Five fraternity members, including its former national president, have been charged in the death of a Baruch College freshman during a hazing ritual in Pennsylvania, police said Tuesday.
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A panel recommended third-degree murder charges against the Pi Delta Psi fraternity and five students at Baruch College in the December 8, 2013, death of Chun “Michael” Deng.
This is part of the statement released by the grieving parents of Chun Hsien Deng, the 19-year-old Baruch student, who died in 2013 after being hazed by the members of the Pi Delta Psi fraternity.
Five New York fraternity brothers have been charged in connection with a hazing death.
The mortally injured Deng was left lying helpless and unresponsive for more than an hour before fraternity members finally brought him to a hospital. Baruch immediately instituted a permanent ban of the Pi Delta Psi fraternity. As reported by the AP, police are staggering arrests and first going after lesser offenders, who have been charged with things like hazing and conspiracy. Third-degree murder does not require the accused to plan the murder ahead of time or have intent to kill when causing harm.
An attorney representing one of the frat brothers said charging all the members is “not justified nor provable”.
Deng’s family has filed suit against the fraternity and Baruch College. “Everybody’s kind of eerie about Greek life now”, said Laetitia Metellus, a 20-year-old senior.
Baruch College has said it had no knowledge of the event.
“They’re really, really scrutinized right now”, he said. Many of its students commute from the neighbouring burroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and fraternities are not as strong as at other colleges.
Six fraternity members are facing homicide charges. His death was ruled a homicide.
He said Deng was tackled multiple times.
Critics of hazing practices are closely following the case. It has taken two years to press charges because of the dozens of students involved in Deng’s death, according to David Christine, district attorney in Monroe County, New York. “Typically the charges get dropped or plea-bargained away”.
As for what inspires this kind of violent hazing, Nuwer says that it all boils down to the desire for power. Investigators believe that the national fraternity directed a cover up. “Cutting a young student’s lip open and making him drink from a salted cup, paddling, making a blindfolded young man tell his embarrassing confession to a confessor, who was just another student”. “This is an example of a fraternity gone wrong in an individual situation, but certainly not representative of the whole”. None of the fraternities or sororities own houses on campus. Connecticut’s Wesleyan University mandated in 2014 that all of its fraternities go coed.
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Deng’s mother, who asked to only be identified as Mary, told DNAinfo New York Monday that she was “heartbroken”.
