Timothy died in February 2017 at a fraternity event at Penn State. A simple trip through the archives of The Daily Collegian might have revealed to him that the Alpha Upsilon chapter of Beta Theta Pi was hardly the Garrick Club. At the entrances were biometric fingerprint scanners. In short order it will “recolonize” on the campus, and in a few years the house will be back in business. At the very least, this might not have been the crowd for anything requiring a fingerprint. I don’t know what hazing is today.” He wasn’t upset that the wrestlers had engaged in hazing; he was scornful of them for doing it wrong. Clearly the brothers are trying to make this terrible situation appear a little bit better for when the authorities arrive. Evelyn, who is petite and has long, ringleted hair—a lighter shade of red than Tim’s—was in shorts and a T‑shirt. In the words of Stacy Parks Miller, the district attorney who brought the charges against the Beta brothers, the whole system was an elaborate “sham,” one that was exposed only after Tim Piazza died. Kordel attended a majority-white high school, where he made good friends and had many caring teachers, and where he found a mentor in the football coach. The University has decided to permanently revoke recognition of Beta Theta Pi banning it from ever returning as a chapter at Penn State. Penn State University told “CBS This Morning” their office in charge of the school’s fraternities has told the chapter it cannot host or participate in campus activities. He reaches the front door, but the mechanism to open it proves too complicated in his drunken state, so he turns around and staggers toward another door. Around campus, people are beginning to wake up. Abbey seems not to have considered why the house might have become so “repulsive” in the first place. And then I realized why Horras was able to see the torture and death of a 19-year-old kid as a golden opportunity: He didn’t really know that much about it. For more feature stories, read aloud, download the Audm app for your iPhone. Some fraternity members head off to class, and in the fullness of time they return. Text messages from members’ cellphones had been entered into evidence, and included this exchange between two brothers at the time of the fall 2016 initiation: As people have since explained it to me, the Shep Test itself is little more than a quiz about Beta Theta Pi history, but it’s one part of a night of mind games and physical punishments. A grand jury found no link between his death and the hazing he had endured. Another piece of ongoing Penn State litigation involves a student at the Altoona campus named Marquise Braham, who pledged Phi Sigma Kappa as a freshman in 2013. In fact, Jim and Evelyn Piazza have not chosen to distance themselves from the men who hazed their late son and left him to a fate that Jim compares to a crucifixion. But there really wasn’t anything at all about the Shep Test—except for this, from the national Beta organization: It seemed to me—based on the fact that I could find nothing else about it—that the Shep Test had truly been eliminated. A former Beta told me that pledges were held down on a table as a red-hot poker was brought close to their bare feet and they were told they were going to be branded. But it is also true that he is setting off to get jumped by a gang, and he won’t survive. This extraordinary action occurs in the context of a continuing criminal investigation into the death of Penn State sophomore Timothy Piazza. Now he had a lacerated spleen, an abdomen full of blood, and multiple traumatic brain injuries. Two checkers arrived minutes before he fell down the stairs, and inspected a house rife with policy violations, yet no alarm was raised, and the night raged on. I asked a lawyer with extensive knowledge of fraternity litigation whether Kordel might have his own civil claim against Beta Theta Pi, and he affirmed that—given the hazing he had experienced as well as the scarring—he could indeed have a “deep-six-figure claim.”. “I lost my future,” he told me. “He remembered it just the way we did.” I now have a copy of that letter, and have spoken with the parent who wrote it; the account verifies everything the Piazzas remember and identifies the man who made the remarks as the university’s then-head of Greek life, Roy Baker. When I dropped Kordel off at his father’s home, I wondered whether this experience would indeed cost him his future. In many regards, our conversation was like other such conversations I’ve had with fraternity executives over the years. He would spend a total of $8.5 million on what would be the most extensive renovation of an American fraternity house in history. By Valerie Waltz, WPMT. Beta Theta Pi at Penn State University is suspended after the death of a student. All Rights The chapter president, Brendan Young, was—get this—majoring in risk management. They will be reunited for the few hours they have left with this redheaded boy they have loved so well, and at least it can be said that Tim did not die alone, or in the company of the men who tortured him. The cameras were in no way secret, and yet the brothers continued to engage in a variety of forbidden acts, including hazing, in clear view of them. The first was administrative: create “a five-person trained and active advisory team.” The other three were the crux of the matter: commit “to a 100% hazing-free pledge program,” institute “alcohol-free recruitment,” and eliminate the “Shep Test,” which it described as “the rogue National Test.”. These policies forbid not just the egregious behaviors of hazing and sexual assault, but also a vast range of activities that comprise normal fraternity life in the majority of chapters. The national organization grooms a new set of brothers—a “colony”—and trains them carefully so that the bad behavior of the previous group will not be replicated. He said that at some point, you have to trust young men to make the right decisions. “You must have a very strong faith,” I said, and Jim winced a little and glanced at his wife. Fraternity members live under the shadow of giant sanctions and lawsuits that can result even from what seem like minor incidents. By now Tim is “thrashing and making weird movements,” according to the grand-jury presentment. Perhaps he won’t have to pay them back himself. In his native New Jersey home, Piazza’s friends are choosing to remember the light that he brought to their lives. "Drink hazing can send me to jail for organizing the obstacle course," he said, referring to one of the activities during the bid acceptance night. Reserved. This was an outfit in which a warm day might bring the sight of a brother sitting, with his pants pulled down, on the edge of a balcony, while a pledge stood on the ground below, his hands raised as though to catch the other man’s feces. In a statement to “CBS This Morning,” Jim Piazza, Tim’s father, said investigators were looking into what he called “this fraternity pledge/hazing event.” He also said: “Tim was an amazing son, an amazing person and someone who we are going to miss dearly.”, Alpha Upsilon, Beta Theta Pi’s Penn State chapter, said that Piazza “recently accepted an invitation to join.” The national branch told “CBS This Morning” that “as a matter of fraternity protocol, the chapter’s operations have been temporarily suspended until the investigation has completed.”