Early last month I wrote about the death of freshman Tim Piazza, a pledge at the Beta Theta Pi chapter at Penn State. Now Caitlin Flanagan has a well-researched article up at The Atlantic about this incident. Read it. It will make you angry.
This was not a weird twist of fate that led to the death of a perfectly healthy young man, but a homicide, which deserves to have been prosecuted as such.
Of all things, this frat house had close-circuit surveillance cameras installed inside the house. This was because back in 2007 the place had been completely rebuilt with $8.5 million provided by Penn State / Beta Theta Pi alum (class of 1970) Donald Abbey, now a wealthy businessman, found the house in a “repulsive” condition when he returned on a visit. Quelle surprise.
According to a recent article in Penn Live, the reconstruction took seven years, and at the end, the house featured things not common in most university housing:
[T]he house featured hardwood floors, antique fixtures, leather furniture, ornate plaster molding, heated bathroom floors and imported Argentinean hardwood bed frames, according to a 2011 press release from the Alpha Upsilon chapter of Beta Theta Pi.
Although the rebuilt frat house was probably the most expensive ever constructed in the United States, the brothers immediately proceeded to trash the place, causing Abbey to have 14 security cameras installed. The Penn Live article reports further:
As part of the renovations, Abbey did not want the Beta house to return to its previous state of disrepair. Cameras could help in that regard to assign responsibility to specific people for vandalism instead of assessing financial costs to all active members or dipping into reserves intended for normal wear and tear.
The brothers went on their merry way, hazing etc. all in full view of the security cameras, and by February 2010, their charter had been revoked. But not for long, as the house reopened, supposedly after cleaning up its act, in the fall of 2010.
Hazing continued, despite various official prohibitions and denials right up to the death of Piazza on the night of February 3, 2017. Flanagan has apparently watched all the videotapes of the incident, and what she reports is terrible mistreatment and assault upon a human being. One quote from Flanagan perhaps shows what was going through the minds of the killers:
But they do not use their many cellphones to call 911. Instead one brother uses his phone to do a series of internet searches for terms such as cold extremities in drunk person and binge drinking, alcohol, bruising or discoloration, cold feet and cold hands.
Last month, 18 year old Maxwell Gruver, at Phi Delta Theta at LSU, died, apparently of alcohol poisoning. According to CNN:
All Greek activities at the university were suspended "indefinitely, pending the results of a thorough investigation," he said at a news conference. "As we've continually warned over and over again, hazing is dangerous, irresponsible, and unacceptable, and it will not be tolerated at LSU period," Alexander said.
Later LSU President Alexander released a statement which read, per The Advocate:
Many of our Greek organizations represent all that is good about our university. They volunteer, fundraise for charities and provide opportunities for students to make lifelong connections that extend far beyond their time at LSU. However, a small minority of these groups engage in behavior that undermines all these benefits, and that will be identified and discontinued."
Truly, this is the usual bullshit. The fraternities wish to be judged as a group when it suits them, and as individuals when it does not. Alexander also said:
It is important to understand that there will be no return to 'normal.
However, it looks to me like the death of Gruver was a return to normal.
In 1997, 20 year old Benjamin Wynne died following heavy drinking on pledge night at the LSU chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Wynne, who had transferred into LSU from Southeastern Louisiana University which he had attended for two years, died on August 26, 1907 after a single day of classes at LSU.
SAE was suspended for four years, but sure as the swallows return to Capistrano, SAE was back, twice, per the Advocate:
Wynne's own fraternity, SAE, returned to LSU in 2004 only to be kicked off again in 2012 after allegations of hazing, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct and endangering the safety of others. SAE returned to LSU again in 2015.
The truly sick thing about all of this is that it was supposed done to make the fraternity members better men and better leaders.
Flanagan knows that nothing will be done.
The fraternity enters a “period of reflection”; it may appoint a “blue-ribbon panel.” It will announce reforms that look significant to anyone outside the system, but that are essentially cosmetic. Its most dramatic act will be to shut down the chapter, and the house will stand empty for a time, its legend growing ever more thrilling to students who walk past and talk of a fraternity so off the chain that it killed a guy. In short order it will “recolonize” on the campus, and in a few years the house will be back in business.
The criminal court proceedings in the Penn State case (a miracle perhaps that any were brought at all) have gone largely the way of the brothers, with the most serious charges being dropped. And no charges have yet been brought in the LSU case.
None of us, should we ever engage in this ourselves, would expect to receive anything but a severe punishment.
Why is this so? To some extent it is white privilege, but that doesn’t explain the existence (and relative impunity) of hazing in certain minority organizations, such as the FAMU marching band, where brutal hazing was prevalent for years.
I think what is going on is the diffusion of responsibility, as well as a sort of Stockholm syndrome. The fraternity is part of the university, but the house isn’t owned by the university.
The national fraternity has various rules and distances itself from the chapter when they are shocked, shocked to find the chapter has violated those rules. The university is dominated by the needs to keep alumni happy and funds flowing in, and doesn’t want to have to bother to monitor alcohol consumption at this or that frat.
The frat brothers themselves never seem to assume responsibility for the safety others, and the pledges, who are young men wishing to be part of something larger than themselves, are under a lot of pressure not to complain. Older people like me may well have forgotten the pressure of the world on young people to conform.
It gets much worse when the individual is separated from his or her home, as happens in college, the armed forces, etc., so that there is, or tends to be, no real alternative to conformity.
The Zimbardo and Milgram experiments, which everyone who takes Psych 101 reads about, show well the danger of power and the willingness of people to comply with authority. While these experiments have been criticized on a number of valid grounds, I think everyone understands the urge to be accepted and welcomed. The fraternities however have hijacked this urge and turned it into something perverse.