On the eve of former Penn State freshman Tim Piazza’s birthday, the U.S. House passed new federal anti-hazing legislation with heavy influence from the Penn State community.

H.R. 5646, entitled the “Stop Campus Hazing Act,” passed the House on Tuesday with bipartisan support. The bill passed with the help of Jim and Evelyn Piazza, the parents of former Penn State sophomore Tim Piazza, who died after hazing rituals at a bid acceptance night at Penn State’s Beta Theta Pi fraternity in 2017.

Representative Glenn Thompson, R-Howard, has long advocated for anti-hazing legislation throughout his congressional career and championed this most recent effort at the national level.

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“Today’s overwhelming passage of H.R. 5646 reaffirms Congress’ commitment to protect students on college campuses across the country,” Rep. Thompson said in a statement to his congressional website. “This vital legislation will increase transparency and accountability in an effort to ensure that no one will have to experience what the Piazza family has over these past seven years. My prayers go out to Evelyn and Jim Piazza, and I sincerely appreciate their ongoing advocacy and strength.”

The bill, which heads to the Senate for approval, would require post-secondary institutions to report hazing incidents as part of the Clery Act, the federal campus safety law that requires colleges and universities to report crime statistics. Currently, the act mandates that colleges and universities provide Annual Security Reports, and the new legislation would also create a public Campus Hazing Transparency Report as part of the act’s disclosure requirements. It also creates a consistent definition for hazing statistics across all colleges and universities.

The new legislation would also require colleges and universities that receive federal student aid, like Penn State, to provide comprehensive, research-based anti-hazing prevention programs to all students.

Piazza died at Beta Theta Pi’s bid acceptance event in 2017. As part of the pledge initiation event, Piazza and other pledges were forced to finish several bottles of vodka, where, after 18 alcoholic drinks over 82 minutes, a visibly intoxicated Piazza fell head-first down the basement stairs. Piazza fell several more falls throughout the night, bleeding internally, and had multiple traumatic brain injuries, but no one called for help until the next morning.

Piazza’s death resulted in the temporary, later made permanent, banishment of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Penn State and lengthy litigation between the Piazza family, the university, and the Beta Theta Pi national organization. The hazing rituals spurred one of the largest legal prosecutions against a fraternity and its members, with over 18 members answering for more than 1,000 counts since 2018. Most recently, the final two defendants, the fraternity’s president, and the vice president and pledge master, pled guilty to 14 counts of hazing and one count of reckless endangerment in August and are set to be sentenced next month.

The events at the Beta Theta Pi event also spurred the creation of the Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform in 2019, which aimed to provide university leaders with critical information about Greek life across college campuses in the country.

The Piazza family have been advocates of anti-hazing legislation since 2017. In the commonwealth, the Piazzas worked at the state level to help shape Pennsylvania’s Timothy J. Piazza Anti-Hazing Law, better known as “Tim’s Law,” which was sponsored by former state Senator Jake Corman and signed into law by former Governor Tom Wolf in 2018. The Piazzas have also worked with other bereaved families at LSU to support similar legislation after a student died due to hazing-related incidents and threw their weight behind anti-hazing legislation in their home state of New Jersey.

“Sadly, we do not get to celebrate his birthday with him, but we feel he may have given us a wink from above with today’s vote. We are thrilled to see the House passage of the Stop Campus Hazing Act on this day and appreciate Rep. Thompson’s continued and unwavering support of federal anti-hazing legislation,” the Piazzas said in the statement posted to Rep. Thompson’s website.

“Tim’s death due to fraternity hazing at Penn State is something no family should have to experience. Through this important legislation, students and their families will have the much-needed transparency by universities to make informed decisions about which student organizations to join,” Jim and Evelyn Piazza continued.

The legislation has received support from the National Panhellenic Conference, the North American Interfraternity Conference, the Clery Center, and the Anti-Hazing Coalition.