Proposed bill could have saved Max Gruver’s life | Local Politics – NOLA.com

WASHINGTON – The father of Max Gruver said his son would be alive if the college fraternity hazing legislation introduced Tuesday in the U.S. Senate had been law six years ago.

Gruver, of Roswell, Georgia, was 18 in 2017 when he died from “acute alcohol intoxication with aspiration” the day after participating in a hazing ritual at LSU. The Phi Delta Theta fraternity required pledges to chug 190-proof liquor. An autopsy found Gruver’s blood had more than six times the level of alcohol at which a person is presumed drunk.

Steve Gruver said Tuesday that LSU published guides about campus fraternities that listed grade point averages, accolades, public projects and other information to help incoming students and their parents decide which fraternity to join. But LSU kept hazing infractions to itself.

Phi Delta Theta had violations of the student code of conduct, including hazing, in six of the seven years before Max Gruver pledged, his father recalled. The prior year, Phi Delta Theta had been suspended for a hazing incident. None of that was disclosed when Max Gruver and his parents researched and compared his options.

“This act would have saved my son’s life,” Steve Gruver said Tuesday during the rollout of “The Stop Campus Hazing Act,” sponsored by U.S. Sens Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota. Gruver was joined by other parents whose children were injured or killed in hazing incidents

The legislation would require hazing incidents to be reported publicly, using a standardized format that allows comparisons between institutions. It also would require colleges to establish a campus-wide program to educate students about the dangers of hazing. And it would require higher education institutions to disclose which student organizations have a history of hazing incidents and student conduct violations.

Klobuchar said that information would be easily found on the college’s website under the terms of the legislation.

Parents deliver their children to colleges and universities with a mix of excitement and worry, she said.

“You’re thinking of things like, what if they have trouble making friends? What if they get homesick?” Klobuchar said. “But there’s one ‘what if?’ we as parents can’t even bear to think about, and that is: What if our kids are in danger?”

A 2019 survey of 6,000 college students found that 26% of them had experienced hazing, Klobuchar said. Since 2000, 50 hazing-related deaths have been reported, and five were reported in 2021 alone, she said.

Hazing was seen as a key factor in deaths resulting from heatstroke, drowning, alcohol poisoning, cardiac arrest and other reasons.

Jessica Mertz of the Clery Center, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that advocates for greater campus safety, said more than half of college students involved in extracurricular activities have been subjected to dangerous initiation rituals.

“Anything that is physically and emotionally damaging for a student who is being manipulated because of his or her desire for belonging should be eliminated,” said Cassidy, whose Baton Rouge house is about a third of a mile from the Phi Delta Theta House on Dalrymple Drive. “A parent should not have to worry about their child being endangered because of their sense of belonging.”

The legislation provides an incentive for universities and fraternities to clamp down on hazing because parents and students would have easy access to data that shows where it’s happening, he said.

Cassidy said he and Klobuchar combined their two separate bills to make it easier to pass on its own or be attached to another bill destined to be approved.

The legislation will be considered in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, of which Cassidy is the ranking minority member.