May 13--Mortarboards, tassels, robes -- across America, high school classes of 2015 prep for Graduation Day. Vast throngs, cameras flashing, will swell with pride and expectation: You're on your way! Savvy parents, though, have been steering their grads toward a goal more crucial than a new adventure, a college degree and an impressive, rewarding career. "Please," they'll murmur amid the season's pomp and circumstance, "make good choices. Be careful out there."
Often that yearning falls flat. Bad choices fueled by alcohol and other drugs will leave young adults suffering fatal consequences. Some students who strut across stages to collect diplomas this spring will, within months, make bad, irreversible decisions. Other young people who encouraged those decisions, or who didn't intervene, will spend the rest of their lives paying a different price.
Thirty months ago, Northern Illinois University freshman David Bogenberger, 19, died after a night of drinking at a Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity initiation event. Last Friday, DeKalb County Judge Thomas Doherty found 22 former fraternity members guilty of misdemeanor hazing or reckless conduct. They must pay fines, perform community service and, for two years, remain under the eye of the court.
None of those penalties, we imagine, will be as searing as hearing two parents tell the judge Friday about the defendants' decisions, and their son's death. "On Nov. 2, 2012, 22 men pledging to be David's brothers for life ridiculed, tormented, poisoned and killed him," Ruth Bogenberger said. "The human decency that most of us would render to a sick animal, these self-proclaimed 'brothers' would not even extend to a young man they pledged a lifelong brotherhood to."
Five takeaways for the high school and college students in our lives:
Look out for you. These deaths don't occur because someone intended a fatal outcome, or because random perpetrators materialized out of nowhere to force young adults into lethal behavior. David Bogenberger died after an event with people he trusted as friends. Any number of folks are responsible for whether you survive a party, a school year, a college education. But you are one of those people. So, at every turn, think ahead and make good choices.
Don't just blame Frat Row. Alcohol and drug deaths in Greek houses, dorms and campus auto crashes attract broader news coverage than similar deaths among the millions of young people who join the military, accept jobs out of high school or otherwise don't enter college; they, too, encounter their own chances to make choices with deadly consequences. A companion reminder that some risks arise with age, not college acceptance letters: Despite the recent and welcome focus on campus rape, college-age women who don't go to school are likelier to be sexually assaulted than those who do.
You're involved? You're liable. Maybe you didn't buy the alcohol, let alone make anyone drink it. A point we can't stress too often: Much as the driver who stays with the getaway car is as guilty as the robbers who were inside the bank, joint actions create joint liabilities -- in criminal cases but also in potentially devastating civil lawsuits. So do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don't be the young person facing allegations that he or she urged someone to drink excessively or take drugs. Or who kept serving someone who was already intoxicated. Or who didn't call 911 or otherwise seek treatment for someone who was dangerously intoxicated or unconscious.
You will live with your decisions. We hear complaints that misdemeanor convictions are piddling penalties for these 22 men. Our own sense is that State's Attorney Richard Schmack deserves the thanks of everyone who cares about such deaths: Schmack, who was elected to office four days after David Bogenberger's death, treated this case more seriously than prosecutors in many jurisdictions do. Given the context -- all those involved had social ties, there was no menace, the victim had a hand in what happened -- Schmack evidently exacted an appropriate level of justice. Misdemeanor or felony, a criminal conviction doesn't fade away. These 22 men cannot outlive online records and references to their crimes. Nor will they ever forget their complicity in the death of someone they knew -- someone for whom they should have felt responsible.
And the Bogenbergers? They said in a statement after David's death that they had no desire for revenge. They said they wanted to end hazing rituals. More broadly, they wanted universal awareness that "Alcohol poisoning claims far too many young, healthy lives."
Whether that wish comes true depends on what the rest of us say to the young people around us -- the confident yet vulnerable Class of 2015 included.
