I am not excusing what happened at all, but it seems to me that the elephant in the room is that Tim Piazza was a sophomore, not an inexperienced freshman, who chose to rush and then pledge this fraternity in hopes of becoming one of them. He must have had a good idea of the scene.
If he had not met this very sad end, would he have been happily participating with the next pledge class?
I am disturbed by his elevation to near sainthood and dismissal of all responsibility on his part for what he chose to engage in, while characterizing the others as pure monsters.
Yes, the whole hazing scene is sickening, especially when it is dangerous, especially what it reveals about pack mentality among young males. (Of course, it has already been well documented in Lord of the Flies. And not that young women are free of it, either.) There are those who choose to walk away from it when they see it up close, even after pledging.
My H depledged a fraternity his freshman year after an incident that could have seriously injured someone–accidentally. They dropped a guy, one of the older brothers (and a willing participant), on the stairs when “kidnapping” him in a required pledge thing. H said no one checked to make sure he was really okay. He may have been knocked out. Afterward he said to himself, what were we doing? This is nuts. That plus another thing that was just weird, and he walked away.
I am sorry beyond words for Tim’s parents. I am the mother of an only child, a son. I can only imagine their pain and sorrow. The ultimate nightmare. Especially knowing he might have been saved.
I wish I knew how to solve the hazing problem. It isn’t just fraternities. It’s bands. It’s sports teams. It goes on even after it is clearly banned and there are significant penalties for it that are actually carried out. Two or three groups can be closed down, and yet another will do it. Sometimes people will voluntarily do it to themselves. See the case at Dartmouth where some pledges at AD chose to brand themselves. (Some did not.) Their house, of which the president of the college is an alum, was closed down despite the fact that it was not found to be hazing, an illegal activity in NH. Some people WANT to be hazed.
I don’t get it. I wish there were some way to inoculate against it.