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Rider fatal hazing defendant takes a plea deal
Ex-frat president agrees to assist family of dead pledge
Friday, October 17, 2008
BY LINDA STEIN

While the final defendant who faced criminal charges in the Rider University hazing case pleaded guilty yesterday to a lesser charge, a civil wrongful death case against the university remains pending and that former student is likely to play a key role.

Michael Torney, 22, former president of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, allegedly sought the university’s help to prevent hazing only to have officials change their minds on a planned program a week before a freshman died of alcohol poisoning after a fraternity event.
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The parents of Gary DeVercelly Jr., 18, are suing Rider, several administrators, the fraternity and some of its members, alleging negligence in his March 2007 death.

Torney, of Randolph, pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of hazing, a disorderly person or misdemeanor charge. In exchange for his guilty plea a more serious aggravated hazing charge will be dismissed when he is sentenced in December.

In a brief hearing before Superior Court Judge Mitchel Ostrer, Torney answered yes to questions posed by one of his lawyers, admitting he failed to exercise the necessary oversight of the frat party. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Torney will be sentenced to three years probation, must attend alcohol counseling and will be required to perform 100 hours of community service.

During the fraternity’s “Big Little Night” party, DeVercelly drank nearly two-thirds of a bottle of vodka.

The criminal case caused consternation in academia across the country when a Mercer County jury indicted two Rider administrators on hazing charges, along with the students. The charges against the administrators were later dropped and the two other fraternity brothers, Dominic Olsen, 22, the pledge master, and Adriano DiDonato, 23, were allowed to enter the Pretrial Intervention Program, a program for first-time, nonviolent offenders. Torney, who had a prior conviction on a marijuana charge, was turned down for PTI by court officials, Assistant Prosecutor Skylar Weissman said yesterday.

“They all had some type of contribution (to the death),” Weissman said. “The bottom line was, we wanted to make sure they were all equally punished. The penalties are all the same for the three of them.”

Meanwhile, Torney, who also was a defendant in the lawsuit, has settled with the DeVercelly family and agreed to help them in their case against Rider. Sources close to the case said Torney had approached Rider officials prior to DeVercelly’s death because he was concerned about hazing practices at the fraternity. Those officials agreed to put a plan in place to help him stop the practice, then changed their minds about a week before the fatal party.

In an amended lawsuit filed in June, Gary and Julie DeVercelly, of Long Beach, Calif., allege Rider and administrators Ada Badgely and Cassie Iacovelli “were informed that dangerous hazing existed in the PKT fraternity” and “help was sought to end this dangerous practice.” Badgely had been charged with hazing by the grand jury, but the charge against her was later dismissed. Iacovelli was not criminally charged.

to assist family of dead pledge

“After promising to render assistance (they) refused to intervene just before the pledge process resulting in Gary’s death commenced,” the lawsuit said.

Daniel Higgins, a spokesman for Rider said, “We’re pleased to learn the Prosecutor’s Office and Mr. Torney reached an agreement on the matter.” However, Higgins said he could not respond to allegations made in the civil lawsuit.

Douglas Fierberg, attorney for the DeVercelly family, said, Torney has “agreed to provide significant support to the family.”

Fierberg said an investigation showed Torney was not the person most responsible for DeVercelly’s death.

The family accepted the ruling.

“We’re fine with the judge’s decision,” said Julie DeVercelly. “Mike has taken responsibility and wants to bring awareness to the dangers of hazing that go on at universities across the nation. We had learned in the past 18 months that the national fraternity and Rider University hold the greatest responsibility for our son’s tragic death.

“It’s been very difficult for our family,” she said. “It goes on. We have not educated our kids or their parents. It needs to be done. It’s very sad and very scary. You don’t send your kids away to die.”

Meanwhile, Torney settled the suit with the DeVercellys for $150,000 in April through his parents’ insurer. Another student defendant in the lawsuit, Vincent Cagulero, of Jackson, settled the case for $375,000, also through an insurer, said Fierberg. Cagulero had been DeVercelly’s fraternity “big brother, the lawsuit said.

“The family understands that prosecutors have difficult decisions to make and the family was not involved in the negotiations,” Fierberg said.

Torney was upstairs studying and not in the basement of the frat house where the fatal party took place, said his lawyer Edward Bilinkas. He did not provide the alcohol or drink with the brothers, Bilinkas said.

“Before and after this incident Michael Torney took a stand against hazing,” said Bilinkas. “He clearly admits his responsibility.”

