses on Washtenaw, Hill, Tappan and Geddes belong to private corporations holding $2 million to $3.85 million each. The university’s immunity does nothing for them.
University of Michigan — Dearborn
Public · Dearborn.
- Hazing report
- Handled through the University of Michigan system and linked from the main U-M report page. The policy page cites Garret’s Law.
- Chapters
- Include Alpha Phi Alpha, Alpha Psi Lambda, Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Phi Epsilon.
University of Michigan — Flint
Public · Flint · 11 chapters, 200+ members.
- Hazing report
- Handled through the University of Michigan system and linked from the main U-M report page.
Wayne State University
Public · Detroit · 27 national chapters.
- Hazing report
- 🔴 None. Wayne State has not published one.
- What that means
- The federal deadline was December 23, 2025, and Wayne State is more than 225 days past it — with an active fraternity system, off-campus chapter houses, and a university that cites the federal hazing law by name when imposing rules on its own chapters.
- ⚠️ And this
- Wayne State already pays for the software that publishes these reports. Its report page is set up but switched off — the link returns an error code instead of a report. It is the same product Oakland University uses to publish theirs successfully.
- Why it’s here
- If you are choosing a school, or trying to establish what a university knew, you are entitled to know that the public record federal law requires does not exist at this one. Anyone can verify that in thirty seconds.
Western Michigan University
Public · Kalamazoo.
- Hazing report
- ✅ Published — no findings for either 2024–25 or 2025–26, last updated May 2026. Read it · WMU hazing page
- Note
- A national database lists Western Michigan as having no report. It does have one — the link above is live. That database’s own key explains that its mark can also mean a report exists but was judged out of date or incomplete, so it is worth checking the school directly rather than relying on any index.
- Death
- Bailey Broderick, 2021 — killed near Fraternity Village by a drunk Sigma Chi pledge on pledge duties.
- 🔑 Who owns the houses
- ⚠️ Western Michigan is public and owns Fraternity Village. Same difficult combination as Grand Valley — immunity and ownership together, and a six-month deadline.
The rest of Michigan
Beyond the schools above, another fifty or so Michigan colleges are covered by the same federal law. At least 23 Michigan institutions have now published a hazing report.
Published, with no findings
- Calvin University
- “there have not been any hazing reports identified.” Cites Garret’s Law. Read it
- Kalamazoo College
- Publishes federal, state and campus definitions side by side; violations listed as “None.” Read it
- Grand Rapids Community College
- Two reporting periods, zero reports both times.
- Mid Michigan College
- “no hazing incidents reported, no investigations initiated, and no findings of responsibility.”
- Henry Ford College
- “There have been no reportable acts of Hazing at Henry Ford College.” Keeps records seven years — longer than the law requires.
- Baker College
- All campuses, two periods, no reportable incidents.
- Alpena Community College
- “no student organizations had been found responsible.”
- Kalamazoo Valley Community College
- Two periods, no findings.
- Glen Oaks Community College
- ⚠️ Published as a live Google spreadsheet with column headings and no rows. It can be edited at any time and there is no archived copy. If this school matters to your case, screenshot it today.
Policy on the books, report missing
- Macomb Community College
- Policy approved July 2025 — but it promises to publish “annually.” ⚠️ Federal law requires at least twice a year. No report published.
- Alpena Community College
- ⚠️ Its anti-hazing policy is still labelled “Proposed … subject to approval by the Board of Trustees” inside a published 2025 report. Also promises “annually.”
- North Central Michigan College
- The page still says the report “will be available by December 23, 2025” — eight months past that date.
- Cornerstone University
- ⛔ “To review the university’s hazing report, please contact campus safety.” The law requires it be published on the website. Making you ask for it is not publishing it.
- Mott Community College
- ⚠️ Its page titled “Campus Safety Transparency Reporting” contains nothing about hazing at all.
- Oakland Community College
- Full policy covering any group of two or more students whether or not the college recognises it, and minors in college youth programs. Its definition reaches “physical injury, psychological harm, or degradation” — broader than the state criminal statute.
- Spring Arbor University
- Full policy citing Garret’s Law; consent never an excuse. No report found.
