It came to my attention yesterday that the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), my alma mater, is at the center of a disturbing hazing lawsuit. The plaintiff, Raphael C. Joseph, alleges that he was so brutally beaten during Omega Psi Phi’s Nu Eta chapter “Hell Night” in April 2023 that he required emergency surgery, a blood transfusion, and months of rehabilitation to relearn how to walk. He eventually dropped out of school.
The lawsuit names multiple defendants: Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., the University of Southern Mississippi, the interim associate director of USM’s Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, and several fraternity members. The fraternity was founded in 1911 at Howard University inside a science building—now known as Thirkield Hall. Omega Psi Phi is an international, historically black fraternity.
According to the lawsuit, the abuse began in December 2022, when Joseph and other pledges were threatened, robbed of food and money, and deprived of sleep. And, as the Independent points out, the suit also details a second case of alleged abuse, claiming that the Nu Eta chapter’s hazing left another student with a torn ACL in the fall that same year.
From December 2022 through April 2023, Joseph says he was beaten repeatedly by fraternity members, both on and off USM’s campus, often with a two-by-four cut into the shape of a paddle. The abuse was so severe that he was rushed to the emergency room on two separate occasions, April 14 and April 16, 2023. Notably, fraternity members did not assist him in getting medical care either time. The April 16 beating came during the fraternity’s so-called “Hell Night,” a ritual initiation event that the lawsuit describes as planned, promoted, and carried out as part of Omega Psi Phi’s history and traditions. On that night, Joseph suffered bruised ribs, a hematoma, posterior compartment syndrome, and rhabdomyolysis—a severe muscle breakdown that can cause kidney failure. He spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, and readers can find images of his injuries on page nine of the filing.
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The complaint further claims that USM intentionally withheld critical information from incoming and prospective students—and their families—about the serious and pervasive hazards present in university-affiliated fraternities. This included patterns of extreme hazing, such as forced alcohol consumption and physical beatings. Despite being aware of these practices, the university excluded them from its materials promoting Greek life, leaving students and their families unaware of the risks. (Find those details on pages 13-14 of the lawsuit). Mississippi Today adds that officials were also informed about the specific abuse Joseph endured, but failed to take disciplinary action against those responsible.
To be sure, this is not isolated to USM.
Another chapter of Omega Psi Phi is under investigation in Louisiana following the February death of 20-year-old Southern University student Caleb Wilson. In that case, authorities charged 23-year-old fraternity member Caleb McCray with criminal hazing and manslaughter for repeatedly punching Wilson during an off-campus initiation ceremony.
And just this month, a separate incident at Texas A&M University sent several pledges of Kappa Sigma to the hospital. According to Chron, the young men were forced to exercise to the point of exhaustion, leaving them unable to walk and with urine turned black—a symptom of rhabdomyolysis, the same condition that hospitalized Joseph.
These incidents reveal that hazing is not an isolated mistake, but a persistent culture of abuse, allowed to continue by universities that fail to intervene until catastrophe hits. Bakari Sellers, a civil rights attorney at Strom Law Firm who is representing Joseph, said in a press release obtained by Mississippi Today:
We see violent incidents like these time and again across the nation but, instead of taking action, fraternity leaders and university officials alike sweep it under the rug and write it off as ‘boys will be boys.’ … This isn’t youthful indiscretion. This isn’t tradition and it sure isn’t brotherhood. It’s criminal violence and abuse and it needs to end.
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Adding to that, this case prompts us to ask: why would anyone tolerate such treatment? Why didn’t Joseph simply leave the fraternity at the first sign of abuse?
The answer probably isn’t simple. Admission into these groups is known to come with perks, as I pointed out in “It’s a Big Club, and You Ain’t In It.” The ring, the colors, the parties, the network—it all dangles in front of young men as a prize worth suffering for.
Social scientists have been circling this paradox for decades. Aldo Cimino calls hazing “the generation of induction costs”—pain and humiliation that serve no purpose other than to prove loyalty and secure status. The harsher the hazing, the more elite the prize is perceived to be. Lionel Tiger of Rutgers University, writing in 1969, saw hazing as a kind of evolutionary “male bonding”—a way for high-status groups to police who gets in and to preserve the clubby exclusivity of belonging. Others, like Irving Janis, have framed it as groupthink: the crushing of individual judgment in favor of collective delusion. What looks to an outsider like senseless abuse can, from the inside, feel like an honored tradition. And cult researchers like James Arnold have gone further, describing fraternities that haze as “addictive organizations”—systems that manipulate pledges into dependency, convincing them that pain is the necessary doorway to privilege.
Multiple news outlets, from local Mississippi papers to national news sites, have contacted USM. All reports state that the university is not offering a comment. As an alumnus, I had hoped to receive a response, so I reached out with a straightforward question: Is it true that officials were aware of this situation and did nothing about it? Nobody responded.
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Author’s Note: This article comes from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, which usually goes out to subscribers on Thursdays. It’s a bit delayed this week, as I was away on vacation.
Image by Andie Brewer, USM student
