Penn State frat members face manslaughter charges in hazing case

[TruthBTold]

From a legal perspective, it's very difficult to prohibit free association in this way, especially if the school allows students to live off camps. Let's say ten guys want to live together and call their house "Roger." Every year, as seniors leave, they interview new freshmen to take their places. What are you, as a university administrator, going to do about it?

From a practical perspective, it's usually a bad idea. At many schools, fraternity alumni are the big donors, both because they tend to be gregarious and successful and because these guys usually have warm feelings about their college experience. Banning them would mean that many future donors would go elsewhere and the ones that go anyway wouldn't feel the same bond to the school. Even small liberal arts colleges that tried to ban Greek orgs eventually relent.

 

I am not sure that a frat house would be protected as a group, as opposed to a union or political group. I do not think that the fraternity brothers in the Penn case were living together to promote or advance ideas or beliefs or to espouse religious beliefs. They were simply living together. So they probably were not be protected. If all schools care about is money, well then that is a different matter.

Edited May 15, 2017 by TruthBTold

[instudiocity]

What a horrifying waste of life = What kind of creatures is our society raising

 

that so many could stand by and do nothing for so long - and watch someone die . . .

 

-- A Star Athlete and Top Student a Beautiful young man whose engineering talent might have

 

provided multiple advances to the cause of humanity. I have not been able to confirm but have

 

been told by sources in Jersey that the family is related to retired Pro Athlete Mike Piazza but

 

they did not want to advertise the connection to keep the focus on their son.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/us/penn-state-fraternity-death-timothy-piazza.html?_r=0

I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments. These sentiments are also the reason I oppose abortions, btw. We don't know who these people will be or how they can contribute to our world, their lives are extinguished far to early.

[instudiocity]

That is why I think that universities should prohibit any association in any way with any type of "fraternity" and that a college be allowed to expel or discipline a student if it finds out the student is living somewhere that is considered a fraternity. While I agree hazing will go on at all times and everywhere, a university does not have to enable it.

There's a whole lotta good that comes out of Greek organizations on campus. Don't throw the organization out because some soil the bath water.

[+ FreshFluff]

There's a whole lotta good that comes out of Greek organizations on campus. Don't throw the organization out because some soil the bath water.

 

Where would gay porn be without them?

[+ friendofsheila]

Stupid enough to do such a deed = Stupid enough to communicate it in a medium that can get saved and posted everywhere.

 

Yes, indeed.

[nycguy]

There is so much bad behavior coming out of frat houses - extreme hazing sometimes resulting in death, dying from alcohol poisoning, gang rapes, etc. The frat houses should be required to have an adult on premises 24/7.

[kewtex]

The frat houses should be required to have an adult on premises 24/7.

 

Legally, adulthood begins at the age of 18. I would amend your statement to read, "The frat houses should be required to have a mature, sober person on premises 24/7."

[Guest]

While not passing judgement about this Penn State scandal - it's notable to recall the Duke University Lacrosse Team Rape scandal where in the end all charges were dropped, but lives and reputations were still tarnished.

 

WTF? These two situations have essentially nothing in common, except that they both involved fraternities. The Duke case was a complete fabrication, and the only crimes were the filing of false police reports, the perjury, and the prosecutorial and police misconduct. In this case, the frat brothers killed a promising young man, and callously left his body to rot overnight, when a call to 911 might have saved the man's life. I hope the perps rot in prison--and get raped a number of times while they're there. Their lives should be completely ruined. Never in my life would I behave in such a horrid fashion--not even when I was a college undergraduate. Those frat bros are repulsive excuses for human beings. Immaturity, my ass. It's just sociopathy.

[+ MostlyLurking]

If they did somehow magically manage to banish all free association by the students (good luck)....

...the students would vote with their wallets and go to a school with fraternities instead of one without....sad but true.

 

There are colleges without fraternities which are doing just fine. I am very, very glad I went to one.

[+ FreshFluff]

Unicorn is right that this has little to do with the Duke case.

 

I don't agree that all of the "brothers" are sociopaths. (The frat president, who appears smarter than the rest, might be.)

 

This reminds me of the Stanford Prison Experiment. During the early seventies, a Stanford psychologist recruited some undergraduates for a study on authority. Half were randomly assigned to be guards in a "prison" while the rest were assigned to be prisoners. Because this happened at the peak of the counter-culture, none of the students wanted to be guards at first.

 

Yet by the end of the experiment, the "guards" had gotten so brutal to the "prisoners" that the experiment had to be shut down early.

 

Edited May 17, 2017 by FreshFluff

[JayCeeKy]

Yet by the end of the experiment, the "guards" had gotten so brutal to the "prisoners" that the experiment had to be shut down early.

