Original subtitles

[music]

PRODUCER: Kordel, what does it feel like to be back?

KORDEL DAVIS: It feels a little bit strange.

You know, I don't oftentimes come back here.

PRODUCER: Do you remember the house?

Like, can you describe the house at all?

Like, just--

I didn't really know anything about them

or their reputation.

Tim was probably so excited and he had no idea.

KORDEL: I saw bruises on his chest.

His eyes were closed.

The plan was to tell the police they had no idea,

that they weren't aware.

All of this was essentially a cover-up.

It was just...

it was deeply troubling.

[crowd cheering]

WOMAN: There is no place in the world

that is more exciting or thrilling

than sororities and fraternities.

SAM RULAND: But you don't know what actually goes on

behind closed doors.

All of Greek life has some sort of a tradition of secrecy.

MAN: This was a powerful organization.

I mean, it was a serious cover-up.

MAN: The amount of power that the fraternities have,

it's so thoroughly woven

into the nature of the universities.

JIM PIAZZA: There is always the same playbook.

DISPATCHER: 911.

What is the address of your emergency?

They start the cover-up.

Nobody talks.

Hazing is a huge problem

and it's resulted in tragedy.

Someone was burning across on the lawn.

They would grab their members, force their face down

and make 'em do a line of cocaine.

WOMAN: It felt very sadistic.

He wanted me to be hurting.

EVELYN PIAZZA: You sent your kid off to college

and this happens.

We gotta clean up Tim's room.

A lot of stuff in there.

Yeah.

[music]

EVELYN: Tim was unbelievably funny

and just loved making people laugh.

MIKE PIAZZA: We were 18 months apart.

My favorite Nintendo character was Mario and his was Luigi.

I was Batman. He was Robin.

It's just--it's hard to characterize his personality

'cause it was so, um--

it was so big.

He was a good friend

and he was a protector.

MIKE: I found out Tim was coming to Penn State

after he got his letter of acceptance

and I was very excited to have him on campus with me.

JIM: Tim always would say,

"Mike's gonna take care of me."

I just--you know,

I think he went to Penn State because of Mike.

[music]

I think almost everyone knows Penn State.

Penn State is a classic university.

It's pretty.

It's got a lot of buildings

that are a hundred years old.

MIKE: Town is picture perfect.

There's all the seasons,

you know, there's a vibrant downtown.

I was impressed with Penn State's

engineering program, their business school,

and, you know, Penn State has an incredible football team.

SAM: It's just kind of the idyllic college town.

MIKE: Penn State was its own world.

It felt like you could find anything,

be anything, and just kind of exist in this

microcosm away from everything.

That's why it's Happy Valley.

Greek life is a significant part of Penn State life.

Lots of alumni, lots of former Penn Staters

have been in Greek life.

SAM: People have such pride for Penn State,

but there are some cons too.

It was always considered a very big party school.

I think it still does have that reputation.

There are dozens of fraternities and sororities on campus.

When you're in a fraternity or a sorority,

you're the one who is throwing the parties.

Alumni are the ones who are making the biggest donations.

Dues, donations, and prime real estate,

fraternities and sororities make money and they make a lot of it.

They take care of their own,

especially when it comes to business connections.

You already have to have some privilege to a degree,

and then it's like, you're just elevated

to an even higher level,

but you don't know what actually goes on

behind closed doors.

Members are instructed to stay silent,

to not disclose the secrets of the organization.

It's fascinating to look at how much control and power

this group of students and alum have

over the direction of an entire institution.

Nobody really wants to talk about it.

[music]

EVELYN: I think Tim mentioned before Christmas

that he wanted to join a fraternity.

I was a bit surprised,

mostly just because it was something

that I wasn't interested in, but I knew that,

you know, Tim was very different from me anyway.

JIM: Beta Theta Pi had a reputation

as being a place where you developed good network.

It said it was a non-hazing, non-drinking fraternity,

and I thought

he was making a good choice.

[music]

CHARLIE THOMPSON: Beta Theta Pi nationally

advertises itself as men of distinction.

They were one of the more selective fraternities

on fraternity row at Penn State.

SAM: It was definitely what was considered

a top-tier fraternity.

The rumor on campus was that they had to provide

their parents' tax returns to even rush it.

He had called me and I said, "Did you get the bid?"

And he said, "Yes."

I didn't even know about it.

The whole Greek life scene,

we didn't know that he was getting into.

KORDEL: My name is Kordel Davis.

It was September, 2016

when I started pledging Beta Theta Pi.

