Here is the link: https://mynorthwest.com/3383100/my-dream-his-dream-cut-short-parents-of-son-killed-in-hazing-incident-applaud-sams-law/
And an excerpt: from Station WIRO
House Bill 1751 was approved by both chambers in the state Legislature last week, but is awaiting final passage to resolve an amendment to officially name it “Sam’s Law.” The legislation follows a similar push in the 90s to criminalize college hazing. The more current legislation expands the definition of hazing, requires public and private schools to publicly report incidents of hazing, legally mandates employees of the school to report hazing, and orders that schools provide education to students on the dangers of hazing.
“We really believe that this law is going to save lives … It is shining a light on what has been hidden up until now from new students and from their families in terms of the disciplinary track record in the history of Greek organizations, but also other clubs and student groups and athletic teams,” Jolayne Houtz, Sam’s mother, said.
Documented cases of collegiate hazing date back to the 1830s. John Butler Groves died in a hazing incident in 1838 at Franklin Seminary in Kentucky, according to Hank Nuwer, a journalist who collects all U.S. reported deaths of hazing and compiles the information in a public database.
“Fraternities have proven over and over again that they are not capable of ending hazing on their own,” Houtz continued. “If you look through that [Nuwer’s databse], it’s just picture after picture of mostly young men, some women who have been hazed to death. These people who are 18,19, 20 years old — on the cusp of the rest of their lives, with so much to offer — are stamped out by hazing.”
A second, similar bill would have updated Washington law to treat hazing as a felony charge. That failed to make its way out of committee before the Legislature’s cut-off date, although the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mari Leavitt, has publicly signaled interest in bringing it back in the next session.
West Virginia University announced Monday that it suspended a fraternity for a reported hazing incident in violation of the university’s student conduct code.
The interim suspension of the fraternity, Delta Chi, went into effect immediately and, among other restrictions, bars the fraternity from recruitment activities and attending and organizing social functions, the university said in a press release. The suspension will remain in place as the university investigates the allegations, which could be reviewed for criminal charges outside of the university’s code of conduct. The Office of Student Conduct sent letters to the chapter president and adviser outlining the specific allegations, which do not involve alcohol or controlled substances.
“I join the University’s administration, along with many others in the Center for Fraternal Values and Leadership, who are working to ensure we are acting in accordance with rules established for the safety of all of our chapters and their members, in our profound disappointment,” Matthew Richardson, director of the center and chair of the WVU Hazing Prevention Task Force, said in a statement.
Danny Santulli, Fiji pledge on life supportCOLUMBIA, Mo. — The parents of a Minnesota man allege in a lawsuit that he has been unresponsive and requires constant medical care since being forced to drink a bottle of vodka at a fraternity at the University of Missouri. Daniel Santulli, 19, of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, was found in cardiac arrest inside a car at University Hospital on Oct. 20, according to the lawsuit. His blood alcohol content was 0.486%, more than six times the legal limit for driving, the Columbia Missourian reported. Recent Stories from ABC News Top ArticlesREAD MOREBiden says IS leader killed during US raidin Syria The lawsuit contends Santulli and the rest of his pledge class at Phi Gamma Delta were each forced to drink a bottle of hard liquor, given to them by their “pledge fathers.” Santulli remains “unresponsive, unaware of his surroundings, unable to communicate and (with) a significant injury to his brain,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit names the national Phi Gamma Delta organization and individual members of the Missouri chapter. The national fraternity and university both suspended the Missouri chapter following Santulli’s hospitalization. Ron Caudill, the fraternity’s national executive director, said in a statement that the fraternity is reviewing the lawsuit. “We expect all chapters and members to follow the law and abide by the fraternity’s policies, which prohibit hazing and the provision of alcohol to minors,” he said. Attorney David Bianchi, the family’s attorney who specializes in hazing litigation, said Santulli’s injury was not an isolated event. “These are part of a pattern of unsafe and dangerous behavior that represents the traditions of the fraternity,” he said. Since 2017, Phi Gamma Delta, also known as Fiji, has six documented violations of alcohol distribution policies and two hazing violations at Missouri, according to university records.
Johnson was born April 2, 1941, in Jamestown, New York, to Dorothy R. and Edward, Sr.
He graduated in 1959 from Clearwater High School in Florida. He was a six-footer with hooded dark eyes.
