Fraternity hazing at PSU - pledge dies

I just noticed I didn't address your question about whether Davis watched the whole thing. I'm quite sure he was there for only a small portion of the night. I don't know whether he was elsewhere in the house, or if he left. I don't think the document addressed that. I just skimmed over the document again, and I only see a part that tells how he urged the brothers to call 911, he was slammed against a wall and was told they were taking care of it, and that he tried to express to the brothers that he had specific knowledge of head injuries/concussion. I don't remember any specifics of him being mentioned again.  (Other than when they were discussing previous pledge classes and similar hazing - Davis was a new member of the fraternity as of 2 months previous.)
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I also heard on the news today that they told him that his word didn't matter because several of the others were pre-Med and kinesiology majors, so they knew more than he did.

People don't make good decisions when they are shit-faced.

How horrible for his family. 

Note how beachgurl didn't respond with the following:

There is so much wrong with this story but quite honestly one of the things wrong was that there was even a loud large party featuring under-age drinking in the first place. Not acceptable, and I don't care what race you are. No, it is not an acceptable teen activity that everyone does. So while this shooting and lack of medical care are entirely unacceptable, so is the entire situation. It doesn't justify the shooting, but it also would not have even happened otherwise.

I was in college in the 90s and there was a lot of drinking.

I was never in an organization, however, where admission turned on things like drinking huge amounts of alcohol. I agree with other posters that people who are highly intoxicated make bad decisions that they often wouldn't make while sober or mildly intoxicated. That is only a legal excuse in some states, however, and then only for crimes that require a special heightened mental state, like murder (manslaughter, eg, doesn't have such a mental state).

As for the other guy who didn't call 911, you don't generally have a duty to help people unless you have a special relationship with them (parent, guardian) or a contract (nursing homes) or a specific law (eg mandated reporters). I am not completely clear on that guy's role, but if the only allegation is that he didn't call and that he was there, that's usually not enough for charges (if I missed some facts, that might not be true).

Anyhow, I immediately told my 14-year-old about this case and I worry a lot about these kinds of scenarios. I think prosecution here is appropriate, but I am interested in strategies to prevent these situations from happening in the first place.

That is a Bingo! for me.

I read this story the other day and was horrified by it. I agree with you that if they had called 911 in the first place he would most likely still be alive. I also think that the other kid who wanted to call 911 should have done so, regardless of the consequences he may have faced from the others. I'm sure he feels guilty about that.

The whole fraternity / sorority thing is completely foreign to me, we don't have any of that nonsense here. I'm sure there are probably lots of nice stories about fraternities and sororities, but I've only seen negative press about them. 

Regarding the bolded line...when I was in undergrad, all of the greek houses had house "parents" - some sort of adult (usually a grad student) who was supposed to look out for the undergrads. It's been awhile, so I may be misremembering their role, but I'm wondering if the solution is as simple as that. University administration has GOT to know these types of hazing rituals are happening. A pretty straightforward way to make sure they don't get out of control is to have the house parent monitoring hazing ceremonies and parties. They can easily look the other way on minor infractions, but at least life-threatening situations can be addressed before they become, well...life-threatening. 
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I think if you were that adult and illegal activity took place, you'd open yourself up to civil liability should anything go wrong (and possibly criminal charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor or conspiracy, depending on your role) if they looked the other way on minor infractions. If I were a university, I think I could only put a house parent in that position with instructions to report/stop anything illegal and possibly anything in violation of university policy. Do you think if such a person were present and given those instructions, these organizations would stop hazing? Or would they just haze off-campus and out-of-sight?

Again, I am not an insider, so this is all anthropological for me, but I attended an academic panel on bullying where one of the presenters gave a pretty vigorous defense of the fraternity hazing process -- a person who was thoughtful and wasn't someone I thought would be writing in support of what I consider to be institutionally-sanctioned abuse -- and it made me wonder how you would root out something this determined to survive.

Full disclosure: my dd2 just graduated from PSU this past weekend. It's been absolutely devastating to all of the kids. I can only hope that every parent sending a kid to college this year (and every year in perpetuity) had their children read that report and said to them: "if you see anything like this, call for help." The image of the boys walking over him breaks my heart.

While they were unwilling to defend what they thought of as extremes (which I assume this PSU incident would fall under), they really did believe that the level of bonding forged by hazing activities and the code that it fostered between fraternity brothers was beneficial -- that it forges life-long professional networks with coded communications (it is pertinent here that he was talking about historically black fraternities and the kinds of professional obstacles faced by black men in careers where they are wildly underrepresented).  I disagree, obviously, but I was surprised to hear a straight-faced defense of it at all.

What devastates me is that his parents were at home thinking their child was safe and sound at college, most likely full of pride that he was getting a great education at Penn State, but in fact he was going through this abuse and then lay dying while no one would lift a finger to help him, for HOURS. I don't know how you can get over that.