Penn State wins right to buy fraternity house where Timothy Piazza was fatally injured
Penn State scored a major legal victory Tuesday in its yearslong quest to buy the former fraternity house where a student was fatally injured during a night of drinking and hazing.
The university won a lawsuit that argued a 1928 deed gave it the right to force the sale of the former Beta Theta Pi house because it’s no longer used as a fraternity.
Centre County Judge Brian Marshall gave the university and the fraternity’s national chapter six months to negotiate a deal. The purchase price could be determined by arbitrators if the two can’t reach an agreement.
Marshall’s ruling came about two months after a three-day trial. University President Eric Barron, Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims and State College Borough Manager Tom Fountaine were among those who testified.
“What occurred was just reprehensible. It was awful. It was a case where I believe a young man’s life could have been saved if people cared about him,” Barron testified about his decision to authorize permanent revocation of the fraternity. “And as an institution, any death is horrible, but we just couldn’t ignore the evidence that was there and needed to have a very strong message that we just can’t have this happen.”
Jim Piazza — the father of Timothy Piazza, a 19-year-old engineering major who died in February 2017 after multiple falls down stairs at a pledging event — pushed “very, very strongly” to ensure the house was not used as a fraternity after his son’s death, Barron testified.
The two regularly exchanged emails about the future of the property. Suggestions from Jim Piazza included demolishing the building, repurposing it as an engineering building that bore Tim’s name or — at minimum — acquiring the land.
“The Beta fraternity deserved to lose its right to be a fraternity at Penn State and now to lose the fraternity house itself. It is a disgraceful, but fitting ending for what occurred at that house,” Piazza family attorney Tom Kline said in a statement. “Penn State and its leadership should be commended for its leadership in taking back the house and what it symbolically represents.“
Sims, as part of the university’s senior leadership team, played a central role in overseeing the investigation. He testified about a flurry of flights and meetings in the weeks after Piazza’s death.
The fraternity, Sims testified, had a reputation as a “chapter of excellence” at University Park. That changed after Piazza’s death. The university’s investigation uncovered allegations of hazing dating back to fall 2014.
Sims recommended to Barron that the university’s recognition of the fraternity be revoked permanently, which occurred a month after Piazza’s death.
“The seriousness of this was evident. We had a student death, so it sort of begins there. The rest of it was that this was a chapter that had presented itself as a chapter of excellence, and by all outward appearances it was,” Sims testified. “What we discovered through this investigation was there was a systematic, long-standing effort to do anything but what the chapter should have been doing and what it professed to have been doing.
“We had every reason to doubt that this group of people would change their way. And, in fact, we had an awful lot of evidence suggesting that this was about as bad a situation as we had seen, and that we had to take action that was commensurate with that circumstance.”
The house has been used sporadically since spring 2017, typically by fraternity alumni during home football weekends or other special events.
The national fraternity’s three attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. A Penn State spokesperson responded with a brief statement, writing in an email that the university was “very pleased” with Marshall’s ruling.
The decision could affect who has control of millions of dollars.
University alumnus Don Abbey gave Alpha Upsilon more than $10 million for repairs and renovations at the fraternity, but filed a lawsuit in 2017 to get his money back.
A contract signed in 2009 called for Alpha Upsilon to repay the money if the property was no longer used as a fraternity, according to the lawsuit. The litigation is still pending.
A conference is scheduled for March 16.
This story was originally published December 24, 2021 at 7:00 AM.