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| 4000 Days Photo: Tribeca Festival |
4000 days – that’s how long it has taken for legislative effort to restrict hazing on US university campuses to take effect. 4000 Days is also the name of Daniel E Catullo’s documentary on the subject, which is screening as part of Tribeca 2026. Featuring interviews with many of those who lobbied for change, including people whose children died in hazing incidents, it looks at the complicated way that money and power have protected the fraternity system – known in the US as Greek life – despite more and more young men falling victim to the increasingly dangerous rituals performed by many of its organisations.
This is a film which has been several years in the making, in that it’s part of a long term project for the filmmaker.
“I've actually done three,” he says when we meet. “I was actually working on a totally different thing when this came about, so it feels like it's been forever. I mainly do concert specials and music, and I kind of fell into this because I was doing a lot of stuff with my alma mater. I went to West Virginia University. I'm a donor there. I do a lot of things at the university, and they had a death there in 2014, a boy named Nolan Burch.
“The university was on Dateline because of that death, and I remember my wife called me downstairs, like, ‘Hurry up, come down. Your friend Gordon's on TV.’ Gordon Gee was the president of the university. And I saw it, and I didn't realise how bad things were getting there. When I went to WVU, I was in a fraternity, and things were always crazy but we weren't hurting each other, and no one was dying. So I said ‘Hey, how can I help?’ And he asked me to help them, so I went to West Virginia two weeks later, and we sat down, and I came up with an idea to make an educational film about Nolan Burch, and we did that together. And what happened is it went viral. We had millions of views.
“Next thing, I'm on national TV shows with the Burches, and we're speaking at universities. And then other families started calling me, saying ‘My son died. You need to do a story on it.’ So I started saying yes. So in between all my other craziness, I'm making these small educational films, and then they all started going viral, and we won three Emmys in a row for them. As I was doing that, I saw a bigger story. So I'm like, ‘I'm going to make a feature about what's happening.’ The feature became a series, and we started working on it, and as I was working on the series, the pandemic hit, which made it a little difficult to do.
“We were trying to really get to the bottom what was going on, and I started seeing this sub-story develop that kind of reminded me of the movie Newtown that was about the Sandy Hook Elementary families in the wake of their kids’ death. That's when I came up with the idea to kind of have this spin-off movie where I just follow some of these families in their personal journey to create change. Because I don't know about you, but I have kids and I don't know what I would do if one of my kids died.
“So we started filming this and I think what we captured was a beautiful story of them putting their pain and their suffering aside to try to fight for other people. It was inspiring to see because they went through so much and then to go work the Hill in Washington – they were being jerked around for years, and to go back and meet with the same senators – it was like the same thing every year, like ‘Okay, this is going to be the year it passes.’ And it never passed. For them to go there and have such perseverance and then eventually get the bill passed, I mean, it was an honour to be able to film it all and watch it happen. But frustrating.
“We're all like family now. When you go through something like this, when you're responsible for telling the world the story about their child's death, you know, I saw them at their worst and took them back to the time where they had to relive the worst day of their life. I mean, with all three of the families I went to the death scenes of their kids. That’s a pretty heavy thing to go through with anybody, so we've become really close.”
Part of the film mentions social media and the way that people are comparing stunts and the things that they're doing at pledge events. Does he think that has aggravated the situation?
“It certainly has. I mean, things are much different today, obviously, and when I was 18, I didn't want old people like me saying ‘Oh, times were different back then.’ But when I went to college, we drank beer. We weren't drinking [hard] alcohol. We weren't doing hard drugs or anything, and there was no social media. Now with the peer pressure that social media brings, along with the fact that no one's drinking beer anymore, they're usually either doing drugs, like sometimes very hard drugs, or hard alcohol, you know, and they all seem to be one-upping in each other. Like, the stuff they're doing now...” He trails off for a moment, then collects himself.
“I'm a consultant at San Diego State. We had a pledge get lit on fire a year and a half ago. I mean, I don't know about you, but if I was trying to join an organisation and someone said ‘I'm going to let you on fire now,’ I don't think I would agree to that. Yeah, some of the stuff is just downright dangerous. And the whole system's built on secrecy. That's the great thing about the bill they have passed. It's going to be more transparency until everybody gets together and says ‘Okay, enough of the craziness.’ You know, the BS has to stop.
“Unlike some of the families – and everybody has their own opinion – I'm still not anti-Greek. Kids should have a right to do what they want to do in college, go have fun. I just try to tell them, ‘Don't hurt people and don't kill people.’ I mean, if that's going to ruin their college experience, I honestly don't know what I could do to help them. But it's just ludicrous that they're doing some of the things that they're doing and that the national organisations and sometimes universities are trying to protect that.
“It has a lot to do with the power, but the number one thing is the money. It's a fact that the vast majority of the active donors at all major universities in the United States are Greek. Greek alumni are more than four times more likely to come back to actually support the university. And believe it or not, the people that the university bow down to – it's not the big donors that write a five million dollar check. A big donor might write a five million dollar check for an endowment or for a building, but then that's it, right? There's tens of thousands of donors that give $50, $60, $100. Those are the ones they're scared of, and those are usually Greek alumni.
“They're very active at the school and schools are operating as a deficit these days and they need to keep the money flowing, so they don't want to do anything to mess with those donors. Sometimes change in traditions, you know, a lot of alumni don't get it. I mean, I get into it with some of my old brothers. I try to explain to them like things are different, they're not doing what we did, and they don't get it. And. But it's kind of frustrating because I was just trying to raise awareness of the crazy shit that's going on.
