Summary Of Death At A Penn State Fraternity

In the article “Death at a Penn State Fraternity” by Caitlin Flanagan, the tragic story of Beta Theta Pi pledge Timothy Piazza’s last moments are recounted in great detail. Throughout the analysis of the situation, Flanagan subjects her audience to a substantial amount of heartbreaking details, as well as her opinion and speculation. Flanagan’s purpose in her writing of this article is to display the message that fraternity hazing is apart of a much greater problem in the fraternal system. She does this in a number of ways, including her interviews with other frat brothers such as Kordel Davis, and her stringent analyzation of Greek Life as a whole. What happened to Tim Piazza is in no way okay. The death of a healthy college student is a tragic loss to all, especially in the case of Piazza’s, as it could have been prevented. In her recounting and analysis of Piazza’s death, Flanagan continually subjects the fraternity system to a relentless metaphorical beating. In the first half of the article, Flanagan speculates about how the incident will affect Greek life at Penn State in a way that is morbidly factual. She informs the reader of the sad truth that not many will get in trouble for what happened to Piazza. This sets the tone

Kordel Davis, an African American student at Penn State, was subject to a great deal of racism throughout his tenure at Penn state and Beta Theta Pi, a problem with fraternities that Flanagan highlights along with Piazza’s death. Together with this racism came a similar story to Piazza’s, with Davis sustaining an injury that could have killed him without medical help being administered to him until the morning after the incident. Flanagan uses Davis an another example to further her narrative the the fraternity system is not what much of the public believes it to be, and is, according to her, harmful and