More than a month has passed since the death of Joseph Dado, and the community has far from forgotten the late Penn State freshman.
Dado was found dead outside the Steidle Building on Sept. 21 after he reportedly left Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji) and Alpha Tau Omega. Dado, 18, had a BAC of .169.
The greek community at Penn State is looking at internal changes to prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future.
“Underage drinking is a cultural problem, more than just a greek problem. However, because greeks have such a large presence on campus, we can be leaders and facilitators of change,” said Zach Meli, vice president for communications for the Interfraternity Council (IFC).
The IFC is looking into alcohol educational programs to change the way students view drinking.
“It can be really hard to connect with students and show them the severity of high risk drinking. No one program can really solve this problem,” Meli said. “Our challenge as we move forward is to find the most effective educational programming that students will actually comprehend and soak it into their brains.”
All chapters are participating in educational programming, as well as new members. Incoming freshmen joining the fraternity must participate in AlcoholEdu, an online alcohol education program designed to assist students in making healthy decisions regarding alcohol consumption.
“We recently participated in ‘Perfect Party,’ a mock alcohol event at SAE [Sigma Alpha Epsilon],” said Phil Relic, president of Kappa Sigma. “It was mandatory; all social chairs attend and set up a mock perfect social. It showed what a safe party looks like. They had two parties going on; one was a typical party and the other was the perfect party. It modeled safe and unsafe drinking behavior, and showed that the safe party could be just as much fun as the unsafe party.”
Many fraternity houses have begun placing more brothers at exits and making sure people are using the buddy system when leaving.
“Frats are trying to prevent a similar situation [Dado death] from occurring by eliminating alcohol they give out to people they don’t know or people not on their guest list,” Relic said. “Our risk manager has given presentations to make sure that our brothers are being safe as well. We are using the buddy system when we go out, and doing more ‘sober brothers’ [certain number of brothers who do not drink for a night and make sure everyone else is safe].”
But not all students believe fraternities should be the embodiment for change here at Penn State.
“Frats need a wakeup call that they’re not invincible. I’m hoping the college becomes a little stricter with frats. I think they get more leniency from the cops,” said Eric Lynch (masters of education candidate). “Everytime something goes wrong, there seems to be a fraternity involved.”
