For years hazing has been known as a rite of passage to obtain membership into selective organizations. But what is considered “too much hazing”? Is it a fair process?

In order to answer those questions, host organizations including the National Newspaper Publishers Association; The National Save the Family Now Movement, Inc.; The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; The National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), and others, announced on Tuesday the launching of a National Anti-Hazing/Anti-Violence task force.

“We have come together to organize an historic National Anti-Hazing/Anti-Violence Task Force to provide solutions and strategies to eradicate hazing from Black college campuses and to develop proactive programs and events to address the escalation of violence in Black America,” said Reverend Dr. R.B. Holmes Jr., organizer of the task force and pastor of the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church of Tallahassee, FL.

Co-chairs of the task force include Martin Luther King III, Cloves Campbell, national chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association and Dr. George E. Cooper, president of South Carolina State University.

The announcement of the task force comes just weeks after the death of FAMU drum major Robert Champion, who died last month as a result of hazing, including bleeding caused by blunt force trauma. It also follows the hospitalization of FAMU student Bria Hunter, who filed charges against three members of the school’s band who broke her thigh in an alleged hazing incident.

Stay tuned to BET.com for more on what the historic civil rights organizations are doing to combat the epidemic affecting minority communities nationwide.

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(Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)