Ben & Jerry’s won’t rename its Hazed & Confused ice cream, defying anti-hazing activists, who complained that the moniker was insensitive to victims of the dangerous college tradition.
The company found nothing in its marketing for the chocolate and hazelnut flavour that “condoned hazing, supported hazing, or even inferred hazing”, according to Sean Greenwood, a spokesman for the South Burlington, Vermont-based company, which is owned by Unilever NV. Executives also took into account that Internet responses were mostly favourable, he said. “It didn’t make sense for us to change the name,” Greenwood said. “We named it because it’s a pop-culture reference.”
The name of the flavour, which includes fudge chips and a hazelnut fudge core, was a play on Dazed and Confused, the company has said, a Led Zeppelin song and a 1993 coming-of-age film comedy.
The ice cream had been on the market six months without an objection before Lianne and Brian Kowiak of Tampa, Florida, and their allies spoke up. Their 19-year-old son, Harrison Kowiak, died of a head injury during a fraternity 'Hell Week' hazing ritual at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina, in 2008. The Kowiaks sued for wrongful death and won an out-of-court settlement. Harrison Kowiak was a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream fan.
“The company completely avoided and didn’t take into consideration what are the unintentional implications of this chosen name,” Brian Kowiak said in an interview following a call he had with officials at Ben & Jerry’s.
‘Shocked’
The Kowiaks noticed an advertisement for the ice cream and sent an email to Ben & Jerry’s on 5 September. The flavour had been in stores since February. Criticism also came from anti-hazing activist Hank Nuwer at Stophazing.org, who urged readers to contact Ben & Jerry’s.
“I just paused, and I was shocked and we were dismayed,” Lianne Kowiak said last month. “I was just upset about it.”
After the complaints, the company condemned hazing and later said that it would consider changing the name. The company received 11 complaints, which were mostly e-mails, said Greenwood, the Ben & Jerry’s spokesman.
“The flavour Hazed & Confused and Ben & Jerry’s as a company in no way condone – nor support in any manner – the act of hazing or bullying,” the company said in a statement at the time. “Ben & Jerry’s believes that hazing and bullying have no place in our society.”
Ben & Jerry’s has gotten into trouble over its names before. Its shops in Boston apologised in 2012 for a handmade flavour called Linsanity – named for Chinese-American basketball star Jeremy Lin – that contained fortune-cookie pieces. Its Schweddy Balls flavour, which riffed on a risqué Saturday Night Live skit, was protested by the group One Million Moms.
Bloomberg News, edited by ESM
