As the historically unproductive 118th session of Congress comes to a close and members fight over the basic tasks of governing, lawmakers quietly passed a law to fight campus hazing without much controversy.
The bill, which passed both chambers unanimously and is set to be signed by President Joe Biden this week, was the result of a six-year collaboration between national fraternities and the parents of hazing victims at colleges and universities around the country.
If that seems like an unlikely pairing, it is one. When students die from hazing incidents, parents typically take the fraternities responsible to court. But in the effort to get state and federal laws to take a harsher stance on hazing, the two sides became allies. Jim Piazza, whose son, Timothy, died from injuries sustained while being hazed at Penn State in 2017, was one of the first parents to reach out to national fraternity representatives to talk.