The criminal case against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology fraternity responsible for last year's death of a freshman pledge was abandoned Oct. 22 when prosecutors learned that the fraternity had disbanded. In effect, they realized, the defendant no longer exists.
Now that prosecutors have dropped the manslaughter charges against the fraternity, it might be tempting to pursue justice through any available means and go after the individual fraternity members who provided Scott Krueger with the alcohol that killed him.
But to do so would be a step backward for the prosecutors who sought the manslaughter charge, for it would indicate that they have lost sight of their initial symbolic motivation for charging the fraternity and not its constituent members.
In this case, the responsibility still falls on the practices of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, as a whole and its individual members, and on the housing policies of MIT that helped push freshmen toward fraternities as a means of securing prime housing.
Individual members who happened to hand Krueger a beer are clearly culpable to a degree, but their actions are also symptomatic of the greater problem: MIT's policies and the fraternity's irresponsible distribution lend themselves to creating unsafe situations.
That is why the Krueger family should pursue its planned lawsuit against the school and fraternity to hopefully instigate some reform. But the family and prosecutors should not abandon their ideological stance merely to punish someone.
The quest for justice occasionally meets roadblocks, but that is no reason to abandon the rightful path.
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