He loved going to horse races with his grandad, a Vermont tout named Warren Johnson who abandoned his wife. The grandson once published a piece on betting tips for a national magazine.
E.W. married and, in the mid-Sixties, earned an MFA from the University of Iowa program. He smoked a pipe constantly in class. His landlord overcharged him rent, he complained.
Kurt Vonnegut was then an Iowa writing professor. He too smoked like a chimney in class.
Johnson’s thesis adviser on a manuscript for his MFA was the tormented, brilliant writer Richard Yates.
Flashback to 1967. Johnson’s wife divorced him. He left Iowa City after Western Illinois University’s English Department hired him.
A vanity press published his novel about an instructor with an unsatisfying love life.
He nicknamed himself “Crazy Ed,” hanging summers with lesser-known Merry Pranksters chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s “The Kool-Aid Acid Test.” He boasted that he took psychedelic acid. He crisscrossed the country with his cocker spaniel.
He wore custom dress shirts and purchased expensive cigars.
He created a WIU writers’ conference in Macomb, Illinois.
Johnson advertised the conference in The New York Times.
The conference’s celebrity author was Kurt Vonnegut. Yates accepted and then cancelled.
Johnson mishandled the conference by putting together an impossibly chaotic agenda. Kurt chewed out Johnson. He handed back his fee and stormed off to the airport.
Kurt mocked “the cigar-eating” Johnson in a much-quoted New York Times Book review.
“You know why more people didn’t come?” a divorcee said, according to Kurt. “Because Macomb, Illinois, sounds like such a hellhole …”
Tom Wolfe and E.W. Johnson, New Journalism
While at WIU, Johnson published poems, edited two short-story anthologies, and wrote two biographies in pamphlet form. He began to co-edit, with Tom Wolfe, a “New Journalism” anthology.
Wolfe worked with Johnson for three years through the mails and in Wolfe’s New York flat. At least once, Johnson brought his offbeat druggie friends to hang with Wolfe.
When Wolfe, usually dressed in a vanilla-colored suit with fedora, fell behind, his co-author berated him and rekindled the project.
E.W. Johnson spent some of his $30,000 advance at the racetrack.
Picador published the best-selling Johnson-Wolfe anthology in 1973.
The book contained Wolfe’s essays on journalism’s new craft form, plus stories by literary stars Norman Mailer, Gay Talese and Joan Didion.
Johnson quit teaching at WIU. His students described him as weird. Tenure was unlikely.
He gave away his possessions, including a chandelier he bragged to students that he had stolen from his Iowa City landlord. He bunked with an artist buddy in Greene County, Indiana.
One day, Johnson guest-taught an Indiana University journalism class. He mumbled and was incoherent. A student came in late, and Johnson threw an axe, missing the boy.
The frightened instructor cancelled class.
The incident made the papers. Wolfe ended all correspondence with Johnson.
In disgrace, Johnson moved in with his parents in Pinellas County, Florida.
The FBI investigated Johnson for mailing threats to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.
A medical exam diagnosed him paranoid-schizophrenic. His father, Edward, Sr., paid his bail.
He lived in cheap motels after his dad died. His father had been a benefactor for a local library.
Johnson next did terrible deeds.
I obtained records from Pinellas County through a Freedom of Information request. At least twice, he committed sexual assaults on women.
Court records said Johnson violated a woman who agreed to sleep with him. He inflicted unspeakable acts after she begged him to stop.
Florida placed Crazy Ed on its sexual offender list. His picture revealed a white-haired old man with the bulging eyes of a lifetime smoker.
He lived in a run-down motel.
Then, he fled and stopped reporting to his parole officer.
Florida named him an “absconded” sexual predator.
We all have a time to be born, a time to die, as the Bible says.
Tom Wolfe died at 88 on May 14, 2018. The Boston Globe cited his famous anthology with E. W. Johnson.
On November 10, 2021, I read the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announcement of E. W. Johnson’s recent death on an unspecified date.
E.W. Johnson once glowed bright as a meteor, then winked out.
I used his anthology while teaching journalism graduate students at Ball State for four years.
Turn the page.
Hank Nuwer is a professor emeritus with Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism.
Sexual offender E. W. Johnson, New Journalism co-editor with Tom Wolfe