- College for Creative Studies
- Policy citing both federal and Michigan law. No report, no zero statement, no data.
- Bay Mills Community College and St. Clair County Community College
- Anti-hazing policies on record; no report found for either.
For context, before you judge any one school
A year after the federal law took effect, only about half of American campuses had published a report at all. Public universities were at 68%; small colleges under 1,000 students at 24%.
Michigan looks like the rest of the country. The gaps here are concentrated in small and religious colleges, exactly as they are nationally. The exception is Wayne State — large, public, and in the group that overwhelmingly complied.
One published error worth correcting
Alpena Community College’s 2025 security report states that “Michigan’s anti-hazing law is located at MCL 750.411h, not MCL 750.411t.”
That is wrong, and the same document contradicts itself twice. Its own policy section correctly cites the hazing law as MCL 750.411t. And its own section on stalking correctly identifies MCL 750.411h as Michigan’s stalking law.
Michigan’s hazing law is MCL 750.411t. If a campus document told you otherwise, that’s why.
How to look up a school’s hazing record
The most useful thing to happen in this area in a generation happened quietly, and most families have never heard of it.
A federal law signed in December 2024 now requires every college that receives federal student aid to publish a public report naming every student organization found responsible for hazing.
What that means for you: there is now a free, official, public record of what a school already knew and when. That used to take a lawsuit to get. Now it’s a web page.
What every report has to contain
- The organization’s name
- The first time federal campus-safety law has ever required naming groups
- A description of what happened
- Including whether alcohol or drugs were involved
- The finding
- What the school decided
- The sanctions
- What the organization got
- Four dates
- When it happened · when the investigation started · when it ended · when the organization was told
It must be updated at least twice a year, show five years of history, and must not identify individual students.
Four things the report will never tell you
This is why families read one and feel let down. The law requires the organization, the conduct, the finding, the sanction and the dates. It does not require — and federal privacy law generally prevents —
- who was hurt, or how many
- what injuries they had
- whether they were hospitalised, and what happened to them
- whether it was referred for prosecution
So the report tells you about the organization and nothing about the human being. That is how the law was written, not a decision your school made. The injury side has to come from the medical records, a court case, a prosecution, or the news.
How to actually use one
- Find it. Every Michigan report I could locate is linked campus by campus above. If it isn’t on the Dean of Students page, try campus police, public safety, Title IX, and student conduct — and check whether the school uses a separate website, the way Michigan State does.
- Screenshot it the day you find it. These are living pages. One Michigan school publishes its report as an editable spreadsheet. Reports get changed, corrected and taken down.
- Read the dates against each other. The gap between when something happened and when the school acted is the school’s response time, in writing, in its own publication.
- Look for the same organization appearing twice. A repeat is proof the school already knew, and that is often the most important fact in a case against an institution.
- Ask for what’s underneath. The report summarises an investigation file that still exists. At a public university, that file may be obtainable under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act.
- Zero is information too. A report showing no findings at a school with an active fraternity system, next to an incident you personally know about, is a gap worth pushing on.
What changes on October 1, 2026
From that date, hazing becomes a reported crime statistic at every college in the country, the same way burglary and assault already are. It will be the first time there has ever been standardised national data on this. Every school listed above will have a number attached to it.
The federal law itself · Clery Center explainer · StopHazing — how to read a report · Federal campus safety database · Look up any campus
The first forty-eight hours
You don’t need a lawyer to start. You need a record.
Evidence in these cases disappears fast — not usually because anyone is destroying it, though that happens, but because group chats delete themselves, bruises fade, phones get wiped, and building entry logs are often overwritten within a week or two. What you capture in the first days usually cannot be recreated later.
Do these seven things
- Get medical care, and say what actually happened. The medical record is the single most important document that will ever exist about this. A vague story produces a vague record. If there was extreme exercise, a beating, or being tied up, ask specifically for a CK and a creatinine, and ask them to note what time the blood was drawn.
- Photograph everything, with dates. Injuries every day as they change — bruises often look worse on day two, three and four. Also the room, the objects, the clothing. And photograph the urine if it’s dark. That colour is gone in a few days.
