The Aftermath: What Happened to Timothy Piazza?

By AMAURIS PERALTA-MUNOZ

Lambda Sigma Upsilon once had brothers walking through the Ramapo College campus. But as of Fall of 2015, no brothers were to be found and only one Latino organization existed on campus.

Eager incoming students were only given one option when it came to Latino fraternities, but that did not stop one student who wanted to become a brother of Lambda Sigma Upsilon Latino Fraternity Inc.

About two months into his college career, after days of research and asking questions to different people on campus, this freshman student finally received the cell phone number  of an alumni from this fraternity he was interested in. Fast forward a few months to April 5th, 2016, Lambda Sigma Upsilon was no longer in the past and now an active organization on campus with one active brother.

This young brother fought through the stigmas created for “Frat Boys” and was in hope of potentially recruiting new members in order to grow his chapter at Ramapo College. While hoping to recruit more members, this one brother made it his goal to make sure everyone knew who Lambda Sigma Upsilon was on the Ramapo College campus. About one year after he became a brother, his chapter grew and was no longer one brother on campus, and now The Resistentes Chapter had four new brothers.

The perception this new brother had built for the chapter all changed on Feb. 4, 2017.  It all began with the death of Timothy Piazza, a Penn State University Student interested in becoming a brother of Beta Theta Pi.

“The death of Timothy Piazza really struck us hard. We have a chapter at Penn State that was affected and looked at differently because they attended the same school,” said Joseph Rodriguez, brother of Lambda Sigma Upsilon Latino Fraternity Inc.

According to the North-American Interfraternity Conference and compiled from the 2013-2014 academic year, “fraternity undergraduates served for 3.8 million hours in their local communities and chapters raised $20.3 million for philanthropic causes.” “Chapters from different organizations around the country are more than what people make them out to be. These college students are leaders giving back to their communities and organizations,” said Welington Gomez, Director of Greek Life at Montclair State University.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN?

As Piazza was in the fraternity house to accept a bid offered to him, he underwent rounds of rituals this fraternity had set up in order for new members to become brothers. These rituals included excessive alcohol drinking which eventually took the life of someone they wanted to call “brother.”

After being heavily intoxicated, Piazza fell down a flight of stairs, landing face first, and causing a brain injury that as the night went on it only got worse.

Brothers of the fraternity picked Piazza from the ground, carried him back upstairs and threw him on a couch where they threw water and slapped him to try to wake him up. As the night continued and Piazza was laying in the couch, someone got tackled and landed on Piazza.

As Piazza fell to the wooden floor, he was then slammed on the couch. When brothers tried to move him to a different room, Piazza once again fell down the flight of stairs, but this time things were a little different. The brothers just stepped over his body and left him laying on the floor for hours until someone thought they should bring him to another room.

In the early mornings of Feb.3 , brothers denied the request of a non medical major brother to get Piazza some medical assistance. They then tried to google different ways to wake someone up after falling sleep from a head injury. A little before 11 am, they dressed Piazza and finally called for help. He had a fractured skull and a lacerated spleen. For hours, blood was seeping into his abdominal cavity.

Piazza was then pronounced dead at 1:20 a.m. Feb. 4, 2017 in the surgical Intensive Care Unit of Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania.

THE CONSEQUENCES

Kayla Cintron, a Montclair State University sorority member said that, “After the death of Timothy Piazza, and his parents speaking out, my parents became worried about me joining a sorority the semester after this tragedy. Over the course of the summer I had to prove to them, that what was done to Piazza were actions taken by those particular students and that every other organization across college campuses do not partake in those actions that took the life of an innocent student.”

Brothers of Theta Beta Pi were facing legal charges and facing disciplinary actions from Penn State University. Legal charges included involuntary manslaughter, hazing, aggravated and simple assault, alcohol-related violations and evidence tampering. This was only the beginning for what some people call the downfall of greek life.

After the death of Timothy Piazza, strings of deaths arose throughout the nation due in relations to fraternity and sorority Life. A freshman at Louisiana State University was forced to drink excessively if he answered questions about his fraternity incorrectly. Being disliked by an older brother, Maxwell Gruver was the target for most questions. He died the following morning from alcohol poisoning and aspiration. Gurver had a .495 blood alcohol concentration level. Ten members of the fraternity were arrested in relations to his death.

Later that year, a 20 year old pledge and student of Florida State University, Andrew Coffey, was found unresponsive after a Pi Kappa Phi party. Investigators indicated that alcohol was the cause of death. This tragedy forced Florida State University to take action and ban greek life and all of its activities.

A week later after the death of Andrew Coffey, another student, Mathew Ellis, from Texas State University died from an initiation to Phi Kappa Psi where alcohol was involved. Mathew Ellis was the second death in the month of November and the Fourth of the year which started with Timothy Piazza.

AFTERMATH

As these events continued to occur throughout the nation, administration from different schools started to take actions against fraternity and sorority life on their respective campuses and encouraged others to follow along. Penn State University, Florida State University, University of Michigan, Texas State University, Ohio State University, Louisiana State University, and Indiana University suspended greek life as school leaders were trying to find a solution to better their students and to prevent another incident from happening.

Lambda Sigma Upsilon wanted to prove everyone wrong. These events continued to prove the perception many people had on “Frat Boys” wrong. Many people involve greek organizations with parties, alcohol, and drugs. But they are completely wrong. Many organizations across the country were affected by the actions of certain organizations. Students no longer wanted to listen to brothers pitch their organizations to them, they were warned by others because of what they saw on the media. Jose Alcantara, the newest member of the Resistentes Chapter at Ramapo College said, “After these events occurred throughout 2017, our chapter sat down and spoke about how we are going to answer back to the perception built on us. We continued to serve our community, adopt a highway that we are mandated to clean, raise over 1000 dollars for the New York City AIDS Walk.” He added, “We did not give up and our actions continue to speak louder than words.”

Greek life on college campuses is revolutinizing on a daily, and it is up to the active members of their community to make it known that they condemn actions such as taken in 2017 that lead to the death of those students. Organizations must continue to represent the goals that their founders founded their organization on. They must always remember the reasons to why they wanted to join this organization in the first place and continue to embody the goals set forth by brothers or sisters previous to them.