Penn State is suspending a fraternity for at least three years for hazing new members.
Following an investigation, the university’s Office of Student Accountability and Conflict Response placed Pi Delta Psi on organizational suspension last month.
According to a press release, the office found that fraternity members coerced new members into “high-risk alcohol consumption” during the spring 2024 semester.
The chapter is on indefinite organization suspension through at least spring 2028 with an additional year of organizational conduct probation.
This comes as the federal “Stop Campus Hazing Act” awaits a signature from President Joe Biden. The parents of Timothy Piazza helped shape the bill. He died in 2017, following a hazing initiation with alcohol at the now dissolved Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Penn State.
"We, along with other families in the anti-hazing coalition, which we helped form, have been working on this bill and its predecessor (The End All Hazing Act) for the past seven years," said Jim Piazza, the father of Timothy Piazza. "Many thanks to the congressional leaders who supported us and to everyone responsible for making this happen."
There are currently ten fraternities suspended at Penn State; six of them are suspended for hazing violations.
A judge banned Pi Delta Psi chapters in Pennsylvania for 10 years starting in 2018, over the 2013 hazing death of a Baruch College student in the Poconos. But that ban was later overturned on appeal. The fraternity still had to pay a fine of more than $110,000.