 

FreshFluff - your allusion to the Prison Study is appropriate, I think. . Zimbardo's study illustrates that, given the right circumstances, we ALL have the potential to do terrible things - and might help us understand (and maybe empathize, not condone) what happened at the frat house. It's what Zimbardo calls the "Power of the Situation." I like what Martin Luther King said in regards to understanding the evil that lurks in all of us:

 

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

- Martin Luther King, Jr

[Guest]

FreshFluff - your allusion to the Prison Study is appropriate, I think. . Zimbardo's study illustrates that, given the right circumstances, we ALL have the potential to do terrible things - and might help us understand (and maybe empathize, not condone) what happened at the frat house.

 

It's why I hope the legal system really throws the book at those bros. Society (and fraternities in particular) need to be reminded that sociopathic behavior cannot be excused just because it's done on an institutional level or in a group. The message should be pretty clear that dangerous hazing may land you in the state penn, regardless of whether everyone else was doing it. Killing people or even putting others' lives at risk isn't OK just because you did it in a group or were "following orders."

[kewtex]

FreshFluff - your allusion to the Prison Study is appropriate, I think. . Zimbardo's study illustrates that, given the right circumstances, we ALL have the potential to do terrible things - and might help us understand (and maybe empathize, not condone) what happened at the frat house. It's what Zimbardo calls the "Power of the Situation." I like what Martin Luther King said in regards to understanding the evil that lurks in all of us:

 

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

- Martin Luther King, Jr

 

Forcing the pledges to drink to excess was premeditated on the part of the fraternity's leaders. There is no defense for their actions. They must be held accountable for the consequences.

[+ FreshFluff]

Zimbardo's experiment doesn't excuse the "brothers'" behavior any more than the Milgram experiment excuses the Nazis'. But it's hard for me to believe that all the brothers are sociopaths, even if this fraternity selects for that type. They're all culpable, but from what I've seen so far, the president and a few of others appear to be more culpable than the rest.

 

Hazing has always been driven by a desire to boast about it later, and social media exacerbates that effect. Check out Total Frat Move. It's written by some guy in his late 20s who probably fabricates most of it, but frat boys love to RT his stuff.

 

http://i.imgur.com/4PCgzu1.png

[samhexum]

A fraternity pledge who fell asleep at the wheel and killed another student claimed in a new lawsuit that he was forced to stay awake for three days straight in a hazing stunt ahead of the deadly crash.

 

University of Louisiana at Lafayette student Michael Gallagher Jr. sued the Kappa Sigma fraternity and the university officials Friday, following in the footsteps of 23-year-old Rustam Nizamutdinov’s mother, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the fraternity and some of its members in September.

 

Nizamutdinov was on his way home to his apartment on Nov. 6, 2016 when he was fatally struck by a vehicle driven by Gallagher, which drifted onto the sidewalk where he was walking.

 

Gallagher’s lawsuit claims he was badly sleep-deprived when he was forced to be a designated driver for drunken Kappa members during the university’s homecoming weekend.

 

Following the accident, Gallagher immediately phoned his parents. When they arrived on the scene, they found him shocked and unable to remember what happened.

 

According to the toxicology reports, Gallagher was not impaired at the time of the crash, KATC reported.

 

The suit additionally claims university officials should have known about the “persistent pattern of hazing” by the Kappa Sigma members long before the deadly accident.

[+ TylerandAce]

Having been in a fraternity and now the father of a son and daughter in Greek organizations, I can see both the good and the bad. I will say that my experience along with my children’s experiences have been extremely positive. My son has served as VP and is now the social chairman of his fraternity. We have on-campus, heavily regulated and controlled houses. However, no amount of control or supervision can stop kids from being kids. When I was active, we had plenty of beer and maybe some moonshine. Today, it’s hard liquor and drugs. I preach to my son weekly about limiting exposure and making sure he chooses good people to be monitors for their events. They limit the number of people on the grounds (even not allowing the team’s popular quarter back in) for the events and even have somebody designated to call Uber rides for ones they want to evacuate quickly from the property.

 

It’s also not at all like what you hear happens in these stories. It’s not Animal House every day. My son is a 4.0 student in the most difficult major on campus, he serves in elected office for the student body, and keeps a part-time job in addition to everything else. The boys who are with him are equally competent. Are there losers? Sure, but they are quickly weeded out if their actions don’t change.

 

Schools do take and are taking action. Florida State just suspended all Greek organizations indefinitely. My fraternity was kicked off campus for four years due to shenanigans. And Fraternities are shortening the pledgeship in order to limit exposure to hazing. What constitutes hazing has even changed quite a lot lately. It used to be indentured servitude, but now it’s study halls and some charity work parties.

