Several students have come forward with claims of underground hazing incidents, NIU Judicial Director Larry Bolles said.

As a result, Bolles said the Judicial Office currently is investigating several campus organizations.

Bolles said he could not go into specific detail about the allegations because of privacy issues but said the activities the students described included physical and mental strain.

Although some students identify hazing as acts that cause injury or other harm, what actually qualifies as hazing is a lot closer to what some might consider normal activity, Bolles said.

Hazing is any act or activity by an organization or by one of its members that may put someone’s physical or mental health at risk, according to the NIU Student Code of Conduct.

The difference between hazing and underground hazing is that hazing involves a known program going on that gets carried away, such as at Greek rush time, Bolles said. With underground hazing, everything is planned from the very beginning, but members make sure that no one finds out about it, he said.

The only way the information about underground hazing gets out is when the student the hazing is happening to reports it, Bolles said.

“Members of groups come in all the time,” Bolles said. “They think if they come to me and tell me what’s going on, I can stop it.”

Hazing ranges from minor acts, such as a member of a fraternity or sorority forcing another member to eat too much, to more serious acts such as injuring someone or causing someone’s death, Bolles said.

Separate sanctions exist for different levels of the offense. Under Illinois law, hazing can be classified as either a Class A misdemeanor or a Class 4 felony.

However, the only situation in which hazing becomes a felony is when “great bodily harm or death occurs,” according to Illinois legislation as stated on StopHazing.org.

“Students need to know it’s serious business,” Bolles said. “We’ve had people seriously injured and hospitalized as a result of hazing over the years.”

Some groups’ members have taken actions into their own hands despite the instruction of their officers.

“There were times when we wanted to beat the crap out of people, and they told us we couldn’t, but we did anyway,” said a former fraternity member who spoke on a condition of anonymity. The house he was affiliated with no longer exists at NIU.

The consequences for hazing include not only sanctions against the individuals involved, but against the organization as a whole as well, Bolles said.

“In most organizations not everyone hazes, but everyone goes down,” Bolles said.

When someone gets hazed, the judicial system finds the president and leading officers responsible, regardless of whether they are involved in the act, Bolles said.

Part of the problem with the hazing that does occur is that students are encouraged to haze by people who no longer go to NIU or who can’t be held accountable for it once it happens, Bolles said.

“There’s times where kids are getting hazed and the president just leaves the room … but they are the responsible ones. That’s why they are elected,” he said.

Some fraternity members, however, said they think there is a great misunderstanding about the amount of hazing that goes on at NIU.

“I’m a part of a house where everyone thinks it happens, but it doesn’t,” said Phi Kappa Sigma Rush Chair Aaron Dolin. “There’s a big misperception.”

Alpha Kappa Lambda member Jason Ballard also said he doesn’t think hazing is a problem at NIU.