Plaintiff in Penn State hazing lawsuit, lawyers tour frat house

STATE COLLEGE – A former Penn State student who is suing over alleged hazing toured his former fraternity house with his parents and lawyers for the involved parties.
James Vivenzio’s attorney, Aaron Freiwald, said Wednesday’s tour was a chance to find evidence and take video. Kappa Delta Rho, which owns the property, has been suspended by the university and a different fraternity was set to take over the property this weekend.
“We’re trying to do what we have to do here to document James’ legal claim,” Freiwald said.
Penn State officials didn’t comment on the tour, referring reporters to a statement issued when Vivenzio sued in June.
Among other things, the statement said Penn State “strongly disputes” the allegations and offered “extraordinary assistance to Vivenzio by sending an investigator to his home after he left school. The school said Vivenzio and his family weren’t willing to “file a complaint, provide documentation, speak with State College police or participate in pursuing the formal disciplinary process.”
Vivenzio, of Great Falls, Va., flunked out his freshman year amid the hazing, Freiwald has said.
Vivenzio went home during the spring 2013 term, sought treatment for alcohol problems, tried school again last fall, and was eventually hospitalized earlier this year for post-traumatic stress.
Vivenzio first complained to the school in April 2014, claiming he was burned with cigarettes and force-fed buckets of liquor mixed with urine, vomit and hot sauce in hazing rituals.
“When you send your kid to a university like Penn State, you expect them to come back a better person, not a broken person,” his father, Jim Vivenzio, said at the tour Wednesday.
Vivenzio also blew the whistle on a covert Facebook page on which frat members posted pictures of nude and semi-nude women, and which also featured references to drug use.
Penn State announced in March that it determined some fraternity members engaged in sexual harassment that helped create a “persistent climate of humiliation” for women. The school also suspended Kappa Delta Rho for three years and the fraternity’s national office expelled 38 Penn State members, saying they violated the fraternity’s values.
Vivenzio wants people to sign an online petition “to prevent and end what has become increasingly more violent and demeaning behavior in the name of good clean fun.”