Help for Parents of Students Hurt by Hazing

Key Takeaways for Parents

For many families, the first hard truth is that a college student's records are, in most respects, the student's to control. Under federal privacy law, the rights parents once held over their child's school records move to the student at 18 or on enrolling in college. That does not shut a parent out completely, and it does not make the parent the person who decides whether a case goes forward.

Several points tend to change how a family thinks about the first weeks:

• A parent's access to school records often runs through the student. A signed written consent from the student can open doors that a phone call from a parent cannot.
• Tax status can matter in an unexpected place. A college may release records to the parents of a student who counts as a dependent under the federal tax code, so a family's tax return can bear on what the school is permitted to share.
• A college is permitted, though not required, to tell the parent of a student under 21 about an alcohol or drug disciplinary violation. Alcohol is part of many hazing incidents, so this narrow rule can be relevant.
• A hazing case often reaches more than one party: individual students, an organization, a national body, a school, a property owner. Each one stands on its own facts.
• No single national deadline governs these claims. Limitation periods, fault rules and damages rules come from state law and differ from state to state.

Together, these points shift the early questions from "what can I demand" to "what can my child authorize, and what does the school hold." A conversation with an attorney at this stage can cover who holds the claim, what consent the student might give, and which state's law may apply.

What a Parent Can — and Cannot — See Once a Student Turns 18

The starting rule is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA. Under 20 U.S.C. § 1232g(a)(1)(A), a school that receives federal funds may not deny parents the right to inspect and review their children's education records, and must grant a parent's request within a reasonable time, and in no case more than 45 days after the request. Subsection (d) then moves that right: whenever a student has turned 18, or is attending an institution of postsecondary education, the permission or consent required of and the rights given to the parents belong only to the student.

The U.S. Department of Education calls that student an eligible student: one who has reached 18, or who attends a postsecondary institution at any age. Its page Who is an eligible student? states that once a student becomes an eligible student, the rights afforded his or her parents under FERPA transfer to that student. Its page What is FERPA? describes those rights as access to education records, the right to seek amendment, and some control over disclosure. In plain terms, a 17-year-old freshman's records are already the student's to control. That is why a dean may decline to discuss a conduct file with a parent, and why the student's willingness to sign a written consent often becomes the first practical question.

The first exception concerns dependents. Under 34 C.F.R. § 99.31(a)(8), a school may disclose information from education records without the student's consent to parents of a dependent student, as section 152 of the Internal Revenue Code defines one, and 34 C.F.R. § 99.5(a)(2) confirms that the transfer of rights does not prevent such disclosures. The word is "may": the school is permitted, not required. For a family that claims the student as a dependent, this can be a second route to records, though how far it goes depends on the school's own practice.

The second exception is narrow. Under 20 U.S.C. § 1232g(i), federal law does not prohibit a college from telling a parent or legal guardian about a student's violation of a law or school rule on alcohol or controlled substances, whether or not the information sits in education records, if the student is under 21 and the college determines the student committed a disciplinary violation. This rule does not override a state law that prohibits such disclosure. In practice, a college may share an alcohol-related finding but has no obligation to, and the rule only matters if discipline of that kind was part of what happened.

Health information follows a separate rule. Under 45 C.F.R. § 164.502(g), a health care provider covered by the federal privacy rule treats a personal representative as the patient. For an adult, that is a person who, under applicable law, has authority to act on the patient's behalf in health care decisions. For an unemancipated minor, a parent with that authority is generally the personal representative, subject to exceptions, including care the minor may lawfully consent to alone. After a death, the executor, administrator or other person with legal authority for the estate is treated as the representative. A hospital, then, may not treat the parent of an injured adult student as the decision-maker on records without legal authority; the student's own authorization, or authority that already exists, is usually the path.

A further avenue is the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education, which enforces federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in federally funded programs. Its page How to File a Discrimination Complaint with OCR states that anyone may file a complaint, and that a complainant filing for another person is responsible for securing any necessary written consent, including when a parent files for a student over the age of 18. It states that a complaint must ordinarily be filed within 180 days of the last act of discrimination, with a waiver possible for good cause, or within 60 days after an institutional grievance process ends if the complainant used one. That process concerns discrimination, not every hazing injury, and it is separate from a lawsuit for injuries.

When a Child Is Hurt by Hazing: How a Legal Case Takes Shape

Hazing cases tend to come out of rituals tied to joining or staying in a group: forced or pressured drinking, physical beatings or paddling, exhausting physical demands, sleep deprivation, and humiliation that turns violent. Many happen at night, off the main campus, with older members directing younger ones. The event is often pieced together afterward from group chats, photos and the accounts of students who were there.

Most civil hazing claims rest on negligence: the legal rule that a person or organization with a duty of care toward someone, who breaches that duty, can be responsible for the harm the breach causes. A negligence claim asks four things: whether a duty existed, whether it was breached, whether the breach caused the injury, and what damages followed. An injury alone does not prove that anyone was at fault.

Many states also have anti-hazing laws of their own. This page does not describe any particular state's law, and what such a law covers, and whether it bears on a civil claim, differs by state.