So the Beta Theta Pi fraternity right here,

obviously on campus,

it just seemed like it was

a part of the Penn State tradition.

It definitely is marketed as the place

where great, great things happen.

Joining the fraternity,

I never expected to experience what I did.

I got this full tuition paid scholarship.

It felt like this was gonna be dream come true

the next four years.

I couldn't wait.

Beta Theta Pi is right there on the campus of Penn State.

It was like fantasyland.

Mahogany in the kitchen.

You had gold ceilings.

The chairs were replicas from the White House.

The first night, you know, it was great going there.

You know, you walk into Beta on night one

and they're wearing suits and ties

and, you know, there were mentors,

aerospace, engineering majors,

and, you know, they would talk about their dream jobs

and they would talk about how all of them

go to the big five accounting firms.

You get the sense that you could really have

a really successful future here.

It's just like on a whim, let's join Beta.

Unfortunately, I kind of learned too late what hazing is.

Hazing starts out slow.

It started out really simple.

Like, we need somebody to put up the flag tomorrow morning.

And it just started out so small.

And then the next day,

we need somebody to clean the house tonight.

And they would always say,

"We don't haze here. We don't haze here."

And I fell for it. I totally fell for it.

You don't really have a grasp of how dangerous

these fraternities can be.

Being hit with a wooden spoon,

leaving a mark on your body,

at night, you're being broken up,

you're being forced to do lineups.

All universities I think would, you know,

publicly say, "Yes, we have a zero-tolerance policy."

- MAN: Moorefield. - [screaming]

And I'm sure they believe

that they have a zero-tolerance policy.

MAN: Go, go, go!

SAM: But all of the fraternities still haze.

It's chalked up to it's all good fun.

It's all bonding.

[music]

KORDEL: Hazing continues.

Hazing gets worse.

ALL: Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

KORDEL: Every night, there's something different,

different event.

There's a lot of humiliation.

They have a huge house.

So they're gonna stand on the roof

and one of the older members

is going to poop and you have to catch it.

They talk about the elephant walk,

which is a male has to stick his finger

into the male in front of him's anus

and then hold the scrotum, and they go in like a circle.

KORDEL: One event was supposed to be banned from Beta Theta Pi.

This cultish scene, they're all dressed up

in this Greek, you know, these Greek outfits

and the pledge master is

taking in one pledge at a time.

You see a brand that's red hot.

It's burning red hot.

And they're laying you down on the table

and you see the brand get close.

I was trying so hard to get out of there,

like this is not about to happen.

I'm not about to be branded.

And then they take ice

and they put it on your foot instead.

So it's the fake branding.

It was bizarre.

This was not what I had signed up for.

The older brothers say,

"Oh, we did that when I was pledging too.

"Don't worry.

"You just gotta get through it

"and then you can become one of us."

You're being manipulated,

you're being coerced, and you don't have a say.

DOUG FIERBERG: Individuals want to make it

as tough on others as they had it,

as if that will create some form of a bond.

And when it gets out of control, it's resulted in tragedy.

KORDEL: My pledge brothers would keep talking

about this gauntlet.

I was like, "What's the gauntlet?"

The gauntlet was them lining up in a line

and passing a large bottle of vodka

from front to back with instructions

that they had to finish the thing

by the time it got to the end of the line.

Some people think being in risky situations

is gonna make us great,

and if we bond together, surely they won't let us die.

Pressure makes diamonds.

Surely that could work with humans too.

So after they forced me to drink all this alcohol,

I'm walking from one room to the other room,

I slip on the floor and I just remember I was like,

I couldn't--I couldn't even put my arms out.

Like I didn't know what was going on.

I fell straight on my head.

Still have a scar on my forehead

from falling on that floor.

Immediately,

blood rushing out of my forehead.

I'm bleeding profusely.

You're just-- you're just so scared.

I tried taking pictures of my face.

My clothes were soaked in blood

and one of the brothers

and grabs my cell phone.

So now I'm phoneless.

They're worried that they could get kicked off campus.

They're worried that they could be put on probation.

I was so confused.

What in the world did you get me out of this place?

The next morning, the assistant pledge master

was given orders

to take me to an off-campus medical facility.

He said, "Tell them you fell over the mop bucket

"and don't talk about the Beta house."

It was all coerced

from the organization on what to say.

I didn't quite understand everything I had gone through.

You know, if I left now, who would be my friends?

What would I do?

To be in this fraternity, to be hazed

was better than not being in it at all.

But I had a sense that it could happen again

and it could happen worse.