. He was seized by remorse over what had happened to Tim, and he had decided not to return to Penn State, although he had loved it there and had been awarded a significant financial-aid package. Beta Theta Pi (ΒΘΠ), commonly known as Beta, is a North American social fraternity that was founded in 1839 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.One of North America's oldest fraternities, it currently consists of 118 active chapters and 20 colonies in the United States and Canada. Penn State President Eric Barron said in a statement Friday that Beta Theta Pi was situated on private property and claimed to be a model fraternity, but it was "no model." Davis disappears from the video, in search of an officer of the club. When the nickname came to the attention of a teacher and his coach, the other players claimed that it was meant to be affectionate. I asked to schedule an interview with the CEO, Jud Horras, who was also a Beta, a former assistant secretary of the fraternity’s national organization, and someone who had been intimately involved in the disbanding and recolonization of the Penn State chapter. “We’re in the process of obtaining video of inside the fraternity and we are working closely with Pennsylvania Office of Student Affairs,” said Lt. Keith Robb of the State College Police. The brothers put him on a couch, and Rizzo performs a sternum rub—a test for consciousness used by EMTs—but Tim does not respond. When Kordel Davis was interviewed by a police detective after Tim Piazza’s death, he had a scar on his forehead, which was still there when I met with him over the summer. Once again, a student is dead and a family is shattered. Penn State stripped Beta Theta Pi of its status as a campus recognized fraternity Friday in reaction to the recent death of a sophomore pledge.. Frat members told police and paramedics on Friday morning the teen plunged down the basement stairs the previous night, and that their call for help came about 12 hours after his fall, reports CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan. “Rest in peace.”. When I asked whether a spare car in the driveway had been Tim’s, Jim said yes and then suddenly struggled for composure; he had driven it back to the house after Tim’s death. Kordel seemed rootless when I talked with him over the summer. Yet Vivenzio claims that Student Conduct did not investigate his allegations until he went to the police. Looking back at the past two decades at Penn State, we see a university grappling with its fraternity problem in ways that pitted concerned administrators against a powerful system, and achieving little change. If he makes it through that door, he may get out to the street, may find a place to sit or lie down, may come to the attention of someone who can help him—at the very least by getting him back to his apartment and away from the fraternity. If anything goes wrong with the pledges this semester then both of us are fucked.” He wasn’t suggesting they scrap hazing; he was reminding his subordinate that they had better not get caught doing it. The renovations were largely complete by the winter of 2007, and almost immediately the members began to trash the house. In 1998, a year after Tim Piazza was born, Beta Theta Pi launched something it called Men of Principle, intended to be a “culture-reversing initiative.” What culture was it seeking to reverse? Tim Piazza’s case, however, has something we’ve never seen before. The parents of Timothy Piazza, the Penn State student who suffered fatal injuries inside a fraternity house in 2017 has reached a settlement with Beta Theta Pi fraternity. (Exterior: the frat where the rich bastards live.) It was full night now, and the rain had stopped. This time, when the brothers of the newly reconstituted Beta chapter reverted to type and started hazing, the national organization did not intervene. Patrick Carns / AP About 40 students lived at the house. And then it is time for the first act of hazing in their pledge period: quickly drinking a massive amount of alcohol in an obstacle course, the “gauntlet.” Court documents and the security footage provide excruciating detail about what comes next. Brothers try to prop Tim up on the couch and dress him, but his limbs are too stiff and they can’t do it. To say he was a beloved figure doesn’t begin to suggest the role he played on campus. We have testimonials instead, where pledges can—”, “But it’s in the presentment,” I said, and he looked at me, baffled. When I talked with people about Tim Piazza’s death, many brought up an earlier Penn State crisis, the Jerry Sandusky scandal, in which the longtime assistant football coach was convicted for a decades-long practice of sexually abusing young boys, and the university’s head coach, Joe Paterno, was abruptly fired. He was in obvious need of medical attention, yet the fraternity brothers treated him with a callousness bordering on the sadistic. He fully understood that officers of the fraternity face greater liability than do regular members. He fell 15 feet down a flight of steps, hair-first, going to need help.” (Rizzo, who was not charged with any crimes, told the police that he later advocated for calling an ambulance.). It contracted with an outside security firm called St. Moritz. Listen to the audio version of this article here. And then I got in my car, armed with a father’s good counsel about avoiding the dangers that hid in an ordinary night. In fact, it is really more of a “reopening under new management” kind of process. An hour later, he manages to stand up, and staggers toward the front door, but within seconds he falls, headfirst, into an iron railing and then onto the floor. Penn State permanently banned the Beta Theta Pi fraternity on March 30, 2017 following Piazza’s death, in which he consumed at least 18 alcoholic drinks in less than 82 minutes and suffered a fractured skull and lacerated spleen after falling down the fraternity's basement stairs. So let us now imagine all the forces arrayed against 19-year-old Tim Piazza as he gets dressed in his jacket and tie, preparing to go to his new chapter house and accept the bid the brothers have offered him. Police say 19-year-old Timothy Piazza was found unconscious inside their fraternity house Friday morning. 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