- Save the phone. Delete nothing. Screenshot GroupMe, Discord, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp and texts — including group chats you’re still in. Back the whole phone up. Every platform has an official export tool: Discord, Snapchat, Google, Apple.
- Write it down while it’s fresh. Times, places, who was there, who said what, who else got hurt. Date every entry and keep adding as things come back.
- Keep everything the school or the organization sends — emails, letters, portal notices, voicemails. Write down the date of every phone call and who you spoke to.
- Write down the witnesses — names, numbers, who saw which part.
- Keep every receipt. Medical, travel, parking, prescriptions, missed work.
What disappears fastest
Some of the most important evidence in these cases is on a one-to-four-week deletion cycle. A written demand that it be preserved, sent immediately, is what stops that clock — and a lawyer can send one the same day, long before anyone decides whether to sue.
- The phones of everyone who was there
- Group chats, timestamps, videos, deleted messages. Devices get wiped, traded and factory reset within days.
- Chapter house cameras and door-entry logs
- Who went in and out, and when. Often overwritten within one to four weeks.
- Photographs of the room and how he was found
- The scene is cleaned within hours.
- Blood and toxicology samples
- Some degrade within days.
- The repeat blood tests for muscle damage
- They rise and fall within days. If they aren’t drawn early, that picture is gone permanently.
- Autopsy tissue and samples
- Discarded on a schedule. Ask in writing that they be kept.
- Receipts, rideshare records, chapter budgets and dues records
- Who bought the alcohol, how much, and whether the organization paid for it.
- The national organization’s safety rules and training records
- These show exactly what the chapter was told about medical emergencies — and therefore what they knew when they waited.
- Past complaints, past discipline, past ambulance calls to that address
- This is how you show the school or the organization already knew.
- The school’s investigation file and any police report
- Statements taken while everyone’s memory was fresh.
Records you have a right to ask for
- Medical records. Federal law gives every patient the right to their own records within 30 days — the rule. If a hospital refuses, delays, or overcharges, you can complain to the federal government at 1-800-368-1019.
- School discipline records. A student has the right to inspect their own education records, including conduct files — the rule. Ask the registrar or dean of students in writing. If they refuse, you can file a complaint.
- Public records. At a Michigan public university, campus police reports and many university records can be requested under the Freedom of Information Act — including past complaints about the same organization. That is often the single best evidence, and it is usually cheap.
- The school’s hazing report. Free, public, and often already proof the school knew. See above.
- The annual security report. Every college taking federal aid must publish one by October 1 each year and give a copy to anyone who asks.
On reporting — your call, not mine
There is no single right answer, and anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t being straight with you. Reporting can bring accountability. It can also bring retaliation. You are allowed to weigh that.
What I’d say is: document first, decide second. Documenting keeps every door open and closes none.
Two things to know before you do report. Anonymous isn’t always anonymous in practice — if only three people know a detail, the detail identifies you. Ask directly what gets shared and with whom. And retaliation is common — from the chapter, from mutual friends, sometimes from the campus itself. Document retaliation exactly the way you documented everything else. It is frequently actionable on its own.
Where you can report: 911 or local police for a crime · campus police, whose reports at a public university are often public records · the Dean of Students or student conduct office · the Title IX office if sexual conduct was involved · the national fraternity or sorority headquarters, which is separate from the school and can close a chapter on its own · and the Anti-Hazing Hotline, 1-888-NOT-HAZE, which is anonymous and is funded by the fraternity industry.
And there is a clock
Every Michigan deadline is here. If a Michigan public university had any part in this — and statistically it probably did — treat the deadline as six months and talk to someone this week. Anyone. Including a free legal aid line.
If someone you love was hurt
If you’re a parent, a sibling, a partner, a friend — you are hurt too. That’s allowed, and it takes nothing away from them.
The first sixty seconds
Believe them the first time. Most people test the water with a partial version, to see how it lands. What you say in the first minute decides whether you ever get the rest of it.
Say: I believe you. This wasn’t your fault. I’m glad you told me. What do you need?
