The Philip DeFranco Show - MS 4.30 The Rise of Deadly Fraternity Hazing and How it Can be Stopped

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to your Extra Morning News Show. My name is Philip DeFranco, and today we're gonna be talking about fraternities. Now, there are about nine million past and present fraternity and sorority members in the United States. And while that number represents only 3% of the overall population, fraternity alumni make up a disproportionate amount of powerful people

Starting point is 00:00:15 in the United States. 69% of U.S. presidents since 1877, 63% of U.S. cabinet members since 1900, and a whopping 85% of Fortune 500 executives have been part of a fraternity. And while Greek Live supporters point to these statistics as an example of how fraternities can breed success, for many people on the outside,

Starting point is 00:00:32 fraternities are mostly associated with partying, booze, and hazing. I mean, just look at how they're characterized in pop culture. Choga! Choga! Choga! Choga! Choga! Choga! How bad do you wanna be a delta? Would you walk on broken glass? Great God save! Great God save! Great God save! Great God save!

Starting point is 00:00:54 And while these movies generally portray these rituals as harmless, humorous rites of passage, in recent years in particular, we've seen that certain aspects of the Greek system can be dangerous and sometimes even deadly. In fact, there have been multiple deaths related to hazing or suspected hazing at US colleges every year since 2012, including three already this year.

Starting point is 00:01:10 So to understand the root of this problem and some of the proposed solutions being offered to prevent dangerous fraternity hazing, we had Cody Snell from the Rogue Rocket team jump into it. We have a friend who is unconscious, probably in an ambulance. That was the 911 call made from Penn State University's Beta Theta Pi fraternity on the

Starting point is 00:01:27 morning of February 3rd, 2017. The call was placed nearly 12 hours after 19-year-old Tim Piazza participated in a pledging ritual where he was given 18 drinks in under 90 minutes. Piazza died from a traumatic brain injury sustained from multiple falls. In the months and years since then, Piazza has become the poster child for the deadly consequences of fraternity hazing, with his story making national headlines and news broadcasts. As a 19-year-old lay dying after a night of alcohol-fueled hazing, the fraternity brothers allegedly did little to help. Instead, their concern was reportedly how to cover it all up. Twelve security cameras captured the Penn State sophomore slowly dying from his injuries to his head and spleen, sustained during a series of falls.

Starting point is 00:02:11 Piazza had fallen headfirst down the stairs after an alleged hazing ritual called the gauntlet, an obstacle course of alcohol. Piazza's parents, Evelyn and Jim, spoke with us about what kind of person Tim was. He was just a great guy. Really good sense of humor. Loved to make people laugh. Kind. A good friend.

Starting point is 00:02:33 They told us that Tim was not a big partier and would rather stay at home on a Friday night playing video games than go out drinking. But they also said that when it comes to the fraternity pledging process, the relationship between brothers and pledges is ripe for dangerous and deadly abuse. It's all about power and control and they exert the power and the pledges do whatever it takes. You know, even if it's something that they wouldn't normally do, they're not given the

Starting point is 00:02:59 playbook ahead of time so they don't know exactly what's coming and then they're caught in the moment and they're faced with the decision, do I do this? Do I keep going? Because if I stop, I'm out, I'm done. While hazing deaths like Piazza's are rare, the number of undergraduate college students experiencing some sort of hazing is not.

Starting point is 00:03:18 In 2008, the largest study of its kind conducted by the advocacy organization Stop Hazing reviewed survey responses from over 11,000 students at 53 colleges and universities, and found that a full 55% of students involved with clubs, teams, and organizations had experienced hazing, with that number jumping to 73% when just looking at social fraternities or sororities.

Starting point is 00:03:39 And while the type of hazing runs the gamut, the most dangerous by far is hazing that involves alcohol. Anywhere between 70 and 80 percent of deaths, particularly after 2000, are associated with alcohol. Hank Neuer is a journalism professor at Franklin College in Indiana and the author of several books on hazing. He says that hazing deaths really started to become a problem in the early 70s. So going back around 1971, you see the incidents escalating because at that particular time, the drinking age was raised from 18 to 21. I was in a fraternity myself. Alcohol wasn't such a big deal in the late 1960s.