DISPATCHER: 911. What is your emergency?

So this is where I expected to basically

be the homeland of four years of college.

This was going to be a place of brotherhood,

a place of belonging, a place of safety,

and it turned into everything opposite of that.

The initiation was first week of December, 2016.

I was in the fraternity.

Like, I wasn't really second guessing anything.

It was just--I just kind of convinced myself

that it was all okay.

It was all part of the experience,

college experience.

Would it be worth it

to simply cancel

your admission to the fraternity?

[music]

Early 2017,

we're opening the house up to the rushes.

We were now members.

We still did not have all the privileges

that come with being in a fraternity.

That same hierarchy, that power structure

remained until we get a new pledge class.

I remember the first night meeting Tim Piazza.

He had walked over to me.

I remember his hands were sort of in his pocket

and he introduced himself to me.

This was really our only conversation

we ever got to have.

EVELYN: Tim was probably so excited.

JIM: Yeah. I just think he, uh,

think he was looking

and maybe not seeing everything, unfortunately.

KORDEL: At the house, it was like,

"This is gonna be a night of chaos."

I took it upon myself to warn all the pledgers.

They warned us, "Don't text the pledgers, don't tell them,"

so I was thinking,

"Okay, how can I warn this in a way

"that they know tonight's not gonna be safe?"

It was actually song lyrics from the song "Shots" by LMFAO.

It's like, "Are you ready to get [bleep] up?

"Get ready for a long semester."

What I really wanted to say was,

"Don't come to the house, don't join."

Yes.

SAM: When Tim first was entering the house,

he was handed a handle of vodka,

he had to chug the vodka,

and then, you know, the other frat members spun him around.

Now he has to chug a beer and he gets spun around again.

He goes to the next floor, he has to drink from a box of wine.

Tim Piazza had double digits worth of drinks.

It's 18 drinks in 82 minutes.

So you can imagine,

you're swimming in alcohol at that point.

KORDEL: My phone had died, so I put my phone upstairs

to go charge,

and I was walking down the hallway,

into the great hall, and...

I see Tim Piazza on the couch.

And I saw bruises on his chest

and his eyes were closed,

just thrashing around

and making all these movements on the couch.

I was told he fell down the stairs.

I'm advocating, "We need to get him to the hospital."

They're like, "Oh, no, no, no.

"That's not gonna happen."

A group of fraternity brothers come over

and they're, like, pushing me away from him.

One of the brothers lunges up,

he's throwing me against the wall,

throw me into the other room.

As a newly initiated brother,

you're gonna have no power.

Stay in your place is what I would kept getting told,

like, this isn't your decision to make.

It was sort of mandated that I leave the house,

catch some fresh air, get some sleep.

I didn't feel that it was right or okay,

but I didn't feel that I had any say anymore.

[siren blaring]

EVELYN: I was at work, and I got a call.

Tim had fallen, they needed to airlift him

to Hershey Medical Center

for emergency surgery,

and that we needed to get there.

I really had no idea

that it was as bad as it was.

The doctor had explained to us

that there were a number of issues and injuries,

primarily the head trauma.

They let me go see him

before they prepped him

for transportation to Hershey.

I kissed him on the temple and I said,

"Everything's gonna be okay."

[music]

MIKE: At Hershey Medical Center,

they took us into a side room.

You know, he had the subdural hematoma,

fractured skull, his spleen ruptured.

Eighty percent of his body's blood

was in his abdomen

by the time he got to the ER.

The covers were pulled back,

we got to see his body.

And all the bandages...

And all the bruises on his body.

It's, like, "What the heck was going on in that house,"

is all I could think of.

Everybody was super suspicious

but it wasn't until early May

that we actually found out the truth.

WOMAN: Dr. Forest, dial 118, please.

EVELYN: I couldn't even fathom it.

I thought, "Okay, he's got a brain bleed,

you know, maybe he'll have, like,

a little speech problem or gait problem.

"Maybe he has to take the semester off."

When they opened the skull

to release the pressure on the brain,

the brain swelled outside of the skull.

And he was gonna die.

A nurse pulled me forward

and told me to kiss my baby goodbye.

And everybody just stood there...

and we let him go.

JIM: Beta Theta Pi, they reached out to us

but we didn't--we never communicated with any of them.

EVELYN: The message was they were on their way

from the headquarters,

they weren't gonna be there until the next morning.

So I texted back and I said, "He's dead.

"There's nothing for us here, we're going home."

