ETTRICK, Virginia -- Enough is enough when it comes to hazing. That’s the message from Virginia State University President Keith T. Miller.
“Outdated rituals performed in the name of brotherly love have no place in building a better world,” Dr. Miller told solemn students, faculty and staff mourning two popular freshmen, Marvell Edmondson and Jauwan Holmes, both 19. They drowned April 20 trying to cross the Appomattox River as part of a hazing ritual to join an off-campus club called Men of Honor, which the university has described as unsanctioned and unapproved.
“As a community, as an institution, we will not tolerate” such rituals, Dr. Miller said during the school’s memorial service for the two students last Friday at Daniel Gymnasium, six days after their deaths stunned the campus.
“We must learn the lessons of Jauwan and Marvell to ensure that these young men’s deaths were not in vain,” Dr. Miller said in seeking to give meaning to the deaths of the youths, now among the long list of American college students who have died or suffered injuries from harsh hazing while seeking to join a fraternity, sorority or other group.
This is an example of a storm-whipped Appomattox River that claimed the
the lives of two promising VSU Freshmen students.
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