Penn State fraternity and 18 of its members are charged in student's death

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After all of the criminal cases are tried (or plead out), I wonder about civil suits against the fraternity brothers. I’m sure the national fraternity and PSU will be named if they haven’t already been sued (I can’t recall if I’ve seen news about a civil suit, but I’d assume there will be one).

I wonder if a judgment against any of the brothers who were most responsible for Piazza’s injuries (like the one who punched him, and the one who filmed him as he lay dying that morning) could result. Even if the defendants didn’t ever make “big” money, I’d think a lifetime of sending X hundred dollars every month to the family of Piazza might be a just result.

ETA: I just googled the victim’s name and “obituary” and it states that he died after “a tragic accident.” His parents or whoever wrote the obituary for them are a lot more charitable than I would be, if I were writing it.

ETA again - I guess at the point at which the obituary was written they thought it was a falling-down-the-stairs accident and not the horrible scenario that unfolded on the tapes.

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“What about the brother that wanted to call for help and they pinned him to the wall because he knew he was in trouble? He knew the pledge was in grave danger and from the finding…they all did and tried to prevent help from coming in hopes of self preservation.”

Let’s talk about that brother, which makes the whole point.

That kid himself had a drunken fall and gotten a head injury at a previous frat event. Someone took him to urgent care at some point to get stitched up, but never called 911. So what is that kid’s excuse?

Why does that kid feel the need to get permission to dial 911? He knows the situation is serious. He has a cell phone. All he had to do was walk outside and dial 911 which would take seconds. Problem solved, life saved. Why doesn’t HE do that? Given his past experience, why is THAT kid still in the frat and participating in such stuff?

In some ways, THAT kid is the worst/stupidest/guiltiest of the bunch. He walks away and lets someone die just because some other drunk moron pushes him against a wall for a few seconds? What is HE thinking?

What that kid’s experience (and the presentment overall) shows is a just a complete sh__ show of stupid risky drunken behavior. On multiple repeat occasions. Guys constantly falling all over the place, passed out, hurling. Any of these guys could have been seriously hurt many many times before. And they’re doing it all on video and other preserved communications devices.

Upon reading the presentment, I’m not so shocked by how outrageous the events of this one evening were. Instead, I’m struck that these guys did stuff like this all the time, over and over again. They’re not exceptional monsters. They’re actually the kind of kids that regularly appear at college, doing incredibly stupid risky things time and again.

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Can someone link to this presentment everyone is talking about? TIA

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https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=3705264-PSU-Hazing-FINAL-Charges-and-Presentment

Here you go, @“Youdon’tsay”/

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Gracias!

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Caution. It is ugly.

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Maybe it should be required reading for anyone going off to college. A horrid, cautionary tale, like those DUI car crash movies we had to watch back in our day in driver’s ed.

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Here is the reader’s digest version recently posted if you can stomach reading this (again for many) but if you haven’t read what happened you need to in order to understand these aren’t just “drunk college students.” These aren’t college students that we know, regardless of how inebriated, they would NEVER behave this way. The 1am incidents are some of the most sickening (all are actually) - with one punching him in the abdomen. Monster, criminal, trash, inhumane - they all seem to be appropriate descriptions for that guy, and frankly, all that were charged.

"The surveillance cameras at Beta Theta Pi documented much of the interactions between fraternity members and Piazza in the 12 hours between the fall and the 911 call. Here is how the night of Feb. 2 and early morning hours of Feb. 3 unfolded at the fraternity house, according to the grand jury report, which cited evidence including surveillance video, testimony and phone records.

While the fall was not caught on video, video at 10:47 p.m. showed Piazza being carried upstairs by four fraternity brothers; in the video, his body appeared limp, his eyes were closed, he appeared unconscious, and a bruise was visible on his side. Piazza was placed on a couch, and liquid was dumped on his face twice, but he didn’t respond either time.

About a half an hour after the fall, at 11:14 p.m., a newly initiated member saw Piazza lying on the couch, looking “horrible,” he later told the grand jury. He saw Piazza “thrashing and making weird movements on the couch” and screamed at the fraternity brothers for help, stressing that Piazza needed to go to the hospital because he could have a concussion. One brother shoved the newly initiated member into a wall and said they had it under control.