Try not to say: Why didn’t you just leave? · Why didn’t you call me? · What were you thinking? · Let’s not tell anyone. Even asked out of love, those land as blame.
Let them keep some control. Control is what was taken from them. Give choices wherever you can — who to tell, when to report, which doctor. Where safety is at stake, decide as the parent and say plainly that you are.
Watch the quiet ones. Going silent is not the same as getting better.
Get your own support. You cannot carry someone while you’re drowning. That isn’t indulgent. It’s logistics.
The wall you hit when they turn eighteen
If your child is eighteen or older, you have no automatic right to their medical records or their school discipline records — even as their parent, even paying the tuition. Hospitals are bound by one federal privacy law and schools by another.
It’s fixable, and it’s far easier to fix before a crisis than during one. Your adult child can sign a medical release and a school records release naming you. Many families also do a healthcare power of attorney. Ask the hospital and the registrar for their forms.
If nothing has happened to your family and you’re reading this anyway — do it this month.
If you’ve lost someone
I’m not going to tell you it gets better on a schedule, or that anything makes it make sense.
What other families say is that the loneliest part was believing nobody else had lived it — and that finding one person who had was the first thing that helped. Several of the organizations below were started by parents who lost a child to hazing. They know exactly what this is.
- The Compassionate Friends
- Peer support after the death of a child, any age, any cause. Over 500 chapters in all 50 states. 877-969-0010 · compassionatefriends.org
- Anti-Hazing Coalition
- Founded by parents whose sons died from hazing. antihazingcoalition.org
- “Love, Mom and Dad”
- Parents who lost children to hazing speak at colleges and high schools. Hazing Prevention Network
- StopHazing
- The research group behind the national study of student hazing. stophazing.org
- Clery Center
- Campus safety nonprofit. (484) 580-8754 · clerycenter.org
- VictimConnect
- Confidential referral line for victims of any crime. 1-855-484-2846, call or text.
- Crime victim compensation
- Michigan, like every state, has a fund that can reimburse medical bills, counselling and lost wages. It usually requires a police report filed within a short window, so ask early. More here
Two things worth holding onto
Most people never report it. The overwhelming majority of students who are hazed never tell anyone official, and the most common reason they give is not wanting to get the group in trouble. If your child stayed quiet, they did the statistically normal thing. It was not weakness.
And it is far more common than anyone admits. Fraternities and sororities, athletic teams, marching bands, corps of cadets, club sports, high schools. In Michigan’s own record, 19 of the 43 organizations named are not fraternities or sororities at all.
Choosing a lawyer — including whether it should be me
Seven questions to ask anyone
- Have you handled hazing cases specifically? Not just injury cases — hazing. Ask which ones and what happened in them.
- Who will actually work on this, and who will I talk to?
- How does the fee work? Most injury firms take a percentage of any recovery and nothing if there isn’t one. Ask for the percentage in writing. Then ask separately who pays the case expenses if you lose. Those are two different questions, and usually only the first one gets answered.
- What is my deadline? A competent lawyer answers this immediately. In Michigan, if a public university is involved, the honest answer starts with six months.
- Who can be held responsible? If the answer is only “the boys who did it,” keep looking.
- What will this ask of my family, and for how long?
- What are the weaknesses in my case? Be wary of anyone who says there are none.
What an honest lawyer will tell you
Litigation is slow, and it can be hard on a family. Depositions are unpleasant. Not every case should be filed. Anyone who promises you an outcome or a number in a first meeting is telling you something they cannot possibly know yet.
If you’re also worried about your own exposure
Some people who were hurt were also present when others were hazed, or took part before it happened to them. If that’s you: be careful about talking to school investigators, the chapter’s lawyer or an insurance company before you have someone of your own. Their lawyer is not your lawyer.
This is common. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes your situation more complicated, which is precisely why you need someone in your corner.
And remember: Michigan’s hazing statute cannot be used to prosecute the person who was hazed, no matter what they agreed to.
If you can’t afford a lawyer
The State Bar of Michigan’s lawyer referral service and Michigan legal aid organizations can help, and many lawyers offer free consultations. Crime victim compensation can cover medical bills, counselling and lost wages. Most of those programs need a police report filed quickly, so ask early.
