The death of a 19-year-old student at a New York university has shone a light on a ritual known as the "glass ceiling". Young people pledging to join a fraternity were blindfolded while wearing a weighted backpack, and forced to get through a line of fraternity brothers outdoors in a freezing Pennsylvania winter, while being shoved, tackled and struck repeatedly.
On Tuesday, officials announced that 38 members of Pi Delta Psi fraternity at Baruch College in Manhattan had been criminally charged for their participation in the "brutal" 2013 ritual, which left Chun Deng dead from multiple, massive traumas. Five were charged with third-degree murder.
After Deng lost consciousness, a grand jury heard in 2014, brothers contacted the national fraternity president, Andy Meng, instead of calling for immediate medical assistance. Meng encouraged the group to "hide all fraternity items", according to a press release from Pocono police.
Over the course of two hours, the release said, various individuals left the residence, changed Deng’s clothing and conducted internet searches in an attempt to diagnose his condition.
The delay led to "continued physiological stressors that resulted in primary neurogenic shock" in Deng and significantly contributed to his death, according to Dr Wayne Ross, a forensic pathologist who analysed the case.
About 30 members of the Pi Delta Psi fraternity – one of the all-male university societies named after Greek letters meant to provide US students with a family-like support system – had spent the weekend at a rented house in Tunkhannock Township, in the Pocono Mountains about 100 miles west of New York. Deng was one of four pledges, or students wishing to join the group.
When they searched the house, police found fraternity clothing, paddles, banners and book bags weighted with sandbags, as well as marijuana and mushrooms.
Twenty-seven fraternity members were charged on Tuesday with hindering apprehension, hazing, and criminal conspiracy; two more were also charged with simple assault; three more with aggravated and simple assault.
Five more, and the fraternity organisation itself, were also charged with third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
"This is one big step to obtain justice for the family resulting from the tragic and preventable death of Michael," Doug Fierberg, an attorney representing the victim's family, told WBRE-TV.
Baruch College has said it had no knowledge about the event. The college banned the fraternity in the wake of Deng’s death and the national fraternity revoked its affiliation with the local chapter.
Fraternity officials did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
Outside the college in Manhattan's Gramercy Park, students were largely reluctant to talk about the incident. Vanessa Gonzalez, who is studying psychology and business and is not in a sorority (the female equivalent of a fraternity), said Greek life on campus, which always represented just a tiny part of the student body, had all but disappeared, with a blanket ban on recruitment. "I used to see them all the time," she said.
According to the university’s website, only around 1.5 per cent of students at Baruch had been members of sororities or fraternities; and all organisations are now required to sign an “anti-hazing agreement of understanding” with the college.
Asked about hazing, Gonzalez said she remembered fraternity pledges "going from classroom to classroom singing [the Miley Cyrus song] Party in the USA". She said she had thought it was funny at the time, and that she had not heard about anything violent until the 2013 incident.
Another student, who requested to speak anonymously, said he had heard stories about hazing in “all frats and sororities” on campus. He said he had chosen not to join Greek life. “I never thought of it as something interesting. I didn’t want to pay for friends.”
(Guardian Service)