Broken Pledge

In the final episode of Broken Pledge, Shari Foltz and Kathleen Wiant talk with The Dispatch about their aspirations for a hazing-free future. After the loss of their sons Collin and Stone the mothers worked together to keep their promises by pushing lawmakers to pass an anti-hazing law. The new law, Collin’s Law, makes criminal punishments more severe for those who haze and expands the definition of hazing in Ohio to include the forced consumption of drugs and alcohol. Finally, the mothers reflect on their sons, the pain, and answer what they would say to group of people who are participating in hazing rituals.

On the night of March 4, 2021, Stone Foltz was ordered to drink a full bottle of alcohol by his fraternity brothers at Bowling Green State University. The hazing led to the death of Foltz, the second Ohio college to suffer a hazing-related death in about three years. About 10 days after his funeral, the Foltz family joined the Wiant family in their fight to end hazing.

It’s been two and a half years since the Wiant family lost their son and brother, but their crusade against hazing has never slowed. They have endured the pandemic, a criminal investigation, court hearings, and the ordeal of trying to pass a new law that would honor Collin and hopefully spare others the same fate.

Columbus Dispatch reporters Lucas Sullivan, Sheridan Hendrix, Mike Wagner, and audio engineer Patrick Flaherty sit down to discuss the Broken Pledge hazing project. During this show we discuss how this project got started, how we reported on this topic, and share some interesting experiences that happened along the way. Finally, we share some reader and listener feedback that we have received since the project has launched.

In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch following the newspaper's Broken Pledge project, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine called for the state to make hazing a felony and do what it can to eradicate the brutal behavior that is leaving some students dead. DeWine said his heart breaks for the family of Collin Wiant, an 18-year-old student from Dublin who died at Ohio University on November, 12, 2018.

In a disciplinary hearing before Ohio University officials, Collin Wiant's brothers make one last stand to save their fraternity.

An emergency meeting before the funeral signals a path Collin's Sigma Pi brothers will follow. And a brutal confession leads to a painful secret.

All along someone could have stopped Collin's death. Up until his final minutes decisions made by those who swore brotherhood helped cause his demise.

Collin Wiant is accused of sexual assault. His fraternity brothers take action but continue hazing. That triggers a decent that the university nor those closest to Collin saw.

Lured into a world that's hard to escape, fraternity pledges are sold on brotherhood, status, girls and all that comes with being in an elite fraternity.

Collin Wiant, like many college students, goes off to college looking for a place to belong on campus. But do they really know what they are getting into?

Each year for at least the last two decades a fraternity pledge has died in this country. And every year the rinse-and-repeat cycle of freshmen hitting campus and being hazed by their peers goes unchanged. Broken Pledge is the story of how a teenager goes off to college and dies. It exposes the underbelly of a system that allows fraternities and universities to protect their brands instead of standing up for victims.