Starting point is 00:04:21 When it became forbidden, function of fraternities kind of changed to an illegal clubhouse where alcohol could be dispensed to attractive guests and to the members. For decades, many fraternity chapters, announced that starting in September of this year, its members could no longer have any hard alcohol present at fraternity facilities. There is an exception for licensed third-party vendors who can serve hard liquor to legal-aged adults during fraternity parties. But notably, the ban still applies to private rooms and communal areas of fraternity houses where hazing is most likely to occur.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Tim Piazza's father, Jim, told us that this ban was one of the most important measures they wanted the NIC to implement in the wake of Tim's death. Most of the situations where people get hurt or die, it's because of hard alcohol. You know, you don't really see people dying from just drinking beer. Not that we're advocating for excessive beer drinking either, but the hard alcohol ban is absolutely an important step forward to protect the students. In a statement to Rogue Rocket, NIC said that in addition to the hard alcohol ban, it was also forming an anti-hazing coalition with parents of hazing victims to advocate for

Starting point is 00:05:41 stronger anti-hazing laws at both state and federal levels. According to the NIC, if its member fraternities fail to comply with its rules, they can be suspended or even expelled from the organization. But even if the trade group is able to effectively enforce the new ban, Professor Neuer worries that prohibition could create a whole new set of problems. While I think it will cut down on the number of deaths at houses, because Greek advisors, for example, and alums will be trying to either limit or eliminate alcohol, but it will go off to apartments and to state parks and other areas where I think the drinking will continue. Many individual fraternity councils at schools like UCLA have preemptively instituted their own hard alcohol bans and claim that it's achieving its desired effect, at least when it comes to house parties.

Starting point is 00:06:33 Joshua Kaplan, the president of the Interfraternity Council at UCLA, told us that there used to be a high number of students transported to the hospital from fraternity events every weekend because of alcohol poisoning. During the fall quarter, you know, you couldn't really go through a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night without hearing a siren coming down Gailey Avenue. Gailey Avenue is fraternity row at UCLA. But he says everything changed once the council put new hard liquor rules in place in January of last year in response to an alleged sexual assault by a high-profile fraternity member.

Starting point is 00:07:02 The new policy has been extremely effective in cutting down on hospital transports. I recently had a conversation with a UCPD official who expressed great joy over the fact that there's much less transports now on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights coming from fraternity row. Kaplan says that the new ban has also coincided with a reworking of the school's anti-hazing education programs. Fraternity executives now examine real-life hazing cases and discuss how they would respond if the incident took place at their school. Traditionally, education surrounding anti-hazing has been mainly based on like a lecture settings, but it's all sort of abstract.

Starting point is 00:07:40 There's a disconnect between what happens in reality and how you can apply these theories that they're teaching and you know the the fine print to what's actually happening in fraternity life so we're focusing more we're kind of reorienting our education on doing case studies but for the parents of hazing victims like tim piazza the biggest changes have to happen at the state level after tim's death the piazzas were instrumental in getting pennsylvania to pass a harsher anti-hazing law last year. The legislation named after Tim creates a new criminal category of felony, aggravated hazing, punishable by up to seven years in prison and severe consequences for the fraternity organization itself. If an organization is aware that hazing is going on and they don't do anything about it, There's a provision in there where they could forfeit their assets. So it's a very punitive law.

Starting point is 00:08:28 We think it's one of the strongest laws in the country, if not the strongest right now. But while 44 states have anti-hazing laws on the books, just 11 of those states classify hazing that results in a death or serious bodily injury as a felony, which is why the Piazzas are pushing for legislation modeled after the Pennsylvania law to be adopted by states across the country. Professor Neuer also says that Congress should pass something called the REACH bill, which would mandate more transparency from colleges and universities.

Starting point is 00:08:55 There's attempts to get something called the REACH bill out there, which would force colleges to have a kind of scorecard on their websites, which would not only include the hazing cases, but maybe sexual assault and other serious charges. That kind of transparency would be useful to new students so that they could kind of see what the problematic groups are. As for future undergraduate students who are considering joining a fraternity or sorority, Evelyn Piazza has this piece of advice. Make a pact with your friends that if you're going to pledge together,

Starting point is 00:09:33 if they're going to haze, you all leave. Because the fraternity needs members, or a sorority needs members. It's a business. And if you all leave, they're not going to be able to survive. It's advice that it's a business. And if you all leave, they're not gonna be able to survive. It's advice that could save lives. So now that you've heard all about that dangerous fraternity hazing,

Starting point is 00:09:50 I wanna hear from you, especially if you are a current college student or about to start college. Have you seen, experienced, or participated in hazing at your college or university? If so, why did you choose to be a part of it? Also, do you think this hard alcohol ban will do an effective job at cutting down

Starting point is 00:10:03 on the number of dangerous and deadly incidents that we've seen at fraternity houses in recent years? Or is this just going to move alcohol-fueled hazing events out of the fraternity houses and into spaces not under the jurisdiction of colleges and universities? And really, just any general thoughts on this topic at all, let me know down below. Also, if you want to support the video and the channel, be sure to hit that like button. If you're new here, you want more, be sure to subscribe. Also, if you're looking for more video, if maybe you missed the last Philip DeFranco show, the last deep dive, you wanna check it out, click or tap right there to watch those. But with that said, of course, as always,

Starting point is 00:10:29 thank you so much for watching. I hope you have a fantastic day. And in fact, I'll see you later today, right here on this channel for a brand new Philip DeFranco show.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - MS 4.30 The Rise of Deadly Fraternity Hazing and How it Can be Stopped

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