At 11:25 p.m., the pledge master slapped Piazza three times in the face. At 11:37 p.m., one fraternity brother tackled another brother into the couch, physically landing on top of Piazza.

By 1 a.m., some brothers saw Piazza vomit and twitch on the couch. Three brothers filled a backpack with books and placed it on Piazza to try to keep him from rolling to his back if he passed out. At 1:48 a.m., Piazza rolled off the couch and to the floor, and three brothers picked him up and “slammed him onto the couch.” One brother hit Piazza hard once in the abdomen.

By 2:38 a.m., Piazza rolled to the floor and at 3:16 p.m. his legs were moving. At 3:22 p.m., Piazza tried to stand and the backpack came off and he fell back, hitting his head on the hardwood floor. A fraternity brother attempted to shake him for a moment and then left the room.

At 3:46 a.m., Piazza was curled up on the floor in the fetal position with his knees toward his chest. At 3:49 a.m., Piazza positioned himself on his knees, bent over with his elbows on the floor and his head in his hands. At 3:54 a.m., he tried to stand but fell face down on the floor. At 4:59 a.m., he stood and then fell head first into an iron railing, landing on a stone floor.

“He gets up again and attempts to go to the front door, but before he reaches it he falls head first into the door,” the grand jury report says. He later rolled to his side, clutching his abdomen.

At 5:15 a.m., one brother came into the room, stepped over the injured pledge, looked at him and then left the room. At 5:26 a.m., another brother saw Piazza on the floor and walked him to another room but Piazza fell down three steps, and the brother stepped over him on the floor and left him there.

At about 10 a.m., fraternity members found the 19-year-old in the basement lying on his back, breathing heavily and with blood on his face. One brother said Piazza’s eyes were half open and he felt cold. Three men carried Piazza’s unconscious body upstairs and placed him back on the couch. Surveillance footage showed brothers shaking him and trying to prop him up. At 10:48 a.m., a fraternity member called 911 but did not say Piazza fell down the stairs the night before."

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Well, that was gross. I’ve never understood the allure of Greek life.

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Yes, and no. People used to get married earlier, have kids earlier, and you saw fewer boomerang kids. When it comes to fraternities and young men over consuming alcohol, I doubt much has changed in the past half century.

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@Northwesty Kordel Davis has most likely cut a deal with the prosecution – happens all the time when there are multiple defendants. The prosecution needs someone to fill in the blanks where the video cameras did not reach and to put words to the actions recorded. Davis would have been the most likely to cooperate with the prosecution given he wanted to call.

Personally I don’t think he was technically any less reckless than the rest of them – he should have called. He gets a few “brownie points” from me for at least trying - no more no less. He will not be called on to account for his recklessness because he most likely now has immunity – the prosecution had to “give some to get some.” That’s the way that system works.

Robin Roberts asked Kordel Davis in the GMA interview why he did not walk outside and make the call anyway. In a nutshell his answer was that the opposition was so great to his suggestion that “you begin to question your own judgment.” I disagree that he is the “guiltiest” of them all - my instincts tell me that he was most certainly not alone in his past experiences. The extreme reluctance of these frat members to dial 911 leads me to believe that frat was already skating on thin ice. They knew one more might be their demise.

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@cobrat My larger point was that not too long ago, there were much higher expectations of maturity, responsibility, and personal conduct and a critical mass of young people between 16-22 met/exceeded it. My father was only one of a multitude…not a unique exceptional case.

I could not agree less with this statement. I’m well into middle age, and I believe that the people of my generation actually were less mature and less hardworking than kids today. And I don’t think the people in my father’s generation were any better either. You think bullying and drunken stupidity didn’t happen at frats in the past? It happened all the damn time, and it was ignored or covered up.

Don’t kid yourself people - we romanticize the mythological past way too much in this country.

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My point about set expectations by society…not necessarily that the older generations were better.

This is underscored by my prior post about how this incident and similar criminal incidents are more of a symptom of a toxic subculture within our society and those who are members, aspiring members, or supporters…not an automatic indictment of all young people.

My main concern is that our current society and many parents…including some posting here are effectively “lowering expectations” by saying this is “because they are young adults”, “boys will be boys”, "this is what all young adults do in college, etc.