Torney would like to perform his required community service by speaking to college groups about the dangers of hazing, Bilinkas said.
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“He’s taken on a position of a crusader,” said Bilinkas.

When Torney learned that DeVercelly was in trouble, he “did everything in his power to try to save the kid,” Bilinkas said.

Bilinkas, who gave the prosecutors evidence he said persuaded them to downgrade the charge, praised Weissman for reconsidering his position.

“The state is satisfied,” Bilinkas added. “We’re satisfied. This has been a very traumatic situation for my client and his family.”

After five years, Torney, who would like to go to law school, can have the conviction expunged, Bilinkas said. He is currently a senior at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

Linda Stein can be reached at lstein@njtimes.com or (609) 989-6437.

10/15/2008 6:00:00 PM
The demise of hazing

By OVID VICKERS

The ridiculous practice of hazing on college campuses, with the possible exception of some social clubs, is happily disappearing from the nation’s colleges. Although some instances are still reported each year, they are relatively few. The decline began with the return to college of young men who had served in World War II and entered college well past their teens. These men had their heads saved when they joined the military, and they were not about to let some college upper-classman attack their heads again with razors or scissors.

The imminent historian Thomas D. Clark, a native of Winston County, Mississippi, describes hazing at the University of Mississippi in his autobiography My Century in History. Clark entered the University in 1925 and makes the following observation about campus hazing. “The insidious idiocy of hazing freshen was carried out during the first week of classes. This consisted of paddling, cutting hair, and making the freshmen do errands and chores for the upperclassmen. The hair cutters seemed to be lineal descendants of bushwhackers and night-riding Klansmen. I witnessed a poor homesick freshman paddled unmercifully, an act that almost sent him home in defeat. I looked upon the practice of hazing as barbaric and escaped it because I was older than the average entering freshman.”

In the years when it was widely practiced, hazing filtered down from colleges to high schools and even to middle schools, particularly city schools. When I completed the sixth grade in South Georgia, I went to live with my grandparents in Gadsden, Alabama in order (my parents thought) to receive better instruction than I was getting in the rural school I had been attending.

At the final bell on the first day of school, the boys in the eighth grade quickly rode their bicycles away from the campus and formed into groups to waylay the seventh graders. There was much paddling, and I even witnessed pages being torn from textbooks of seventh grade boys. In those days, the state did not furnish books; they were purchased by the individual students, so the loss of a book was a major economic loss.

When I began teaching at East Central Junior College in 1955, hazing was still practiced, although it was somewhat controlled by the college and was conducted in a semi-organized manner. A day was set aside for what was called freshman initiation.

The official title was “Freshman Day,” and a list of rules and activities were passed out to the student body.

A typical “Freshman Day” began with the sophomores waking the freshmen about 4:30 in the morning. The freshmen men ran around the football field, and the women took cold showers. When the freshmen dressed, they were told to wear their clothes “wrong-side-out” and backwards. Some were required to wear an onion around their necks on a string, while males had their hair cut, the females had jars of Vaseline smeared into their hair.

At breakfast, the freshmen were required to sit on the floor and eat their food without the aid of a fork, knife, or spoon. Freshmen were required to learn the words to a song, which they had to sing at the request of any sophomore. (I cannot remember the words to the song, and I wonder if students who learned them now remember the words.)

When classes were over in the afternoon, all the freshmen lined up and paraded through town wearing whatever ridiculous garb a sophomore had decided they should wear. Some years what was referred to as a “Sadie Hawkins Race” took place on the front campus. All the freshman girls lined up on one side of the campus, and the boys lined up a short distance away. At a given signal, the girls chased the boys. If a boy was caught, he had to escort the girl to the dance that concluded the day. I am sure that some young men made little effort to escape, wanting to be caught by a certain girl.

After supper, a dance was held in what is now referred to as the “old gymnasium.” The dance seldom lasted past eleven o’clock because half of the participants were so tired from the day’s activities that they had rather sleep than dance.

Freshman hazing at East Central was discontinued in the early 1960s for several reasons. Activities on Freshman Day caused a great deal of disruption in classes. Students became more sophisticated and considered the hazing to be degrading and immature. Other forms of entertainment came about, and some activities lost their appeal.

Hazing, when carried to the extreme, can be dangerous. Students have suffered broken bones from being forced to perform stunts or activities which were beyond their physical abilities.

The fact that hazing no longer is permitted on the East Central campus means that instructors no longer have to smell raw onion or look at skinned heads while attempting to impart useful knowledge to an entering freshman class.