Cover image for Primary Prevention Brief

When we talk about hazing prevention, it is easy to focus on what happens after an incident: reporting, accountability, response, and support for those impacted. These efforts are essential, and they are only part of comprehensive prevention.

October 1 marks the release of college and university annual security reports, and the first time hazing statistics are represented in these reports. They also include required policy statements related to hazing and hazing prevention. In addition to a statement of current policies related to hazing – including how to report incidents, how the institution investigates them, and applicable hazing laws – the ASR must include a statement about the institution’s prevention and awareness programs related to hazing.

That prevention statement is particularly important because the requirements go beyond communicating that hazing is prohibited. Institutions must describe research-informed, campus-wide prevention programs designed to reach students, staff, and faculty, including primary prevention strategies intended to stop hazing before it occurs.

Our new brief, Preventing Hazing Through Primary Prevention: Research, Practice, and Compliance Considerations, provides research-based and research-informed strategies, along with practical resources, to help institutions strengthen primary prevention while supporting campus compliance. The brief can be a useful starting point for thinking about what prevention looks like in practice and how that work can be reflected in an institution’s ASR.

In other words, the ASR provides an opportunity to communicate not just what an institution does when hazing occurs, but what it is doing to prevent hazing from occurring in the first place.

Research on hazing prevention points to the importance of primary prevention: creating the conditions that make hazing less likely by reducing risk factors and strengthening protective factors across individuals, groups, institutions, and communities. This means helping people recognize unhealthy group dynamics, building skills to intervene, developing ethical leaders, and creating group cultures where belonging and connection do not depend on harm.

For colleges and universities, this work can take many forms:

  • Students can learn how to recognize and challenge harmful group norms;
  • Groups and teams can intentionally build cohesion through healthy practices; 
  • Bystander intervention education can give members practical strategies for responding when something feels wrong; and
  • Ethical leadership development can help students make decisions that reflect their values and responsibility to others.

These approaches align directly with the types of primary prevention strategies identified in the federal requirements.

In many cases, you don’t have to start prevention efforts from scratch.. Campuses can build on existing programs, partnerships, and priorities. The requirement to describe research-informed, campus-wide prevention programs can also help institutions connect the prevention work already happening on campus and consider where there are opportunities to strengthen it.

With this year’s ASRs now released, consider how your prevention policy statement reflects the work happening on campus:

  • Does our prevention approach reach students, staff, and faculty?
  • Are we addressing hazing before it occurs, rather than focusing only on response?
  • How are we building skills for bystander intervention and ethical leadership?
  • How are we helping groups build connection and cohesion?
  • Are our prevention efforts sustained throughout the year?

Explore our new brief, Preventing Hazing Through Primary Prevention: Research, Practice, and Compliance Considerations, for research-based and research-informed strategies and practical resources to help strengthen primary prevention while supporting campus compliance.

The ASR may document your institution’s commitment to hazing prevention, but sustained hazing prevention depends on putting that commitment into practice.