Statements I strongly disagree applies to most young adults in past generations…or nowadays. If anything, I feel it insults most young people in the past or present and gives them too little credit.

Keep in mind that not too long ago, only a small portion of the US population attended college…and those who joined fraternities/sororities tended to be a small subset of that population due to their social exclusivity and high costs of participation. In a sense, they were even more of a tiny proportion of the youth of that time than now.

And even now, I’m pretty confident undergrads who join frat/sororities are still a minority of the overall US undergraduate student population.

And even among those who “go greek” I’m not so confident the toxic subculture which caused the death of Piazza or the heinous/criminal behavior at other greek chapters at Penn State and on other campuses extend to all greek chapters/students who join greek organizations.

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In 1978, about the time I was in a fraternity, the movie “Animal House” came out. While it was a parody, it was based on people and experiences the writers had in their various fraternities in their respective colleges. It also mirrored many of the things I witnessed at my fraternity. I think it also shows how basically decent young men (Tom Hulce character etc.) can be swept up in the actions of students who while not necessarily bad people, have no accountability. There is also a fraternal hierarchy among the fraternities and that sense of superiority that comes from that. That was going on 40 years ago and continues today. If you watch the movie you can see the mindset that leads to events like PSU.

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My H went to Penn State, and got an email from the U president today reiterating their stance that - ‘Greek-letter organizations are self-governing private groups on private property, and thus instituting change is quite challenging and complex’, but they are working on it (and have been for more than a decade!?)

I have never been much of a fan of the Greek system. At my college they had houses but they were university owned dorms and thus under control of the school. I’m sure some things have changed since I was there when the drinking age for beer was 18.

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^^ Didn’t some schools, I think Colgate is an example. move towards making Greek housing university owned. And some schools have no separate houses at all, just floors in dorms. If Penn State says they have been working on this issue for 10 years, and now this happens, it seems to suggest they are not committed to change. Maybe this will be the wake up call they need.

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413.

Spot on.

Animal House was based on a frat at Dartmouth, but the stuff portrayed is hardly unique to that school. The insight that alcohol, young men and group think can lead to bad stuff is hardly new. Didn’t you guys have to read Lord of the Flies in high school?

Pointing out the fact that this stuff happens regularly and that these kids are not “monsters” is in no way is a “boys will be boys” excuse. Instead, that insight is a necessary predicate to coming up with some reasonable measures to dial back a systematic public health issue. So just flaming a bunch of kids as monsters with bad parents is pointless and ineffective.

Schools are actually doing a lot of things to minimize the risks associated with fraternities. I’m sure every university president would abolish them in an instant if they could. But frats are unlikely to go away soon. Their membership numbers have actually been increasing in recent years, and there’s a lot of sunk costs and time in that part of college life. So the schools need to keep working to reduce the harms of a system that is well established and persistent.

Take Dartmouth. One thing they did was ban hard alcohol (even for legal age students). Like many other schools have done to varying degrees (Stanford, UVA, ND, etc.). Much harder (though not impossible) for this awful stuff to happen if the fuel is wine/beer vs. handles of vodka. Another thing they did was implement a residential college/house system to dilute the significant power on social life that the fraternities had.

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Interesting question…Penn State frat death: Why didn’t the women call for help?

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/ronnie_polaneczky/Why-didnt-the-women-call-for-help-in-Penn-State-frat-death.html

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@northwesty I hear what you are saying, but I can’t believe “this stuff,” watching another student suffer and die, happens regularly; though if it does, then it is an argument for the monstrous evil of fraternities.

When I read about frat life, I think of Hannah Arendt’s “The Banality of Evil.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem.
She observes that ordinary people commit horrible, monstrous acts with the proper social norms, incentives, conditioning. It is exactly because frats have a long history of making evil banal that they should be banned. From rape to segregation, they have a wretched history of making evil banal

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“Robin Roberts asked Kordel Davis in the GMA interview why he did not walk outside and make the call anyway. In a nutshell his answer was that the opposition was so great to his suggestion that “you begin to question your own judgment.””

This rings true to me. He was still wrong, but this is how ordinary people come to do wrong.