Evelyn Piazza, Richard Braham and Rae Ann Gruver are three parents from different states who have one common goal: to end hazing. After the deaths of their sons Tim, Marquise and Max due to hazing, these parents had a mission to make sure no other family had to endure their trauma.
“Right after Max passed away, we found a journal entry he had,” Gruver said. “He wrote in there about how God works in funny ways and he does bad things to ultimately create good. After reading that, we knew right then that we had to create something good out of something that has been so bad.”
ParentsUnited2StopHazing (PUSH) visited the University of Idaho Tuesday in an event put on by the Panhellenic Council, Interfraternity Council, the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life and Delta Gamma Sorority. Greek life students gathered in front of the International Ballroom of the Bruce Pitman Center as students signed in and collected bracelets with the words “#StopTheHazing” and “#FlyHighMax”.
“(UI Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life) Shawn Dowiak reached out to us and he said that on the University of Idaho campus there is quite a bit of hazing,” Gruver said. “He thought the University would benefit from hearing our stories and our sons’ stories. If we can help in any way, and help the University, in what they think is a hazing culture than of course we’ll come and do anything we can to help.”
At the event, Piazza, Braham, and Gruver each shared the stories of their sons’ deaths and the toll it took on their families. Piazza described the story through Tim’s brother Mike’s perspective as he found his brother in the hospital. Piazza described the agony of discovering Tim was brain dead due to his injuries and his death due to cardiac arrest.
“My personal goal is to make everybody feel the pain,” Piazza said. “I want people to put themselves in that place, so they can see for themselves how awful it is, how painful it is. I want them to think in a way that they’ve never thought before.”
Braham described his son as a good boy who didn’t know what he had become. A slideshow of Marquise’s life and suicide, due to the hazing he had seen and participated in at Pennsylvania State’s Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, included texts from Marquise with a picture of an unnamed pledge blindfolded with a gun to his head.
“I want the students, the Greek members of both sororities and fraternities, to realize hazing is a crime, hazing is immoral, hazing is torture,” Braham said. “Why would anyone who calls themselves a brother or a sister want to torture a brother or a sister?”
The panel was followed by a brief question and answer forum using an app called “Slido” so students could ask questions anonymously as members of the Gamma Delta sorority read the questions to the parents.
“No organization is more important than somebody’s life,” Gruver said. “They killed my son. Are those guys fessing up to it? No, of course not, but those other brothers used their voices. They didn’t stand back and let a bunch of lies take over the whole situation. That was the right thing to do. Max deserves that, Tim deserves that and Marquise deserves that.”
Brianna Finnegan can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @BriannaFinnega8
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misstated the name of Delta Gamma sorority. It also misstated the name of ParentsUnited2StopHazing.