A DEADLY CAMPUS TRADITION

TIM PIAZZA SPENT THE EARLY-MORNING HOURS OF FEB. 3 CURLED up in pain, clutching his head and trying to stand. A Beta Theta Pi pledge at Penn State University, he had been forced to drink a toxic amount of alcohol in an alleged hazing ritual known as “the gauntlet,” according to a grand jury report. He then tumbled headfirst down a flight of stairs. Members of the fraternity carried his limp body to a couch, where they poured liquid on his face and slapped him in apparent attempts to wake him up. Security-camera footage later showed Piazza repeatedly falling and hitting his head, and then lying on the ground alone, holding his stomach. By the time fraternity members finally sought medical aid, according to the Centre County, Pennsylvania, grand jury findings, Piazza had suffered traumatic injuries to his brain and spleen. He died the next morning in an intensive-care unit. He was 19.

A year and a half earlier, the New Jersey teenager had followed his older brother to Penn State, where he began studying to become an engineer. He was known to his friends as a “big goofy kid” who always looked out for others. When he decided to join Beta Theta Pi—whose stated mission is “to develop men of principle for a principled life”—in the winter of his sophomore year, he was searching for community on a campus with more than 40,000 students. “He was looking for that brotherhood and just another place that he belonged here. It is a big place, and finding your group is tough sometimes,” says Bennet Brooks, one of Piazza’s sophomore-year roommates. “That was where he thought he was going to find it.”

Instead, Piazza became the latest casualty in a disturbingly persistent pattern of fraternity misconduct that has resulted in grievous