Where hazing happened in a house or building, a claim may also involve premises liability, the rule that a property owner or operator owes duties concerning the condition and use of the property. Where a student died, the claim is usually one for wrongful death: a claim that certain family members may bring under state law when someone's wrongful conduct causes a death. Which relatives may bring it, and what they may claim, differ by state.

Hazing cases are seldom about one act by one person. They tend to involve what individual members did, what an organization's officers knew or allowed, how a chapter was supervised, and what a school or national body knew beforehand. Each can be a separate basis for a claim against a separate party. That is why small details matter to a parent trying to understand the night: who planned the event, who supplied the alcohol, who was told beforehand, and who decided not to call for help. The fraternity hazing lawsuit page and the page on sorority hazing injury claims look at how these questions play out in each kind of organization.

Who May Be Responsible — and Why More Than One Party Often Is

Families often assume a case is against "the fraternity" or "the team." In practice, the possible defendants come in several types, and each one is judged on its own relationship to what happened:

• Individual members who took part in, directed or supervised the hazing.
• The local organization itself: a chapter, an athletic team, a club, or its officers.
• A national organization or governing body that charters or oversees the local group.
• The college or university, depending on what it knew, its policies and its relationship to the group.
• The owner or operator of the property where the hazing took place, such as a housing corporation or a landlord.

A national organization's possible responsibility depends on how it relates to the local chapter, what control it had, what it knew, and the facts of the incident. The page on national organization hazing liability looks at that relationship, and university hazing lawsuits covers how a claim looks at a school.

Fault matters as well. Comparative fault is a rule, applied differently from state to state, that divides responsibility among the parties in proportion to each one's share of fault, sometimes including the injured person's own share. A few states still use contributory fault, an older rule under which an injured person's own fault can bar recovery. For a parent, this has a concrete meaning: questions about a student's own drinking or choices that night may come up, and how much they count depends on the state.

When responsibility is divided, a claim that leaves a party out can look very different. A conversation with an attorney can cover the roles each person and organization played, as far as the family knows them.

Records a Family Often Needs After a Hazing Injury

Hazing cases often turn on documents and digital records, because the people present may not agree on what happened. When a student is hurt, the records that usually become relevant include:

• Medical records and treatment documentation, from the emergency room through follow-up care and counseling.
• Incident reports and police reports, including campus police reports.
• The organization's bylaws, new-member materials, rules and policies.
• Communications: texts, group chats, emails and social media messages before and after the event.
• Photos and video taken during or around the event.
• The names and contact information of people who were there or who heard about it soon after.
• School disciplinary or conduct records about the incident or the group.

Many families keep a written timeline of what they learned and when, and copies of anything the school or the hospital sent home. The student's own phone often holds more than anyone else's.

Access is the complication. School conduct and disciplinary files are generally education records under the FERPA rules described above, so a parent's access to them usually runs through the student's consent or the dependent-student exception. Records a campus law enforcement unit creates for law enforcement purposes are excluded from the definition of education records under 20 U.S.C. § 1232g(a)(4)(B)(ii). Treatment records follow the health privacy rule, and under 45 C.F.R. § 164.524 a patient generally has a right to inspect and obtain a copy of his or her own health information, with exceptions including psychotherapy notes and information compiled for use in a legal proceeding.

The result is that the student is usually best placed to gather the most important records, with a parent helping to track what has arrived and what still needs the student's signature.

Hazing Injuries and the Damages State Law May Allow

The injuries in hazing cases range widely: traumatic brain injury from blows or falls, alcohol poisoning, organ damage, broken bones, burns, sexual assault, and psychological trauma that can last long after the physical wounds heal. Some hazing ends in death. This page describes injuries only to explain how the law treats them; it does not give medical advice.

Watching a child recover, or not recover, is its own kind of exhaustion, and money is not what most parents think about first. The law nonetheless measures harm in categories. Depending on the state, these may include medical and rehabilitation expenses, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and emotional distress. In a death, wrongful death damages are the categories of loss the law lets certain family members claim. What those categories include, who may claim them, and whether any are capped differ by state.

Recovery depends on the facts, on what can be proven, and on the damages the state's law allows; nothing about an injury, however serious, predicts how a claim will end. The everyday paperwork of a hard season — medical bills, notices of school disruption, records of lost work — is often what later shows the scope of the harm. The hazing death attorney page covers how wrongful death claims are brought.

Filing Deadlines Under State Law

A statute of limitations is the period that state law sets for filing a lawsuit. Each state sets its own periods, and they often differ by the kind of claim, so a personal injury claim and a wrongful death claim arising from the same night can carry different periods.

When the period begins can differ too. Some states apply a discovery rule, under which the period may start when the injury or its cause was discovered, or reasonably should have been. Many states also have tolling provisions that pause the period in certain circumstances. This page does not set out any state's deadline.

Other processes carry their own timelines. The ordinary 180-day period for an Office for Civil Rights discrimination complaint, described above, says nothing about the deadline for an injury claim.

For a parent, the calendar question has two parts: which state's law applies, and when that state treats the period as starting. Where the hazing took place, where the parties are and when the injury became known all bear on both. If those questions are on your mind, you can request a case evaluation to talk through the dates, the places and the people involved.