Spring Ushers in a Bloody Hazing Season for Black Frats
By Paul Ruffins

This spring, the pattern of illegal hazing that has threatened the survival of Black fraternities and sororities has once again repeated itself with deadly and devastating consequences. In early April, Nashville authorities officially announced what many had suspected for months: The January death of Tennessee State University student Joseph Green had been the result of an underground pledging process by the university's Omega Psi Phi chapter. 
Green, 25, collapsed while jogging on the track of Whites Creek High School on an early morning in late January. He was taken to a nearby medical center in cardio-pulmonary distress and had a temperature of 103.7 before he died. 
When the results of the police and forensic investigation were released, the official cause of Green's death was listed as exercise, environmentally induced hypothermia and acute asthma attack as a result of "exercise during fraternity initiation." This is Omega's second hazing death at TSU. In November of 1983, 20-year-old Vann L. Watts also died trying to pledge the same chapter. His body was covered with bruises as a result of being beaten with switches, and he had a blood-alcohol level more than five times the legal limit.
Kappa Alpha Psi's violent history of hazing also has repeated itself. On two different campuses, Kappa pledges were hospitalized with injuries that were virtually identical to those suffered by pledges in a 1999 Kappa hazing incident at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
In late March at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., an 18-year-old Kappa pledge, who had been on line for at least 50 days, experienced chest pains, collapsed and stopped breathing. After he was hospitalized, the medical staff noticed extensive bruises on his hands and buttocks, and the resulting criminal investigation revealed the typical pattern of beatings and abuse. In a written statement to the police, one of the fraternity's other two pledges said they had been offered the choice of joining the fraternity by becoming a "paper" member and going through the official process or by pledging, which would entail "mental, physical and emotional abuse" but "would grant you all of the respect, benefits and privileges of the organization." The pledges willingly chose the abuse, which also may have involved being beaten by Kappas from Norfolk State University.