 

All this is beside the point. I have lifetime bonds with men ( nonsexual, thank you) from my experience. My son’s life revolves around his brothers and I have seen him grow into a wonderful, caring, sensitive, others-focused man through the opportunities he’s been afforded in Greek life. I (and he) would do it over again without a second thought.

[OCClient]

We had a member fall of the roof, 2 stories. People throwing objects off the fire escape. Boys stacked up on top of the other on the den floor, diving from couches, one on top of the other. It's amazing no one died. There was no control over the amount of liquor we drank. It was a lot. We were nuts. We were in an old red brick dormitory system, not even a Frat. The Frats on our campus seemed much more serene than these accounts in recent years. Maybe back there in the hinterlands, back in the middle of nowhere on our campus, we were just not as corporal about things as it seems these kids are now. Life is their fucking reality show.

[samhexum]

My son has served as VP and is now the social chairman of his fraternity... My son is a 4.0 student in the most difficult major on campus, he serves in elected office for the student body, and keeps a part-time job in addition to everything else.

 

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbfewm4wlM1rxygpd.gif

 

http://i.giphy.com/9Q249Qsl5cfLi.gif

 

[+ WilliamM]

My son is a 4.0 student in the most difficult major on campus,

 

Pre-Med?

[+ TylerandAce]

Biomedical Engineering and just accepted to medical school. I know it sounds like bragging, and I suppose it is. My point was that these kids are not all party-focused, thick-headed, misogynistic, entitled pricks. Fraternities do a lot to cultivate excellence in the ones who embrace the system. There are those who make the whole system look bad, and that’s unfortunate

[+ TylerandAce]

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbfewm4wlM1rxygpd.gif

 

http://i.giphy.com/9Q249Qsl5cfLi.gif

 

Lol...sorry about that. You’re right. I am proud of him, but I was hoping to express a little more first-hand account of these places that are often vilified in the media

[samhexum]

Biomedical Engineering

 

TylerandAce's kid's plan to enslave the American workforce:

Robots have long been a part of the automotive assembly process, but what about cyborgs?

 

You won’t find any factory workers jacked into the internet yet, but Ford is trying out a new exoskeleton designed to make physical tasks easier for the human half of the man-machine combination.

 

It’s called the EksoVest and was developed by California’s Ekso Bionics, interestingly enough in a former Ford factory in Richmond. The 9.5-pound device straps onto the shoulders and arms of a worker and uses unpowered springs to give them a little super strength.

 

The vest provides an extra five to 15 pounds of lifting assistance, which can be helpful for picking up heavy objects, but in this case is being mainly tested during tasks requiring employees to raise their arms overhead to work on the underside of vehicles suspended from above.

 

Ford says some assembly line workers have to do this sort of thing over 1 million times a year, and is looking to see if the EksoVest reduces fatigue and injuries. It’s currently being trialed at two plants in Michigan, including Flat Rock Assembly where the Mustang is made, with tests at other locations to follow in the coming months.

 

Along with the EksoVest, Exso Bionics has also developed a full-body powered exoskeleton for patients recovering from spinal cord injuries and strokes.

 

Robots have long been a part of the automotive assembly process, but what about cyborgs?

 

You won’t find any factory workers jacked into the internet yet, but Ford is trying out a new exoskeleton designed to make physical tasks easier for the human half of the man-machine combination.

 

It’s called the EksoVest and was developed by California’s Ekso Bionics, interestingly enough in a former Ford factory in Richmond. The 9.5-pound device straps onto the shoulders and arms of a worker and uses unpowered springs to give them a little super strength.

 

The vest provides an extra five to 15 pounds of lifting assistance, which can be helpful for picking up heavy objects, but in this case is being mainly tested during tasks requiring employees to raise their arms overhead to work on the underside of vehicles suspended from above.

 

 

No doubt 'Biomedical Engineers' will soon refine the equipment to drill into the skull, attach to the brain, and take over the free will of the poor sap who'll be enslaved forever.

TylerandAce, where does your son's school get their test subjects guinea pigs?

[+ TylerandAce]

 

TylerandAce, where does your son's school get their test subjects guinea pigs?

 

We receive a significant cut in tuition when we volunteered him for the test program.

Edited November 11, 2017 by TylerandAce

[+ WilliamM]

Biomedical Engineering and just accepted to medical school

 

So my post about pre-med was not far off. Ir was not meant as a critical comment.

[+ TylerandAce]

So my post about pre-med was not far off. Ir was not meant as a critical comment.

Oh, definitely not...I know. We are excited to have gotten him through this part finally! Lol