Perspective | A legal battle asks: When hazing hits hard, who's to blame?

Gary DeVercelly just wanted to join Phi Kappa Tau.

And for that desire, he paid the ultimate price.

The 18-year-old from Long Beach, Calif., died in late March after a pledging ritual at the Rider University fraternity.

DeVercelly, authorities said, had a blood alcohol content of 0.426 percent.

After the death at the Lawrenceville, N.J.-based private college, a grand jury indicted three college students for aggravated hazing.

But the jury also took the unprecedented step on Aug. 3 of indicting two college administrators in connection with the death.

Dean of Students Anthony Campbell and Director of Greek Life Ada Badgley weren't even on campus the night of the incident, but Mercer County, N.J., prosecutor Joseph Bocchini still tried to hold them accountable by filing criminal charges of aggravated hazing.

At the time, he said the indictments would "send some kind of message that the standards of college life, when it relates to alcohol, need to be policed carefully," according to The Associated Press.

Bocchini later asked a judge to drop the charges against Campbell and Badgley after admitting that not enough evidence existed to hold the administrators responsible for the death.

"We could not meet our burden of proof," Assistant Prosecutor Skylar Weissman told the AP when his office asked a judge to dismiss the charges.

Still, the case introduced a new element into the already tenuous relationships between many university administrations and the Greek organizations on their campuses, raising questions of who exactly is liable in situations like these.

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Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Director Scott Reikofski said he knows Badgley both personally and professionally, and that "if she had any knowledge that [the hazing incident] was going to happen, she would have done everything she could" to prevent it.

Bocchini "tried to develop a case that wasn't really there," Reikofski said. The case is "similar to the [district attorney] thing with the Duke Lacrosse rape case - now the D.A. down there is in as much or more trouble than" the students who were charged with sexual assault.

Penn's associate general counsel, Brenda Fraser, said she wasn't sure why the prosecutor decided to pursue the charges.

"It is difficult to hold someone responsible for a crime in which he or she did not participate," she wrote in an e-mail. "I assume the court dismissed the criminal charges because there was no evidence that the administrators had anything to do with the event at issue."

Bocchini said he originally pursued charges against the university officials because of the grand jury indictment.

But when he asked a New Jersey Superior Court judge to dismiss the charges on Aug. 28, he admitted that he wasn't sure the charges would hold.

"I was grappling with it in my own mind," Bocchini said at the time, according to the AP. "We were trying to figure out what to do with it."

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Despite questions about the merits of the case, its unprecedented nature raises red flags about the relationship between university administrators and campus fraternities.

Reikofski said he wouldn't be surprised "if there were other universities that said, 'If this is the way it's going to be, maybe we need to strengthen [our policy] and beef it up some.'"

Besides closing its Phi Kappa Tau chapter, Rider revised the university alcohol policy, "strengthening sanctions and requiring parental notification for all violations," said spokesman Daniel Higgins.

It also "established a Good Samaritan policy that encourages students to seek help immediately for medically compromised students who are under the influence of alcohol without fear of campus repercussions."

In addition, social events involving alcohol are now prohibited in residence halls and Greek houses at Rider, Higgins added.

Students there will now be required to complete the online alcohol awareness program AlcoholEdu, which incoming Penn students also have to take.

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But despite the signal that the case may have sent, Reikofski says he doesn't worry about a similar situation developing at Penn.

The only way officials could get into trouble, he said, would be if administrators had prior information that a hazing incident was going to take place and didn't do anything to prevent it.

In that instance, "there would be a serious level of negligence," Reikofski said. "If I hear credible evidence that there's something going on, then it's my responsibility to follow up on that."

It was exactly that sort of negligence that the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office decided it didn't have enough evidence to prove on the part of the Rider administrators.

The university's potential liability in a hazing case "would depend on the particular facts," according to Fraser. "Among other things, we would have to consider the deans' role, if any, in the incident or event that gave rise to the suit."

She added that other relevant information would include "the relationship of the would-be-plaintiff to the University [and] whether a University-sponsored or sanctioned event were involved."

Cathie Abookire, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia District Attorney, declined to speculate on whether her office would pursue criminal charges against university deans in a hazing case.

"In any case, for our office, we evaluate the facts and the evidence and make a charging decision based on the facts and the evidence," she said.

Hazing is prohibited by both Pennsylvania Commonwealth law and University policy.

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Penn's hazing policies are sufficient enough to insulate administrators and the University from criminal charges because they "mirror and go farther than the Commonwealth law," Reikofski says.

He says his job is to make sure that students know about the University's policies and that they have resources to insure that they avoid any actions that might constitute hazing.

"If they're wanting to build team closeness, then there are a bunch of different activities . that they can do to build that camaraderie without making them endure some hazing ritual," he said.

OFSA does regular alcohol and hazing education with chapter presidents and leaders, he added.

"We spend a fair amount of time educating chapter presidents and social chairs and working work alumni advisors . so that they know what their responsibilities are," Reikofski said.

And so, says Reikofski - now entering his 25th year advising fraternities - Penn's attitudes toward hazing won't be affected by the recent case.

"I was confident in Penn's policies, and I've worked here long enough to know that" they're sufficient.

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