The grand jury also wrote unsparingly of the fraternity culture at Penn State, a campus that last made national headlines amid a sexual abuse scandal involving its former assistant football coach. The indictment pinned “direct fault” on the entire Penn State Greek community, writing that it “nurtured an environment so permissive of excessive drinking and hazing that it emboldened its members to repeatedly act with reckless disregard to human life.”
The events had already prompted Beta Theta Pi’s international fraternity to suspend and disband the Penn State chapter. In a statement on Friday, it called the charges “incredibly disheartening.”
