Educational Block 2 | 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.

This program will focus on broadening professionals knowledge of both public health strategies and intervention tools for impactful risk reduction programming. As an industry, we tend to lean into speakers and social norm campaigns as vehicles for prevention work; however, those two perspectives are limited compared to the large variety of the intervention strategies that exist within the health promotions field. This session will showcase the broad range of intervention strategies that can be applied to fraternity and sorority communities both at the campus and headquarters level. This program will also highlight broad public health frameworks that will best inform the health interventions selected. Attendees will be able to take away simple, scalable and sustainable health intervention efforts for their students to more strongly impact social change and health promotion.

Logic models are fundamental to good design of prevention initiatives. They provide a structure and thought process that challenges wishful thinking, prevents sloppy logic, highlights potential side effects, reality-tests our theory of change, and forces us to align practice to research. This session will teach the components of a logic model and how to use logic modeling to design and critique prevention initiatives. Put your own prevention program to the test! We’ll guide you through developing a logic model for a current or future prevention initiative and help you find opportunities to strengthen your work.

The focus of this session will be understanding and combating hazing within college athletics. This session will explore the ways in which peer leaders and team captains can impact their athletic team environment, especially within the context of hazing. Most notably, by harnessing the potential of peer leadership, especially the team captain position, educators can design an approach to significantly reduce hazing from college athletics. Additionally, participants will gather insight in understanding and impacting team culture, a vital component in reducing hazing in athletics.

Perhaps the greatest frustration for those investigating hazing cases is the use of orchestrated and choreographed responses by members, and especially new members, of a team, club or organization. But there are a number of ways to work through and around the "same page" responses. We'll review the use of tools such as desktop calendars and the inherent flaws and weaknesses of orchestrated responses in case studies and interactive situations. Orchestrated responses can be overcome with patience, diligence and persistence.

The session will go over the implementation of a root cause analysis workshop to support the reform and continuous improvement of a student organization before or after an infraction from hazing. The foundation will share the steps it took to create this workshop for organizations at Virginia Tech, University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of South Carolina, University of Tennessee and most recently Longwood University. The impact on students and their feedback engaging in the workshop will be shared including student-created goals, strategies and action steps for reform. Lastly, participants of the session will engage in a short demo of the workshop to enhance their understanding and support their own facilitation of the workshop.

Prevention is prevention, is prevention – a phrase often used by preventionist and public health professionals to describe applicability of prevention to many public health concerns. This also applies to hazing. It also means common prevention tools/frameworks can and should be used in hazing prevention as well. This session will look at the Strategic Prevention Framework while asking the questions: who, what, why for each component of the framework.

Higher education and student affairs professionals have been charged with leading and facilitating hazing prevention efforts at colleges and universities, yet many staff members and administrators do not fully understand the reasons why students engage in hazing or which hazing prevention strategies would resound with today’s college students. While survey instruments provide valuable insight into the prevalence of hazing or students’ attitudes toward hazing, they do not allow for deeper explanations of hazing and related phenomena. Based on interview findings from the What Works for Fraternity and Sorority Success and Safety Study, Piazza Center representatives will share some of the reasons why fraternity and sorority members believe hazing occurs and why students participate in hazing. Further, the presenters will share student recommendations for future hazing prevention efforts, such as different programming strategies, increased collaboration between stakeholders and increased student input into programs and policies. 

The Never Leave Anyone Behind program shares how a family learns how their son and brother was hazed and died. His mother, Shari, made a promise to Stone on his death bed that she would never let this happen to any other family. She shares her learnings from this tragedy for other parents and students to learn from her son’s death. Stone’s aunt, DJ, will share how hazing played a crucial role in Stone’s death. His father Cory and friend Jay Richardson share an Alcohol 101 presentation to reveal how alcohol affects the body and how it specifically hurt Stone. In addition, you will hear from Stone’s siblings, AJ and Jersee, on how the tragedy affected them and to teach how the impacts of that night impacts families and friends forever.