Eden Prairie parents who pushed for anti-hazing law mark its signing

Mary Pat Santulli recalls receiving the worst phone call any parent can fathom in the wee hours of the night three years ago.

Her 19-year-old son, Danny, an Eden Prairie High School graduate, was in the hospital following an alcohol-induced hazing incident at a University of Missouri fraternity. “They said my son was in the ICU and he had stopped breathing,” Santulli recalled Monday. “At that moment, I stopped breathing myself.”

Danny Santulli suffered permanent brain injuries that left him unable to speak, see or walk after being forced to drink a bottle of vodka, then beer through a tube and funnel during his initiation to Phi Gamma Delta, a fraternity known as Fiji. His blood alcohol content climbed to a near-fatal level of 0.468%.

Despite their shock and grief, his parents Tom and Mary Pat have tirelessly advocated for a new law recently signed by President Joe Biden to help protect young people from a similar fate.

Called the Stop Campus Hazing Act, the law requires colleges and universities to include hazing incidents in their annual security reports, calls for them to publish hazing prevention policies on their websites and organizations that may have violated those guidelines, and establishes hazing and prevention education programs.

“Sadly, this story is not unique,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who sponsored the bipartisan bill along with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-LA. “Hazing happens all over the country.” She said 50 students have died since 2000 as a result of hazing, often after ingesting dangerous amounts of alcohol.

The fraternity where Danny Santulli was pledging had been on probation twice, according to Mary Pat Santulli. “They weren’t supposed to have any events at that house,” she said at a news conference Monday. “It’s like they’re above the law. They went ahead with it, and there was no supervision.”

If the new law had been in place — and the fraternity’s record publicly known —Santulli said she would have stepped in immediately to protect her son.

“Parents and students will have that transparency to make educated decisions sending kids off to college,” Santulli said.

She said she wasn’t initially worried about Danny joining Phi Gamma Delta because his older brother attended Mizzou and had a good experience at another fraternity. But as the weeks went by, she said, “we heard from him less and less. We didn’t know what was going on.”

Danny’s bank account had been drained, and he confided in his sister that he “couldn’t take it anymore, but he didn’t want to be shamed for quitting,” his mom recalled. “I told him, ‘You don’t have to do this.’” Two days later, she received the phone call in the middle of the night with the dire news.

After he was given large quantities of vodka and beer, “they just threw him on the couch that night and left him,” his mother said. “No one was checking. He did finally fall off the couch onto the floor and someone realized he was in serious trouble. But they didn’t call 911.”

Today, Danny Santulli, now 21, lives with his parents in Eden Prairie. “He fights every day to get stronger,” his mom said. “He’s here for a reason. We won’t give up hope.”