Harvard Independent Sole Group Found To Have Violated College’s Hazing Policies In New Compliance Report

Editor’s note, Jan. 29, 2026: The Harvard University Police Department updated the webpage housing its hazing transparency report after publication due to inaccurate information provided by the Dean of Students Office. A follow-up article now correctly reports that the Harvard Independent received a warning, not probation.

—Dhruv T. Patel, Managing Editor

—E. Matteo Diaz, President

The Harvard Independent was the only student organization found to have violated the College’s hazing policies during the 2024-25 academic year, according to a report released by the Harvard University Police Department on Wednesday.

Harvard released the report to comply with new federal legislation requiring colleges to publicly disclose any hazing findings involving student organizations — though the University was more than a month late to meet the deadline stipulated by law.

According to the report, members of the Harvard Independent — a newspaper that publishes weekly — lined up new members, threw eggs at them, and covered them in honey during an April 2025 incident.

Katie I. Merriam ’26, the president of the Harvard Independent at the time of the incident, declined to comment on Wednesday.

On May 2, the College concluded that the Independent had violated hazing policies and placed the club on probation, a designation that allows clubs to continue operating, though they may be restricted in booking campus spaces, hosting social events, or participating in club fairs.

College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding the Independent’s hazing violation, citing a policy against commenting on issues of student conduct.

The disclosure came as part of Harvard’s first-ever hazing transparency report, released to comply with the Stop Campus Hazing Act, a federal law passed in December 2024. But the law, which mandated universities release their reports 12 months after it was enacted, placed the legal deadline at December 23, 2025 — making Harvard over a month late to put out its report.

Jolayne Houtz, a founder of HazingInfo.org, blasted Harvard for missing the deadline, arguing that the delay could have prevented students from making informed decisions about which organizations to join ahead of the spring semester.

“It’s unfortunate when schools miss an important deadline like that,” Houtz said. “It’s really meeting the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law, which is about providing transparent information so that students and families have the information that they need to make informed decisions.”

Houtz said that of the nearly 1,500 U.S. colleges and universities she surveyed — including Harvard — 44 percent had failed to meet the federal deadline.

HUPD spokesperson Steven Catalano said on Wednesday that the University’s failure to meet the deadline was an oversight on behalf of HUPD, but declined to comment further on the delay.

In cases of noncompliance, the Department of Education can impose sanctions ranging from fines to limits on federal financial aid or the loss of eligibility for federal student aid programs, according to the U.S. Congress.gov website. The maximum fine per violation is $71,545.

The Harvard Independent is not the only student organization to have had a run-in with the College’s changing hazing policies. The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and the Crimson Key Society were both investigated for alleged hazing in fall 2025, though an earlier hazing finding against the HRO was later revoked, and the Crimson Key Society was never found responsible.

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal @sbc.23. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.