Common questions
Is consent a defense to hazing in Michigan?
No. The statute says it is not a defense that the person hazed consented or went along with it, and the Court of Appeals confirmed that in 2025. The statute also says the person who was hazed cannot be prosecuted under it, regardless of what they agreed to.
Consent does come back in a civil case, in the form of an argument about shared fault — explained at how Michigan splits up the blame.
How long do I have to sue?
Three years for injury or death, two years for assault and battery. But if a Michigan public university is involved, you must file a sworn written notice within six months, and the case goes to a special court. If the person was under 18 when it happened, they have one year after their eighteenth birthday.
Can we sue the fraternity if it isn’t a company?
Yes. Michigan law lets an unincorporated association with a distinguishing name be sued in its own name. And the separate corporation that owns the house is an additional defendant — usually the one with the money.
Does the law cover athletic teams and marching bands?
Yes, by name. Michigan campuses have published hazing findings against a men’s water polo team, a women’s gymnastics team, a pep band and a rowing club.
Does it apply to middle school and high school?
Yes, and the felony penalties apply there too. The law is named after a twelve-year-old.
Is what happened to me even a crime?
Maybe not — and that does not mean it wasn’t real. Michigan’s statute only reaches conduct that endangers physical health or safety. Of 35 hazing findings at Michigan schools, 13 describe conduct the criminal law can’t reach. All 13 could still support a civil case. See when hazing isn’t a crime.
Can we sue a Michigan public university?
It’s much harder than suing a private college — immunity, a special court, and a six-month sworn notice. The chapter, the house corporation, the national organization and the property owner have none of those protections. See the six-month deadline.
What is rhabdomyolysis?
Muscle pushed past its limit breaks down and poisons the blood, and the kidneys can fail trying to filter it. Watch for pain far worse than soreness, weakness, and dark tea-coloured or cola-coloured urine. If you see that after extreme exercise, a beating or being restrained, go to an emergency room and say the word out loud. Full detail here.
Do I have to report it before I can bring a case?
No. Reporting and suing are separate decisions and you control both. Document first, decide second.
The school says there are no findings. Does that mean nothing happened?
No. Discipline records are private by law, these reports list organizations rather than injuries, and reports get filed in places nobody would think to look. And one large Michigan public university, Wayne State, has published no report at all.
You’re a Texas firm. Why would a Michigan family call you?
Fair question. We take hazing cases nationwide, and Michigan cases are handled with Michigan co-counsel in our network who are admitted and practising there. If the right answer for you is a Michigan firm we have no relationship with, I’ll tell you that on the phone. More at about my firm.
About my firm
I’ve spent this whole page telling you to check things yourself. So here is what you can check about me.
What you can verify
- Ralph Peter Manginello — founding attorney
- Texas Bar Card No. 24007597 · licensed since — 27 years · also admitted in New York · admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas · law degree from South Texas College of Law Houston, 1998 · speaks Spanish. All of that is on the State Bar of Texas public record.
- Lupe Eleno Peña — attorney
- Texas Bar Card No. 24084332 · licensed since · the State Bar records his status as “No Public Disciplinary History” · law degree from South Texas College of Law Houston, 2012 · fluent Spanish · spent the first part of his career at a national insurance defence firm before switching sides. He knows how insurers value these cases because he used to do it.
- The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — Attorney911
- 1177 West Loop South, Suite 1600, Houston, Texas 77027 · 713-528-9070 · contingency fee, free consultation · 4.9 stars from 296 Google reviews.
The hazing cases we’re handling
All three are in Texas. I’m listing them so you can see what we actually do, not because they’re Michigan.
- Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity, Inc. — Harris County, Texas
- Thirteen defendants, including the University of Houston, its Board of Regents, the national organization, the local chapter, its housing corporation, and eight current or former members — among them the chapter president, the pledge master and the risk management officer. What we allege: hundreds of push-ups, squats and wall sits performed blindfolded; being made to continue after collapsing; being sprayed in the face with a water hose; being made to eat until he vomited; sleep deprivation. What happened to him: rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure, brown urine, and losing the ability to stand or walk unaided. Covered by all five Houston network affiliates, public radio, the campus paper and the national fraternity trade press.
