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PSU on the frat warpath again

Why are off campus frat houses even under the thumb of the university? Can’t they be independent? If a veteran student drank himself to death at the VFW, the university can do nothing.
This didn't happen at an off campus frat house. It happened at a private residence. The University wants to consider it to be a part of a frat house, though, because it was inhabited by some kids who were members of a frat.
 
This didn't happen at an off campus frat house. It happened at a private residence. The University wants to consider it to be a part of a frat house, though, because it was inhabited by some kids who were members of a frat.
The university considers satellite houses to be frat houses because the frats try use the same tortured logic that a bunch of people on this thread are using: “well it isn’t *technically* the *official frat house*, so none of the rules apply!” It’s a nakedly absurd attempt at a technicality, which is why the IFC made the rule that considers parties hosted by frat brothers to be frat events - even if they aren’t at the formal house. Otherwise, every fraternity would just have every party at the satellite house because the university wouldn’t be able to touch them.

Fraternities have satellite houses for three reasons: to house brothers under the radar while the fraternity is suspended and aren’t allowed to live in the formal house, to have parties outside of the traditional IFC purview, and because most active fraternity houses aren’t big enough to house all the brothers.
 
The university considers satellite houses to be frat houses because the frats try use the same tortured logic that a bunch of people on this thread are using: “well it isn’t *technically* the *official frat house*, so none of the rules apply!” It’s a nakedly absurd attempt at a technicality, which is why the IFC made the rule that considers parties hosted by frat brothers to be frat events - even if they aren’t at the formal house. Otherwise, every fraternity would just have every party at the satellite house because the university wouldn’t be able to touch them.

Fraternities have satellite houses for three reasons: to house brothers under the radar while the fraternity is suspended and aren’t allowed to live in the formal house, to have parties outside of the traditional IFC purview, and because most active fraternity houses aren’t big enough to house all the brothers.
This ^^^^^
 
The university considers satellite houses to be frat houses because the frats try use the same tortured logic that a bunch of people on this thread are using: “well it isn’t *technically* the *official frat house*, so none of the rules apply!” It’s a nakedly absurd attempt at a technicality, which is why the IFC made the rule that considers parties hosted by frat brothers to be frat events - even if they aren’t at the formal house. Otherwise, every fraternity would just have every party at the satellite house because the university wouldn’t be able to touch them.

Fraternities have satellite houses for three reasons: to house brothers under the radar while the fraternity is suspended and aren’t allowed to live in the formal house, to have parties outside of the traditional IFC purview, and because most active fraternity houses aren’t big enough to house all the brothers.
Well, there's at least a fourth reason: members of a fraternity are likely to be friends and want to live together and therefore go out and negotiate a private lease with a landlord that has 0 to do with the fraternity.
 
Years ago I was at a party at a hockey house at psu ( club days). Let's say if something happened at a hockey function, the university would probably step in.
If was considered a fraternity type of function, official or unofficial they might believe the fraternity is responsible somehow .
As others said, we don't know the facts yet.

Lets just say if something like that now happened at a (Sports club house) the football team would pay the price.
 
Hmmm, I wonder who the landlord of the property is?

Another question comes to mind, why is a high school kid from Erie in this house? Hopefully he was not on a recruiting trip.
 
The university considers satellite houses to be frat houses because the frats try use the same tortured logic that a bunch of people on this thread are using: “well it isn’t *technically* the *official frat house*, so none of the rules apply!” It’s a nakedly absurd attempt at a technicality, which is why the IFC made the rule that considers parties hosted by frat brothers to be frat events - even if they aren’t at the formal house. Otherwise, every fraternity would just have every party at the satellite house because the university wouldn’t be able to touch them.

Fraternities have satellite houses for three reasons: to house brothers under the radar while the fraternity is suspended and aren’t allowed to live in the formal house, to have parties outside of the traditional IFC purview, and because most active fraternity houses aren’t big enough to house all the brothers.
They should have just hovered a PSP chopper 10 feet above the roof of that "satellite house". That would have fixed everything. :rolleyes:
 
This didn't happen at an off campus frat house. It happened at a private residence. The University wants to consider it to be a part of a frat house, though, because it was inhabited by some kids who were members of a frat.

Penn State is setting themselves up to be sued and offer up another multi-million dollar settlement by suspending the frat. They should have just washed their hands of it, but now they've put themselves out there as partially responsible.
 
Neither, but I don’t exactly see why I should give fraternities any benefit of the doubt, either. Don’t really care if the social club gets suspended if one of their members gives a 17 year old kid a bunch of whippets and the kid dies.
What would you say if (God forbid) a member of the Penn State football team beat up a coed and the University reacted by suspending the entire football team? Let's say he commits the assault at a private apartment he shares with three other members of the football team, none of whom witness the assault. You believe that implicates the entire football program?
 
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The university considers satellite houses to be frat houses because the frats try use the same tortured logic that a bunch of people on this thread are using: “well it isn’t *technically* the *official frat house*, so none of the rules apply!” It’s a nakedly absurd attempt at a technicality, which is why the IFC made the rule that considers parties hosted by frat brothers to be frat events - even if they aren’t at the formal house. Otherwise, every fraternity would just have every party at the satellite house because the university wouldn’t be able to touch them.

Fraternities have satellite houses for three reasons: to house brothers under the radar while the fraternity is suspended and aren’t allowed to live in the formal house, to have parties outside of the traditional IFC purview, and because most active fraternity houses aren’t big enough to house all the brothers.
Under this logic, I had an alumni function at my house for our fraternity last Saturday...
 
I don't recall the university going after the apartment buildings, the owners and all of the tenants of the building when student fell over the rail?
Because they'd fight back. Also, they don't have a gaggle of lifelong social derelicts breathing down their necks (while even more cheer on their every move) every week of every year.
 
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Penn State is setting themselves up to be sued and offer up another multi-million dollar settlement by suspending the frat. They should have just washed their hands of it, but now they've put themselves out there as partially responsible.
Yes, who and why are we being forced to smell this shit?
 
I'm told that the death was caused by some sort of whippet or something like that where CO2 was inhaled and the brain was deprived of oxygen. Very sad, but not clear to me how this is connected to a frat house. Could have happened in a dorm.
Yes, it was an inhalant of some sort.
 
The analogy becomes a lot more accurate if (when?) it turns out that the house where this party occurred is what’s called a “satellite house,” where the only people who live there are frat brothers - nearly every large fraternity at Penn State has satellite houses. The analogy continues to be on the mark if the party is defined as a fraternity event because, under Penn State IFC rules, any event with more than a few frat brothers in attendance is considered to be an official fraternity event. Every fraternity knows that that’s the situation.

Maybe it’ll turn out that the kid died from completely natural causes, in which case the fraternity will only get nuked because they had an underage kid at a party with alcohol post-Piazza. If the kid really die from inhalants at the frat party, though, look out.

Anybody know of anything else that was going on at Penn State this past Saturday night at 9:30? Hmmmm ... let me think. Is it likely there were a lot of fraternity and sorority events (i.e. "parties") scheduled for last Saturday night? Or, is it more likely that a few folks who weren't at that "other event" just decided to party on their own without any formal connection to the social organization they happen to be a member of and something went wrong? Could there have been similar activities taking place in other dorms, apartments, etc. in State College that night ... just like every Saturday night that have nothing to do with the named social organization?
 
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When I was in high school we had a DJ business.My senior year we worked at a frat at Gettysburg College on Saturday nights.I get the late 80's we're a long time ago,but we partied our asses off.
 
When I was in high school we had a DJ business.My senior year we worked at a frat at Gettysburg College on Saturday nights.I get the late 80's we're a long time ago,but we partied our asses off.
missed you by about 15 yrs! What Frat?
 
At the end of the day, the question is was it a fraternity activity, or was it an activity of a bunch of guys who happened to be in the same fraternity. If the former, the fraternity is at risk. If the latter, it should not be.
 
Anybody know of anything else that was going on at Penn State this past Saturday night at 9:30? Hmmmm ... let me think. Is it likely there were a lot of fraternity and sorority events (i.e. "parties") scheduled for last Saturday night? Or, is it more likely that a few folks who weren't at that "other event" just decided to party on their own without any formal connection to the social organization they happen to be a member of and something went wrong? Could there have been similar activities taking place in other dorms, apartments, etc. in State College that night ... just like every Saturday night that have nothing to do with the named social organization?
Yeah, hard to believe a fraternity would have some type of official function on the night of a white out game against Michigan.
 
Nobody even knows WTF happened to the kid yet. :confused:


th



th
This hammerhead Raffy has it all figured out. Of course, he still hasn't apologized for his (now proven incorrect) rants about the Piazza kid.
 
At the end of the day, the question is was it a fraternity activity, or was it an activity of a bunch of guys who happened to be in the same fraternity. If the former, the fraternity is at risk. If the latter, it should not be.
Yep.
 
I'm told that the death was caused by some sort of whippet or something like that where CO2 was inhaled and the brain was deprived of oxygen. Very sad, but not clear to me how this is connected to a frat house. Could have happened in a dorm.

Two points.

1. Way too much unreported to say if the frat was in any part responsible for this. Maybe the frat was clearly responsible. Maybe not. Don’t see how people can have such strong opinions based on limited facts.

2. CO2 inhalation is considered the most humane way to euthanize laboratory mice. Whippets are nitrous oxide (N2O), usually inhaled as gas from cartridges containing a small amount of gas. Too small to be lethal. Years ago I heard of people obtaining a N2O tank from a dental office. If you have a mask on that excludes air and only gives N2O, that could be lethal.
 
What was the annual apartment party that was near waupalani drive. Every year every apartment there would have a party on one night. It was a major bash.
Most on here would not know about it.
But is was amazing
 
Ding ding ding. That was it. Does anyone have any stories about that one. That was right up there with the regatta and the phi psi 500. These days there is nothing like that.
 
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Two points.

1. Way too much unreported to say if the frat was in any part responsible for this. Maybe the frat was clearly responsible. Maybe not. Don’t see how people can have such strong opinions based on limited facts.

2. CO2 inhalation is considered the most humane way to euthanize laboratory mice. Whippets are nitrous oxide (N2O), usually inhaled as gas from cartridges containing a small amount of gas. Too small to be lethal. Years ago I heard of people obtaining a N2O tank from a dental office. If you have a mask on that excludes air and only gives N2O, that could be lethal.

Clearly, I know jack about inhalants, but this matches what was described to me:

"Sudden sniffing death" describes the process of inhaled hydrocarbons provoking irregular heart rhythms in the victim, which leads to sudden fatal cardiac arrest in even very young and healthy hearts.

I don't think that this is a normal frat party type thing, certainly nothing like the Piazza situation and not a hazing incident.
 
I don't think that this is a normal frat party type thing, certainly nothing like the Piazza situation and not a hazing incident.
Piazza was on prescription drugs (also took a lot of recreational drugs) and had existing internal injuries. Not sure what "situation" you're referring to, but Penn State, the prosecutors, and the parents LIED and withheld exculpatory evidence. That's why the charges kept getting tossed.
 
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Maybe the President should go on TV like he did with Beta,
And do his best Dean Wormer imitation.
“ no more Beta”
That was the dumbest PR mistake.
 
Piazza was on prescription drugs (also took a lot of recreational drugs) and had existing internal injuries. Not sure what "situation" you're referring to, but Penn State, the prosecutors, and the parents LIED and withheld exculpatory evidence. That's why the charges kept getting tossed.
I know that, but the the thing with Piazza was that it was a frat initiation party involving group consumption of alcohol in the frat house. So, the whole situation aligned with certain expectations, which enabled the press and parents to run wild with a misleading narrative.

Huffing in an off-campus private residence does not come across as a particularly frat activity.
 
Well, there's at least a fourth reason: members of a fraternity are likely to be friends and want to live together and therefore go out and negotiate a private lease with a landlord that has 0 to do with the fraternity.

That is true most of the time. However, my daughter is a Freshman at a college in Florida and I attended parents weekend a few weeks ago. As you can imagine, the fraternity parties at the fraternity houses were relatively regulated and had a bunch of rules. Then my daughter took me to a fraternity party at a satellite house (i.e. not formally a fraternity house but rented by fraternity brothers) that everyone knew was affiliated with a certain fraternity and was manned by pledges of the fraternity. The fraternity apparently has these parties at this house all of the time and the brothers of the fraternity rent the house year after year. Although the fraternity had a beautiful house on campus, their big, blow out parties are held at the satellite house. The party was similar to the fraternity parties when I was at PSU back in the day with a lot of kegs and nobody getting carded at the door other than to see if you were on a list. I would be thoroughly surprised if the alcohol was purchased anybody other than the fraternity.

Being much older and more conservative than I once was, I looked around that party and saw nothing but a liability waiting to happen. As an example, there were 15 wasted students dancing on a table that looked like the legs were going to give at any time. Although the house was large, the house looked like it should be condemned.

I can tell you for sure that if and when somebody gets seriously injured at a party at this house, the lawyers are going after the fraternity. Further, despite the fact that the students are doing their own lawyering and trying to find loopholes in the fraternity rules to allow for such parties, to the extent that the Florida school is liable for fraternity sanctioned events, the Florida school is going to have a really hard time saying this was not a fraternity event. This type of liability is not something that can be ignored by Universities anymore. It is the unfortunate reality that exists today.

To the extent that someone will say the situation I described is much different than the current PSU situation, I challenge that person to write a rule that will ensure the University has properly addressed these satellite party situations that shields the University from liability for not having proper oversight over fraternities.
 
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To the extent that someone will say the situation I described is much different than the current PSU situation, I challenge that person to write a rule that will ensure the University has properly addressed these satellite party situations that shields the University from liability for not having proper oversight over fraternities.
Why does anyone need a "rule"? Private, off-campus houses have to comply with the law. Just call the cops, problem solved.

And, you know what, the cops are going to investigate this young man's death at an off-campus house, and if it turns out that a fraternity did something wrong, then the DA will indict the fraternity and its officers and members, just like the DA in the Piazza case.
 
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Why does anyone need a "rule"? Private, off-campus houses have to comply with the law. Just call the cops, problem solved.

And, you know what, the cops are going to investigate this young man's death at an off-campus house, and if it turns out that a fraternity did something wrong, then the DA will indict the fraternity and its officers and members, just like the DA in the Piazza case.

And, if the case is "just like" the Piazza case, then the University gets sued.

While I do not know exactly what theory PSU is liable for the Beta death, to the extent that it is because PSU was negligent in their oversight of Fraternities, I would think the satellite house scenario described in my earlier post is reasonably foreseeable and should need to be addressed to avoid potential liability. To the extent the Fraternity is ultimately determined to be liable for what happened in a private house, the university better have sufficient rules in place to cover their rear end.
 
And, if the case is "just like" the Piazza case, then the University gets sued.
It might, but I would argue that it has made that more likely in this case by attempting to exert control over private rental arrangements. That's an own goal.
 
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