Seeking an end to hazing deaths

 Drum Major Robert Champion

(CBS News) HAZING is on no college or university's official curriculum. Yet hazing does occur with regularity on a number of campuses, and when things go wrong, it ends up in tragedy - and headlines. Our Cover Story is reported now by Tracy Smith.

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ORLANDO, Florida - It was a half-time show worthy of the Super Bowl, when Florida A&M's legendary band, the Marching 100, took the field for a college football game last November. Just hours later, 26-year-old drum major Robert Champion lay dying in the band's bus . . . brutally beaten in an alleged hazing ritual.

Champion's senseless death sparked a national outcry over hazing . . . the same outcry as earlier last year after the hazing death of George Desdunes at Cornell . . . and in 2010 after the hazing death of Samuel Mason at Radford University . . . and in 2009 after the hazing death of Arman Partamian at Geneseo State . . . The same outcry that has come with chilling regularity every year, for decades.

Hank Nuwer, a professor at Franklin College in Indiana, has spent the past 40 years documenting every hazing death in the United States. Since 1975, he says, "there's been a death every particular year. Would I be very surprised if 2012 goes by without a death? Yes."

Nuwer says hazing is anything that is required of a newcomer by veterans in a group that you have to go through - it may be silly, demeaning or dangerous. And the record of dangerous, even deadly hazing, stretches back more than a century.

"The first verifiable incident, clearly, is 1873 at Cornell University," said Nuwer ....

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U.S. Navy Discharges 8 Sailors After Alleged Hazing Incident

Discharged Sailor Claims Alleged Hazing Was 'Roughhousing'

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SAN DIEGO, California - Eight enlisted sailors aboard the San Diego-based amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard have received general discharges from the Navy after being caught in a hazing incident. A young mariner requested medical attention for choking and other injuries from the ship’s doctor. The sailors were in the junior ranks and worked the flight deck and other general duties.

After starting in a new department on the ship, the sailor was involved in an incident that included wrestling, punching, choking and horsing around, according to a senior U.S. Navy official. The young man was reportedly choked out until a black out occurred and he sustained significant bruising.

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Recalling nephew, Rep. Chu says: Military hazing 'must stop'

WASHINGTON, D.C. - For Rep. Judy Chu, the Capitol Hill gathering of lawmakers calling for the Pentagon to crack down on hazing in the military was personal. 

Her nephew, Harry Lew, a 21-year-old Marine who committed suicide in Afghanistan in April, was a victim of hazing, the California Democrat said.

"This must stop," she said, calling for congressional hearings on hazing in the military. "Too many patriotic young people, who only want to serve our country, are being harmed."

Since her nephew’s death, Chu said, she has received letters from others recounting their family’s own experiences with hazing in the military. "What was even more disturbing is the fact that they felt helpless in fighting it," she said, standing by a picture of a uniformed Lew with his family.

Lew underwent three hours and 20 minutes of hazing that included having to do push-ups, crunches and other exercises while wearing full body armor, according to Chu. Fellow Marines, reportedly angry that Lew fell asleep while on watch, poured sand on his face and into his mouth and kicked him and punched him, she added.

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