JIM: The thing I think about all the time,

standing in the room, by the bed with Tim,

and I looked to the doctor and I said,

"If someone would have called for help much earlier,

"would we have a different outcome here?"

And the guy just looked me with sad eyes

and just nodded his head and said, "Yeah."

Authorities in State College are investigating

the death of a Penn State student,

Timothy Piazza, of Lebanon, New Jersey,

was injured during an incident

at Beta Theta Pi fraternity house on Friday night.

CHARLIE: The story popped up on our radar screen,

uh, I mean, it raised all kinds of questions.

KORDEL: The news that Tim had died

was in the Beta Theta Pi Facebook chat.

[music]

An alert was sent to our Penn State emails

and it just said that a student had died

from an alleged fall at Beta Theta Pi

the night before.

REPORTER: Police say it was 12 hours

before someone called paramedics

to help sophomore Timothy Piazza.

JIM: I would say he was an amazing kid,

an amazing son, an amazing person.

SAM: We went to the State College Police Department.

State College Police has an active investigation on this.

SAM: Everyone was wondering what happened.

Was it an unfortunate accident, something like that,

or was it something that could have been prevented?

Tonight, the deadly campus mystery

at a fraternity at Penn State.

REPORTER: An autopsy today revealing

multiple traumatic injuries due to a fall,

alcohol in Piazza's system.

And it was surreal

to be reading about my brother

and my family,

and just to not have clear insight

into what led to this was so painful.

I was at lunch with a couple of brothers and I said,

"Shouldn't we tell Tim's family? What should we do?"

And he slammed his fist on the table

and he's going, "Think about Beta, think about Beta."

The plan was to tell the police

they had no idea how bad his injuries are,

that nobody saw him fall,

that they weren't aware.

EVELYN: We had talked to, like, the forensic pathologist,

and she had pinpointed Tim's blood alcohol

at around a .36,

which is deadly in and of itself.

I have several friends who are attorneys

and I asked them, you know, what do I do?

And, you know, everybody says

the one guy you want on your side is this guy,

Tom Kline from Philadelphia.

[music]

I met with the Piazzas.

They knew that something went terribly wrong.

They knew that there were other people

who were responsible for the death of their son.

Coercing someone to drink seven to eight drinks

in 12 minutes or close to 20 drinks

in a matter of 90 minutes is egregiously reckless.

Tim was poisoned with alcohol,

and that's what contributed to his death.

This is no longer about partying,

this is no longer about having a good time.

This is about death.

The brothers were very worried

the Piazzas would have a lawsuit.

[music]

So everything was-- it was sworn to secrecy.

[music]

The leadership board said

all the alcohol has to get cleaned up,

delete the group chats, delete the Facebook pages,

they wanted everything deleted.

[music]

And don't talk to Tim Piazza's family

and don't go to the funeral.

It was just...

it was deeply troubling.

NEWS ANCHOR: Tonight, a major new development

in the alleged hazing death

of Penn State student, Timothy Piazza.

We're in the process of obtaining video

from inside the fraternity,

and we are working closely

with Pennsylvania Office of Student Affairs.

TOM KLINE: Unlike most things that happen,

this was videotaped.

And that was a game changer.

NEWS ANCHOR: Security cameras captured Piazza

drinking toxic levels of alcohol.

There was a video surveillance system

in the house.

This thing might have played out

in real time before cameras.

Everybody wanted to know what's on those tapes.

When District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller

held her press conference

to unveil the results of her investigation,

that story went from zero to 60

in a space of about five minutes.

We had no idea there was going to be that many names,

that many charges.

There was more than 850 charges.

Involuntary manslaughter was on there,

aggravated assault, there was hazing,

there was negligence.

The police found that the brothers hid the party

before they called an ambulance.

[music]

DOUG: Most fraternities and sororities

have spent decades figuring out ways

to operate under this idea of conscious separation,

this idea that a chapter is separate

from the national organization.

Separation helps them

prevent the national organization

from being held responsible.

MAN: Shame on you, bullies, shame!

REPORTER: Expressionless and quiet,

16 members of Beta Theta Pi walked past crowds

as they enter the Pennsylvania courthouse.

The preliminary hearing was raucous

and it was contentious

and it was difficult.

CHARLIE: There were large numbers of spectators,

friends, and family members

of a lot of the defendants.

And there was the Piazza family.

It was just super tense.

Of course it's a tragedy

but, you know, that doesn't mean

there was any intent involved.

Twenty other attorneys against one.

It is just an unspeakable, horrific, sad tragic event.

But for Joey Ems, it's not a criminal case.

