These Parents Want to Change the Frats Where Their Sons Died

Abby Drey, AP Images

Jim Piazza didn’t have any reason to trust the president of the North-American Interfraternity Conference. After all, he’d lost his 19-year-old son in an alleged hazing incident at a Pennsylvania State University fraternity house.

But in February, just after the one-year anniversary of Tim Piazza’s horrific death, the grieving father reached out to Jud Horras, the association’s president since 2016. We need to talk, he wrote to Horras.

When Horras saw the email in his inbox, he was nervous. His tenure had been tumultuous for fraternities, which had drawn increasing scrutiny for hazing, alcohol abuse, and sexual assault. If he responded to Piazza, he knew he’d need to have answers.

They scheduled a meeting in New York City. Horras told Piazza how sorry he was about the loss of his son. Piazza looked Horras in the eye and tried to gauge just how genuine his commitment to reform was. So did his friend Rich Braham, whose son Marquise committed suicide after allegedly being hazed by a fraternity at Penn State’s Altoona campus.

Both fathers spent hours talking with each other afterward. Do we go forward with this? They had strong opinions about what the future of Greek life should look like, and they weren’t sure Horras and others would support their proposals. The next few months brought more meetings. At one, the national president of a fraternity cried.

Slowly but surely, Piazza, Braham, and Steve Gruver, whose son had died after an initiation ritual at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, forged a relationship with the Greek leaders. The parents concluded that everyone in the room wanted to promote a culture of decency on college campuses. And they wanted to do everything they could to keep more students from dying.

Those conversations prompted the formation of an antihazing coalition that includes four families, the interfraternity conference, and the National Panhellenic Conference, which governs many sororities. The partnership was formally announced on Monday.

“It was not a flippant decision,” Piazza said, in an interview last week with The Chronicle. “Our view was, we could’ve done battle with the fraternities and Greek life in general, or we could make an attempt to work with them to make it better and safer.”

‘The Worst’

Their partnership has already helped bring about the ban on hard liquor that the interfraternity conference announced last week, Piazza said.

The coalition will focus on lobbying from state to state. Horras said the group wants states to adopt a better definition of hazing. They also want to make it a felony to commit serious bodily injury, which should include the act of compelling students to drink to the point that they have a 0.25-percent blood-alcohol content or higher.

Colleges too can do more, Horras said, by expelling students who break the rules, instead of simply shutting down the fraternity chapters.

The group also plans to promote antihazing education, inside and outside of Greek life, Piazza said. He wants fraternity and sorority members to visit middle and high schools and educate younger students.

Piazza hopes to spread a message about just how prevalent alcohol abuse is in fraternities. When a student dies, national attention prompts a wave of criticism. But what about the students who almost die? What about the many alcohol-related hospitalizations that result from hazing or other illicit activities by the chapters?

Horras said he has talked with Kevin Kruger, president of Naspa: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, about joining the coalition. They also hope to bring college presidents on board. The leaders of Penn State, Florida State, and Louisiana State banded together in recent months to try to make Greek life safer and to publicize fraternity misconduct.

Making Fraternities Safer

Bringing problems out into the open and promoting confidential reporting have helped lift the veil of secrecy that perpetuates abusive behavior.

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Piazza and Braham say they remain cautious. They know national fraternity organizations have a reputation as being hands-off. Horras and other fraternity leaders will need to do a lot more to hold individual chapters accountable, Piazza said.

The families are still concerned about the culture of suppressing information that persists in many fraternities. “There’s kind of just this pattern of, We’re a secret society, and we’re going to keep it secret, and if we keep our mouths shut, we’ll stay out of prison,” Braham said on Monday.

He wants to spend more time speaking directly to fraternity members and sharing Marquise’s story. He wants to tell them how much he misses his son — and how much their parents would miss them. That’s another goal of working with fraternity leaders, he said.

“We don’t want any more families like ours,” Braham said. “It’s the worst.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.