- Wang v. Omega Phi Gamma — Harris County, Texas
- Filed by Lupe Peña with me as co-counsel. Independently confirmed by the University of Houston’s own hazing report, which records a formal finding against the organization for Fall 2025, all six charged violations found “In Violation,” and the chapter suspended through Fall 2030.
- Thomson & Camp v. Phi Kappa Sigma — Erath County, Texas
- Two plaintiffs. Injuries pleaded as “severe psychological and physical injuries including hospitalization for rhabdomyolysis.” Independently confirmed by Tarleton State University’s own hazing report, which lists the chapter for Spring 2026 and records no other findings in the period.
What I’m not going to tell you
- Those three cases are ongoing. None of them has produced a verdict or a settlement. If you ever see a dollar figure next to a lawyer’s name, ask whether that’s money recovered or money asked for. In these, it’s money asked for.
- I didn’t shut down a fraternity by suing it. In the Bermudez case, Pi Kappa Phi’s national office suspended the chapter the same day our client’s mother took him to hospital, and the chapter voted to surrender its charter eight days later. The lawsuit came after both. What the lawsuit did was put what happened on the permanent public record. That is worth a great deal. It isn’t the same as closing the chapter.
- I’m not licensed in Michigan. Texas and New York. Michigan cases are handled with Michigan co-counsel in our network, admitted and practising there. That’s how national practices work, and you should know it before you call rather than after.
- Nothing here predicts what would happen in your case. Every case described on this page is somebody else’s.
Why I put all this in one place
Because families arrive at my office already behind. They’ve spent months working out what a hazing report is, that a six-month deadline existed and has now gone, that the dark urine meant something, that Michigan wrote consent out of the law back in 2004.
Every one of those things was public the entire time. It was just scattered, technical, and nowhere near anything else.
If you walk into your first meeting — with me or with anybody — already knowing this, you will ask better questions and you will be harder to brush off. That’s the point.
And if you never call: I hope you found the number you needed somewhere above.
The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — Attorney911
1177 West Loop South, Suite 1600, Houston, Texas 77027
713-528-9070 · free consultation · no fee unless we win · English and Spanish
Michigan cases handled with Michigan co-counsel.
Sources
Michigan law is quoted from the enacted text at the Michigan Legislature. Campus findings are quoted from each school’s own published report. Financial figures come from public IRS filings. Medical information comes from the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine and peer-reviewed literature.
Laws change and web pages move. Everything below is linked so you can check the current version yourself — and if you’re relying on a campus report, screenshot it.
Michigan law
- MCL 750.411t — Garret’s Law
- The Legislature’s analysis of the bill that became Garret’s Law
- The 2025 Court of Appeals decision upholding it
- MCL 600.2051 — suing an unincorporated association
- MCL 691.1401 and MCL 691.1407 — government immunity
- MCL 600.6419 and MCL 600.6431 — the Court of Claims and the six-month notice
- MCL 600.5805 · MCL 600.5851 · MCL 600.5855 — deadlines, minors, and concealment
- MCL 436.1801 — alcohol liability
- MCL 600.6304 and MCL 600.2959 — how fault is divided
- The federal Stop Campus Hazing Act
Medical information you can read yourself
These are the patient pages your own doctors use.
- Rhabdomyolysis · the CK blood test · the myoglobin urine test
- Acute kidney failure · kidney failure and dialysis
- Compartment syndrome · the clinical chapter on it
- Alcohol overdose — the signs · alcohol poisoning
- Low blood sodium · breathing vomit into the lungs · hypothermia first aid
- Traumatic brain injury · the National Center for PTSD
Research and national data
- The national study of student hazing — 11,482 students at 53 schools
- The national hazing deaths database, 1838 to today
- Hank Nuwer’s hazing chronology
- Look up any campus in the country
Corrections
If something here is wrong, I want to know, and I will fix it. That includes the schools named above — if a report has been published, corrected or updated since , tell me and this will reflect it.
Last updated .