The university administration, his fraternity brothers, perhaps his friends and family, certainly the MIT community into which he had moved, all failed him. Scott Krueger was not murdered. He was ignored to death. At MIT as anywhere else, students join fraternities looking for a place to belong. College is a bridge between the cozy, often claustrophobic world of high school and the looming openness of the rest of life.
Fraternities provide one more place of shelter.
They can be good or bad for the people who live in them, but they always provide a barrier against isolation. Yet the problem with the fraternity where Krueger died may have been its own isolation from the rest of campus. The most dangerous thing about the party Scott Krueger was attending was not that he was drinking too much, nor even that he may have been pressured to drink. It was the celebration's small size. Alcohol is most dangerous at small events like the one Krueger attended.