Charges leveled against my client, Luke Visser,

are wholly and absolutely unjustified.

What do you call hazing?

I mean, if I make somebody pick up papers,

that could be hazing.

It was--it was a tough--

it was a tough environment.

The most powerful piece of evidence

was the video.

REPORTER: Have you guys seen any of that video yet?

We haven't seen it, no.

REPORTER: Do you think-- are you worried?

Do you think it's gonna show anything new

against your client?

I'm not worried,

I'm very interested in seeing it,

and we'll deal with it as it comes up.

There was a hushed silence in the courtroom,

and there was just a feeling of horror.

It was heartrending to watch

because we knew how the story ended.

It was six hours long.

We first see Tim just wobbling.

You can tell that the alcohol has hit him.

He goes towards the door

and trying to open the front door

and, you know, he can't.

He finds another door and it's the basement door.

He falls down those 15 stairs.

Then you see a squad of brothers

sort of carrying him out of that staircase

and depositing him on a sofa in the great hall.

Some of them were trying to get a reaction from him,

slapping his face, trying to get him to come to,

throwing a shoe at him.

He can't move, he can't get himself up,

and the whole party was still going on around him.

[music]

CHARLIE: The hardest part of the tapes

was that interval from 1:30, 2:00 AM

till 6:00 or 7:00 AM.

Tim is largely alone in the great hall

for who knows what reason.

Every time he got up, you know,

it invariably ended with another fall to the ground.

We knew that he was in excruciating pain

all by himself.

He was alone.

Like, was he--was he wanting us,

was he thinking about us?

CHARLIE: Sometime around 7:00 AM,

he took another bad spill down those steps.

That's where he was ultimately found that morning.

I don't think there was any more illusion

that he was just sleeping it off

because he was showing signs of severe distress,

and you knew that the brothers knew that too

because that's when the investigation shows

that there were Google searches

for "what's it mean

"when a drunk person has cold fingers,"

stuff like that.

Instead of getting him help

at this point even,

they tried to dress him

but are having a hard time because of how stiff he is.

They then are, you know, telling the pledges,

perhaps, start cleaning.

They're doing all this

because they're getting ready

to call the ambulance.

They let him suffer for 12 hours.

He died a slow and painful death

at the hands of these men of principle

as they call it.

DOUG: Time and again,

you have 18 and 19-year-old young men

without much supervision committed to secrecy,

which means when things go wrong,

a code of silence takes precedent

over preserving human life.

REPORTER: Former Penn State fraternity brothers

are heading back to court

to find out whether they're going to trial.

Here they had videotape.

They had contemporaneous evidence

in the form of text messages.

They had the medical charts

of what had happened to Tim Piazza.

At least 18 drinks

in over one hour and twenty-two minutes.

Mr. Piazza never once obtained any of those drinks for himself.

They then left him to die alone

and they tried to cover it up.

With what I saw on the videotape,

I thought it was horrendous

and you would think, yes,

they should all be held accountable.

What people need to understand is that

this was a terrible, terrible tragedy,

and that's what it was simply.

But of course they weren't.

Spring of 2017,

I felt so alone.

I got text messages from one of my fraternity brothers

saying, "We all hate you."

Saying to me that

all I want is for all of them to go to jail.

It wasn't just Beta, it was the whole...

entire Greek life population

wanted this investigation to end.

They were mad at me

because I had talked to the investigators.

Everybody in the fraternity

saw me as was being in the wrong

and saw me as somebody

who was the whistleblower.

The police offered to give me escorts in-between classes,

so that the Greek life members

wouldn't follow me around and attack me.

I was just so troubled.

REPORTER: After seven days of testimony and arguments

in Pennsylvania, a judge ruling to dismiss

the most serious of criminal charges

against the 18 Penn State fraternity brothers

accused in the death of 19-year-old Timothy Piazza.

The district attorney really looked to make this

grand statement about hazing,

but the district judge hearing the case said,

"We don't think that you have evidence

"that these kids showed malice."

He stopped them in their tracks.

It was really very disappointing.

I felt like it should at least

go in front of a jury to decide.

The prosecutors just never had that option.

This is no day for celebration for anyone.

Well, I mean, the evidence didn't support the charges.

It's as simple as that.

Hazing was a crime on the books,

but it was a misdemeanor

and so none of them ever went to jail for this.

SAM: The brothers were very excited

when their felony charges were dropped

and it's like they were very relieved

at the fact that they were going to have a future,

but they played a part in ending Tim's life

and keeping him from having a future.

