Family of WSU student named in Washington's anti-hazing law helped push for national version

In 2019, Washington State University freshman Sam Martinez died from alcohol poisoning. He'd been encouraged to drink excessively at a fraternity hazing event. He was 19 years old. In the wake of their loss, Sam's parents, Jolayne Houtz and Hector Martinez, helped pass the Sam Martinez Stop Hazing law here in Washington state.

They went on to push for a national anti-hazing law. Last Wednesday, the Stop Campus Hazing Act, which had passed in the House of Representatives, passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate. It now awaits President Biden's signature. KUOW’s Kim Malcolm spoke to Jolayne Houtz about this new development.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: You were quoted recently saying this new legislation won't bring back your son Sam or other young people who have been lost in this way. What are your hopes for what it will do?

Jolayne Houtz: I believe that students and parents deserve to know which campus groups pose a safety risk. The most important thing about the Stop Campus Hazing Act is it will give families and students access to that information across all 50 states for the very first time. What I've learned is that hazing thrives in darkness and has for generations. The Stop Campus Hazing Act brings hazing out of the shadows and into the light.

What are some of the most important requirements schools will now have under this new law?

The bill has four key elements. First, it requires transparency. It requires all public and private colleges and universities in all 50 states to publish their hazing prevention policies on their websites, along with the campus organizations that have violated those policies.

It also mandates that schools include hazing incidents in their annual crime reports, also called Clery reports, that they are already required to produce each year. It establishes campus-wide, research-based hazing education and prevention programs. Right now, many campuses don't even address hazing, and now they will have to.

It also creates a consistent definition of hazing, for the very first time. This bill is 10 years in the making. There are families like the DeVercelly family who lost their son in 2007 to a fraternity hazing ritual. They have worked and walked the halls of Congress over 10 years to get this passed, along with advocate organizations, including Stop Hazing, and the Clery Center. I couldn't be more proud to partner with them to move this bill forward, and we are so eager to have the president sign it.

There may be people surprised to learn that this was not already required. Why is that such an important detail?

What's so surprising is that in the absence of a federal law, states are all over the map on how they define and respond to hazing. Some only focus on hazing in fraternities and sororities, for example, but we know that hazing happens in athletic teams, marching bands and lots of other student groups. Some include K-12 schools, some don't. Some have no hazing law at all. Six states have no requirements regarding hazing.

You talk about the importance of transparency. In states where there are more requirements now for transparency, have you seen a change in the culture?

I think it's probably too soon to tell exactly what is going on at the state level. One of the issues that we have is that there are so few research studies available about hazing. We know that 55% of students involved in college groups experience hazing, but that data is a little bit old. Now there is a new national study on student hazing that is just launching through the University of Maine and stophazing.org. We hope that that will give us more information on what each state is doing, what experiences college students are having, and the ways we can make a difference in ending hazing for good.

When you're talking to fraternities about what you want from them with this law, what do you hear from them?

Honestly, fraternities and even the colleges and universities that partner with them have not been eager to share information about hazing. This is not something that they want their institutions identified with and yet, it happens all the time. In the month of October, for example, I went through 31 days of hazing headlines and data, and I found that hazing was happening, in the month of October, in 17 states, 10 colleges and universities, seven high schools and two workplaces, and those are just the incidents we know about.

We have not had good partnership from the fraternity industry, from colleges and universities, in most cases, to make the data transparent and available to families so that they can make informed decisions. This law will change that.

Now that there is national legislation in place, what are you hoping to see? How will you know it's successful?

I expect to see a decrease in hazing incidents on college campuses, because, as we said, hazing thrives in the darkness, and if we bring it out where everybody can see it, talk about it, understand which groups are perpetrators of hazing, then I believe that parents and students will make the smartest decisions that they can to protect themselves, and join clubs that don't have that kind of disciplinary track record.

Is this the end of your advocacy, or is there something else you're working on?

My family has formed hazinginfo.org, which is the nation's first one stop resource for objective information about hazing incidents on college and university campuses. What I'm really proud of is we're partnering with the University of Washington Information School and the University of Maine to be the place where students and families can go to look for the facts about campus hazing incidents.

We are already using artificial intelligence tools, and soon the data made available through the Stop Campus Hazing Act. Right now, there are nine states that require hazing incident data to be transparent. Washington state is one of those. We will soon be expanding across the nation, and I can't think of a better way to save lives.

Why is it important that information about hazing incidents be transparent to everyone?

Hazing harms and kills our young people. It's damage to them that they carry throughout their lives. We hear about the deaths when they occur, which is too frequent, but what we don't often talk about is the harm that's done to students who suffer physical abuse, who suffer emotional trauma, and mental abuse and trauma. This is incredibly painful. It defines the college experience, and it's something that they carry with them forever.

It's just really important for us to get at the root causes of hazing and try to figure out why this is happening, and replace those rituals with things that are healthy, and are important markers of an experience of joining a group, but don't leave lasting damage behind.

Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you would like to make sure that you underline?

I guess back to the point of why transparency is so important, is sharing a little bit about my story. When my son Sam wanted to join a fraternity at Washington State University, I searched hard for information and found nothing. But then, months later, after he died, we learned that authorities from Washington State, from his fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega, and local police had intervened at that chapter house nearly 70 times for a range of misconduct violations, including hazing, in the six years before Sam died.

That's a years-long track record of misconduct that we had no way to know about. WSU and ATO did know this, at the highest leadership levels, and did nothing. The transparency piece of Washington state's law, as well as the Stop Campus Hazing Act, will save lives.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.