Parents, frat leaders launch national anti-hazing effort

LOS ANGELES — Tim Piazza and Marquise Braham told their parents they just wanted to make some new friends by joining fraternities while away at college. Neither got much of a chance: They died before their 20th birthdays, after brutal fraternity hazing rituals.

Now their parents are launching a nationwide anti-hazing campaign, and after too many similar deaths, national leaders of fraternities and sororities are joining them.

“I know it might seem strange to some people that families who lost their children to fraternity hazing are now working with fraternities and sororities to eradicate hazing,” Piazza’s father, Jim, said by phone Sunday from New York, where he, Braham’s father, and other parents were preparing for a series of Monday morning TV appearances to announce their campaign.

“But,” added Piazza, “we will do anything that we can to save a life and to prevent another shattered family.”

His 19-year-old son died an agonizing death last year after he was ordered to binge-drink 80-proof vodka until he became so intoxicated that he fell repeatedly, including down a flight of stairs, and was left to writhe in pain for hours before medical help was summoned.

More than two dozen members of Piazza’s Beta Thea Pi fraternity at Penn State were arrested, but all felony charges, including manslaughter, were eventually dropped. Three people have since pleaded guilty to misdemeanors.

“Currently the system — and that’s the police, the district attorneys, the judges — they seem to view hazing as it’s kind of like kids’ stuff,” said Rich Braham, whose 18-year-old son committed suicide in 2014 after a brutal bout of hazing that he’d complained about to school officials.

These fathers say they were delighted when, after reaching out to the North American Interfraternity Conference, they found an ally in its president and CEO, Judson Horras, who also brought aboard his National Panhellenic Conference counterpart, Carole Jones.