HLS Policy Statements

Massachusetts law expressly prohibits any form of hazing in connection with admission into any student organization. The term hazing is defined as “any conduct or method of initiation...which willfully or recklessly endangers the physical or mental health of any student or other person.” The law applies to officially recognized and to non-recognized groups and to activities conducted both on and off campus.

The HLS Administrative Board will consider any violation of this law in the normal course of its oversight. Any student who participates in, supports or condones the practice of hazing is potentially subject to an Administrative Board investigation. Disciplinary action may include the reporting of confirmed incidents of hazing to local law enforcement officials. Under Massachusetts law, hazing is a crime punishable by fine and/or imprisonment.

Anyone aware of an incident of hazing within a student organization should contact the Dean of Students Office at 617-495-1880. All information will be kept strictly confidential.

Recent amendments to the Massachusetts Hazing Law stipulate that schools must meet the following five requirements established by the General Counsel’s Office to be in compliance with the law:

1. “At least annually, before or after the start of enrollment,” the administration must deliver to each fulltime student a copy of the hazing law.
2. Institutions of higher education must annually distribute a copy of the hazing law to “every student group, student team or student organization which is part of such institution or is recognized by the institution or permitted by the institution to use its name or facilities or is known by the institution to exist as a unaffiliated student group.”
3. Every student group, team, or organization acting through its designated officer, must: (a) ensure that its “members, plebes, pledges, or applicants for membership” have received a copy of the hazing law; and (b) deliver to the school an attestation that the hazing law has been distributed and that the student group “understands and agrees to comply” with the law.
4. Each school must adopt a disciplinary policy with regard to the organizers of and participants in hazing. This policy must be “set forth with appropriate emphasis in the student Handbook or [through] a similar means of communicating the institution’s policies to its students.”
5. The President or his designee must annually certify to the State that each of the preceding obligations has been met. As a practical matter, this means that each school must annually certify to the President’s Office, through the Office of the General Counsel, that the obligations have been met thus enabling the President’s Office to make the necessary representations to the State.

Each student organization must complete a form indicating that every member of the organization is aware that hazing is illegal at the beginning of each year. The signed form should be returned to the Dean of Students Office in Pound 310. The form and the accompanying laws are available here: