Fraternity Hazing: What We'll Do To Belong
Stone Foltz, Timothy Piazza, Michael Deng and George Desdunes died in cases involving fraternity hazing, each under very different circumstances. What connects them is a harder question: what happens to our sense of right and wrong when belonging, tradition and group loyalty make dangerous behavior feel normal?
Published September 19, 2026 | Featuring: Jessica Strohm
What We'll Do to Belong
Fraternity hazing is often defended as tradition: a difficult rite of passage meant to build brotherhood, prove commitment and create loyalty. But when those rituals turn dangerous, the most unsettling question isn't only why someone participated. It's how a group can make behavior that would look obviously wrong from the outside feel normal from within.
This episode follows the deaths of Stone Foltz, Timothy Piazza, Michael Deng and George Desdunes, alongside firsthand accounts from men who experienced hazing and later became hazers themselves. Their cases are very different, and not every causal chain is equally clear. Together, though, they offer a way to examine how belonging, hierarchy, tradition and group consensus can shift individual judgment.
The Price of Admission
Stone Foltz told his mother he didn't want to take part in the Big Little drinking ritual at Bowling Green State University: I have to, but I don't want to. On March 4, 2021, he was given a family bottle of Evan Williams bourbon during a Pi Kappa Alpha event. He died three days later from fatal ethanol intoxication.
Research complicates the fraternity claim that harsher initiation automatically creates deeper bonds. Longitudinal studies following six pledge classes found little evidence that more severe hazing reliably increased solidarity, while later analysis suggested the ordeal may instead operate partly as commitment-selection: the people least willing to tolerate the process are more likely to leave, while the people who remain become the next generation of insiders.
The Pledge Becomes the Hazer
That next generation is where the story gets stranger. Former Phi Delta Theta member Scott Mietchen has written about resenting the men who hazed him and then, once initiated, becoming eager to haze the class behind him. Filmmaker Byron Hurt describes a remarkably similar reversal in his documentary Hazing.
Effort justification and moral disengagement offer possible ways to understand that shift without reducing it to a simple cycle-of-abuse explanation. If suffering becomes part of how someone earned membership, removing the suffering can begin to feel like lowering the value of the identity itself. The group can also supply a new vocabulary for behavior that once felt obviously wrong: humiliation becomes tradition, coercion becomes commitment, and power becomes preparation for brotherhood.
“The question was never whether he'd remember what happened to him. The question was what story the people around him would eventually teach him to tell about it.”
— Jessica Strohm, Host & Show Creator
When the Group Decides What's Normal
Timothy Piazza's 2017 death at Penn State shows another dimension of group influence. Surveillance footage documented fraternity members confronting repeated signs of serious medical distress for hours after Tim fell down a staircase. At least one newly initiated member, Kordel Davis, urged others to call 911 and was told he was overreacting. The case raises a difficult question about pluralistic ignorance: what happens when your own alarm is contradicted by a room full of people acting as though everything is under control?
Michael Deng's 2013 death at a Pi Delta Psi retreat brings loyalty itself into focus. After Michael was critically injured during the fraternity's 'glass ceiling' ritual, prosecutors said members delayed medical care and took steps to conceal the fraternity's involvement. In that case, the institution that was supposed to create brotherhood had become something members appeared willing to protect even while one of its pledges was unconscious.
When the Story Isn't Simple
George Desdunes's 2011 death at Cornell is more contested. He died of acute alcohol poisoning after participating in an SAE 'reverse hazing' ritual, but the criminal case produced competing accounts about how much he had consumed beforehand, whether drinking during the ritual was voluntary, and what role the pledges' conduct played in his death. Three pledges were acquitted. The fraternity chapter itself was separately convicted of hazing.
That ambiguity matters. A ritual can be real, normalized and dangerous without every death yielding a simple causal or legal narrative. It also shows how durable a group's scripts can become: the pledges weren't inventing their own ritual when they temporarily reversed the hierarchy. They were carrying out a tradition the fraternity had already taught them was part of pledging.
Breaking the Script
Scott Mietchen's story eventually turned again. After watching a pledge deteriorate badly during initiation week, he and other members decided the hazing needed to stop. What surprised him was how little resistance they encountered. A relatively small group had been committed to continuing the practice; many others had simply gone along because it was what the chapter had always done.
The episode ends with the promise from the opening scene: I know what this feels like, and I'll remember. The harder question is what that memory becomes once the group gives it meaning. Does it become a reason to stop the ritual, or evidence that the next person should have to endure it too?
Sources & Further Reading
Case Reporting & Investigations
Bowling Green State University / Barnes & Thornburg LLP
The university-commissioned investigation into Stone Foltz's Big Little event, including the family-bottle tradition, witness accounts and chapter practices.
ABC News
Interview with Stone Foltz's parents that provides family context and Shari Foltz's account of Stone saying he did not want to participate in the ritual.
ABC News
Detailed reporting on the surveillance footage and timeline of Timothy Piazza's final night at Beta Theta Pi.
ABC News
Retrospective reporting on Michael Deng's death, the glass-ceiling ritual, delayed medical care, toxicology findings and prosecutors' account of the cover-up.
The Cornell Daily Sun
A detailed account of the competing narratives in George Desdunes's case, including evidence about prior drinking, consent, illness and disputed causation.
The Cornell Daily Sun
Coverage of the acquittal of three SAE pledges charged in connection with George Desdunes's death.
Psychology & Hazing Research
Aldo Cimino & Benjamin J. Thomas — Evolution and Human Behavior
Longitudinal study of six pledge classes testing whether more severe hazing reliably produces greater solidarity with fellow pledges, active members or the fraternity.
Aldo Cimino & Benjamin J. Thomas — Evolution and Human Behavior
Follow-up analysis of the same fraternity data examining whether costly induction may filter for newcomers who enter with stronger commitment rather than creating commitment from scratch.
Gentry R. McCreary & Joshua W. Schutts — Journal of Cognition and Culture
Study of fraternity members examining motivations for hazing, including solidarity, commitment, education and social dominance, and their relationship to hazing tolerance and moral disengagement.
Elliot Aronson & Judson Mills — Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
The classic 1959 initiation-severity experiment used in the episode as limited historical context for effort justification and cognitive dissonance.
Firsthand Accounts & Documentary
Scott Mietchen — Phi Delta Theta
Mietchen's firsthand account of moving from hazing victim to enthusiastic hazer and later helping end hazing in his chapter.
Byron Hurt / Media Education Foundation
Documentary combining Hurt's own fraternity experience with interviews and case reporting on the culture, meaning and persistence of hazing.
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