Everything just felt like a slap on the wrist,

just never felt like there was ever any justice.

[music]

The grand jury report was issued on December 15th, 2017,

and it was a bombshell.

It turned a bright spotlight on Penn State.

SAM: It just painted the picture that

there was a lot more to this story

and that it was definitely

going to be centered around the culture of Penn State.

[music]

By surprise, a grand jury realizes

that the Greek life at Penn State

was rampant with issues

involving misuse of alcohol,

misuse of drugs,

allegations of sexual violence.

There had been a set of cases at Penn State

in prelude to what happened to Tim Piazza.

REPORTER: 18-year-old Joseph Dado

was found dead at the bottom of a campus stairwell

after a night of drinking at two fraternities.

REPORTER: Marquise Braham killed himself in 2014

after hazing at Penn State Altoona.

REPORTER: Burned with cigarettes,

branded with clothing hangers

and poisoned with alcohol.

Former Penn State student named James Vivenzio says

he's dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder,

anxiety, and alcoholism.

The University did not do anything

or really look into it.

The problem with fraternities

is fraternities wield a lot of power.

It's not as cut and dry as like the university president

can just say, "We're going to shut down Greek life,"

and that's that.

The fraternities are on privately owned property,

many times owned by a house corporation

or maybe the national fraternity itself.

If you look at every reasonable measure

short of us sitting in that house

on private property,

if people are willing to hide

that type of behavior

and protect that level of secrecy,

I do not see how it is the university

will ever know that it's happening.

University did impose

a fairly stringent set of reforms,

and it was things like

you can only have 10 alcohol parties a semester

as opposed to the 45.

No more open keg parties.

Alcohol has to be served by a bartender.

And I do remember some complaints

at some of the trustee meetings around that time.

KORDEL: The highest contributing alumni are Greek life graduates,

so schools are very willing to turn a blind eye.

They don't want to have any retaliation.

You shut down those frats,

well, you're gonna lose a lot of donations.

Kids aren't gonna be able to rush anymore.

Students aren't going to wanna go there, then.

They would be losing a lot of donations.

They would be angering a lot of alumni.

You can't do things

that are going to destroy this Greek system

because it has its own inherent value for the university.

KORDEL: They want the money to keep coming in.

They want the wealth havens from the fraternities.

They're like, "Oh, my goodness, how'd this happen?"

The culture has to change.

KORDEL: After Tim passes away,

I wasn't really going to the house

like it felt like evil,

like the evil spirits of darkness in that house

and I couldn't be there.

Like it was just--

like it was not safe.

This fraternity ruined my entire college experience,

so I ended up transferring

to Rutgers University in New Jersey.

They have been advocating to try to help end hazing,

to work with politicians, legislators,

and go to schools across America

and give keynotes about this topic

and try to ensure that it doesn't happen to other people.

The fact that students are dying like my brother,

because that these warped traditions live on

and are protected and kept secret.

It's heartbreaking

and...confounding.

I can't tell you how many families I've spoken to

and the story is exactly the same.

It is important for universities

to recognize that they need

to own the problem.

They can't walk away from it

and they can't turn a blind eye to it.

It is with mixed emotions and great appreciation

that we stand here today with Senator Jake Corman

to announce this proposed anti-hazing legislation,

also known as the Timothy J. Piazza Anti-Hazing Law

for the state of Pennsylvania.

Under Tim's law,

hazing is now a felony in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania will now have one of the strongest

anti-hazing laws in the country.

In many ways, I think for us, it keeps Tim alive.

You know, I hope he is looking down

and saying, "That's awesome."

He would've been such a great asset

and such a bright light

and it all got taken away overnight.

You don't prove yourself

by being paddled,

by being forced to drink.

You wanna grow leaders,

grow leaders the right way,

grow leaders by understanding

who you are welcoming into your organization.

I would love the person

when they walk through that door

gets a hug and a welcome

as opposed to a bottle of vodka in their face.

[music]

REPORTER: A lifeless body of the sorority girl

was discovered in her apartment

on the San Diego State campus.

A young kid bought the age of your own

dead in a dorm room from an overdose,

yeah, it is hard.

There was a coke dealer

in all the top houses.

REPORTER: Ciaccio allegedly organized the drug ring.

I mentioned, "I do have a connection

"if you wanna sell cocaine."

His eyes light up.

I suggested that we do

a narcotics operation.

These individuals

have ruined hundreds of lives.

We don't pass permission to go after crooks.

Before anybody else dies, we're gonna do this thing.