Killing-field fraternities, like massive numbers of big guns in the hands of people like Stephen Paddock, are simply part of the wonderful world of many American males, and nobody gets to mess with frats or guns.
Mr. Horras, quoted in this post’s headline, is charged with defending frats in the wake of yet more torture and slaughter, but, as Caitlin Flanagan notes, he’d do a better job if he, like, knew anything about what he was defending.
Yet why bother checking the narrative – straight out of the Marquis de Sade – of Tim Piazza’s death, when Horras knows that no one will ever do anything about sadistic, homicidal, fraternities in American universities? It’s like asking how many ten minute long massacres of scores of people the country can tolerate before it enacts gun restrictions. Answer: There is no upper limit.
So let us now imagine all the forces arrayed against 19-year-old Tim Piazza as he gets dressed in his jacket and tie, preparing to go to his new chapter house and accept the bid the brothers have offered him.
He is up against a university [the drenched-in-shame Penn State] that has allowed hazing to go on for decades; a fraternity chapter that has hazed pledge classes at least twice in the previous 12 months; a set of rules that so harshly punishes hazing that the brothers will think it better to take a chance with his life than to face the consequences of having made him get drunk; and a “checking system” provided by a security firm that is, in many regards, a sham. He thinks he is going to join a club that his college endorses, and that is true. But it is also true that he is setting off to get jumped by a gang, and he won’t survive.