The Stop Campus Hazing Act (SCHA) passed on December 23, 2024, and it is the most significant amendment to the Clery Act in more than a decade. It passed unanimously, which tells you something about the political moment we are in. If you have been waiting to see how it shakes out, the time for waiting is over.
Like the emergency notification requirements that followed campus shooting tragedies, the SCHA is a direct statutory mandate. There is no rulemaking process, no regulations to wait on. The law is the compliance standard.
The Four Things the Law Requires
The SCHA builds on four core obligations for every covered institution.
Hazing Statistics. Institutions must collect and report hazing data in the Annual Security Report, modeled directly on how VAWA crimes are currently disclosed. Your 2026 ASR needs to include 2025 hazing statistics.
Anti-Hazing Policy. A written policy statement was due by June 23, 2025. It must cover the institution’s hazing prohibition, how to report incidents, and the investigation process that will follow a report.
Prevention and Education Programming. Institutions must publish a policy statement on prevention and awareness programs that includes research-informed, campus-wide programming; information about institutional policies and applicable law; primary prevention strategies to stop hazing before it starts; skill building for bystander intervention; and strategies for building group cohesion without hazing. That last one is new terrain for most campuses.
Campus Hazing Transparency Report (CHTR). This is an entirely new reporting mechanism, separate from the ASR, with its own timeline and publication requirements.
How the SCHA Defines Hazing
The statute uses a deliberately broad definition. It lists examples of conduct that causes or creates a risk of harm, including:
- Whipping, beating, striking, electronic shocking, or placing harmful substances on a person’s body
- Inducing sleep deprivation, exposure to the elements, confinement in a small space, or extreme calisthenics
- Coercing a person to consume food, liquid, alcohol, drugs, or other substances
- Inducing another person to perform sexual acts
- Any activity that places a person in reasonable fear of bodily harm
- Any activity that involves or induces a criminal violation of local, state, tribal, or federal law
Something to note: hazing does not have to be a crime to be reportable under the SCHA. Those are two separate thresholds. Hazing incidents can also be classified as primary, secondary, or both simultaneously.
Who Counts as a Campus Security Authority Under the SCHA
The CSA definition is broad and includes campus leadership (deans and presidents), residence life staff, athletic directors, campus law enforcement including personnel with safety functions like traffic and parking, student life staff, Title IX coordinators, study abroad program staff, and VAWA program personnel.
Institutions are not required to train every CSA specifically on hazing. But the president of the chess club may functionally be a CSA and may need to understand what that means. The most venerated and prestigious groups on campus are statistically among the most likely to have hazing occur. Awareness in those communities matters.
Hazing policies also need to connect to the broader institutional policy ecosystem including drug-free campus policies, discrimination policies, and others.
The Scope of “Student Organization” Is Wider Than You Think
The SCHA does not limit coverage to officially recognized groups. Any group qualifies if it has two or more members and holds itself out to the school as a group or club. Recognition status is irrelevant. If they call themselves a club, they are in scope.
The Campus Hazing Transparency Report
The CHTR is the most operationally complex piece of the SCHA. Here is what institutions need to know.
Data collection began July 1, 2025, for hazing incidents involving student organizations found to be in violation of institutional conduct standards. The report must be published in a prominent area of the institution’s website and updated at least twice per year. Institutions are technically not required to publish it until there is a finding of a hazing violation, but it is strongly recommended posting updates monthly regardless, even when the number is zero. The CHTR must remain on the website for five calendar years from the date of each update, consistent with Clery record retention standards.
Each entry in the CHTR, for every case with a finding of responsibility, must include the name of the student organization, a description of the violation including whether alcohol or drugs were involved, the institution’s findings and any sanctions imposed, the dates the incident was reported, the investigation was initiated, the investigation concluded, and when notice was provided to the organization.
The report must not include any personally identifiable information per FERPA. It should also include a plain-language explanation of the difference between the CHTR and the Clery Act hazing statistics, since these are two distinct data sets that will confuse people if not explained clearly.
Where to Go From Here
Institutions that build strong compliance infrastructure now will be better positioned for whatever comes next. StopHazing.org is an incredible resource, particularly for the prevention and education programming requirements.