“I wasn't trying to do anything to destroy Greek life, but we need to get the word out that these kids aren't just, you know, doing push ups or parking someone's car clean in a room. I mean, the stuff they're doing is extremely dangerous. We think there are far more deaths than have been reported because a lot of times that's either covered up before the police get there, or no-one gets involved because they just think a kid was dropped off at the ER and he drank too much. They don't know how that happened, so times are different and we need to change. We need to change the way things operate and the laws have to change everywhere.
“This film's terribly emotional for me. It was emotionally draining to live in this world with [the families]. I've been really sucked into this whole space for almost eight years now, and you share in their frustration. You feel their pain. Whether it's a birthday of one of the kids or the death anniversary, they live in this world with a dark cloud over their heads. The pain never goes away. The closer I became to them, the more I felt it. So there were times when it was hard to just tell the story and not let emotions get away.
“Thankfully I had a great producer and editor, Russell Greene, who also worked on Newtown, the film that I modelled this after. That kept things in check, and it kept me thinking clearly, because sometimes we had to make decisions about what was best for the film and, you know, not what would hurt someone's feelings. It was a challenge to stay focused on the story and not let personal feelings or emotions get in the way. It was a very long process. The first film I've ever done where I cried when we saw the first cut.”
Among the subjects of Daniel’s film are Gary and Julie DeVercelly, who lost their son, Gary Jr., to a hazing ritual on 30 March, 2007. They kindly agreed to talk about their own experiences, why they chose to share their story and what they are doing now.
It was Nolan Burch’s family who put them in touch with Daniel, says Gary Snr. “We had a lunch with him, and he proposed doing some filming with us. And we talked about it, and we decided that we really liked Daniel. We felt he was a man of integrity, and we decided to go ahead and do it.”
“Gary was our firstborn, and he loved life,” says Julie. “He loved sports, he loved family. He wanted to learn everything and just experience it. He was very protective. He and I were extremely close. He was very close to his younger brother and sister and his friends, all that knew him. He was easygoing, had a smile that lit up the room, and he gave the most wonderful hugs. And he was driven. He knew what he wanted in life, and he was going to succeed.”
Her husband nods. “Gary was a kid that this never should have happened to. I don't just say that because he was my son. If you knew him, you would understand. Some boys are kind of out there. They live on the edge and they're a little wild. But Gary was very thoughtful, very kind, very sweet, very caring about other people. He really watched over his friends and his brother and sister and everybody in a way that always would take me aback when I would see it, because I thought, gee, when I was his age, I was nothing like that. I just wasn't that kind of guy.
“Other parents would come up to us at times and go ‘Hey, are you Gary's dad? He's just the nicest boy I've ever known.’ That happened time and again. I mean, you would think he would have a certain amount of wildness to him, that would put him in that position, but he really didn’t.”
“Unlike many students that go away to college, Gary wasn't wanting to be a part of Greek life,” Julie explains. “That's what makes this even more difficult, because he wasn't going to be part of Greek life. He was going to be an RA, and then he got a lot of bids. And as I said, he was focused and driven, and he was going to succeed. He wanted to join for the right reasons, the reasons that they promote, and that's networking and your resume and opening doors. So that was very difficult. What happened to Gary was so out of the norm. Gary didn't succumb to peer pressure, none of those things. And so when people talk about it, we always are taken aback because that really wasn't it.
“If you understand the dynamics of hazing, for most cases, most situations, they start with small things. For Gary, it was wearing a T shirt, having to make one with a disrespectful, humiliating phrase on it, and wearing it. Studying in the basement about the fraternity...until it leads up to one of the most deadly nights. And so they wear you down. He even had put on his MySpace that he just couldn't wait for this to be over. He didn't want to be any part of it. He was joining it solely for his future and his career. And so we focus on Gary and who he was and just know that this has to stop.”
I’ve read a little about him, I tell her, and it gave me the impression that it could happen to anybody if it happened to somebody like him. They both concur with that.
“I think because Gary was an athlete, you always do what's best for the team,” says Julie. The things that we learned that happened after he was killed, the pressure, the yelling ‘You're going to disappoint everybody,’ and just the intimidation tactics and things that they put on them – for someone to have to go through that is horrific. It's just horrific.”
Some time passed after his death before they were in a position to take action, she says.
“We had to fly clear across the country and do something no parent should ever have to do and take our son off life support with our other two children there. And then we came back home and started navigating through, looking at things. How did we fail our son? What did I miss? Because we had done so much research. I had done so much and realised that we hadn't failed him. We as a society are failing our sons and daughters because there's no information out there. Hazing is one of those things that people turn a blind eye to. They accept it and move on.
“We knew from that point on there were two things that needed to be done. One was a true education piece that didn't just tug at their hearts, but also equip them with things to do to create that change and stand up to it. And the other thing was a federal bill. California has Matt's Law, a felony hazing law. New Jersey has a felony hazing law as well. Gary's case was worked from start to finish under that law and justice, as it was written, was served, whether we agree with it or not. But over a third of our students go away to college, so we knew there needed to be a federal bill that protected all students that gave them the information that should have been in place before Gary ever even stepped foot on campus.
“When were able to finally do it, Emily was 13, Noah was 11. We really made sure that our children were extremely close because they would always have each other, and so his tragic loss, going from full of life to being taken off life support, really impacted them and us tremendously. So we protected our family and our children first until we got to a place that we could actually act.”
They’re both optimistic about the legislative change that has resulted from the campaigning they are part of.
“We think it's going to make a difference,” says Gary. “The first report for the Stop Campus Hazing Act, as being part of the Clery Act, is going to come out in October. We got the law passed that we could get passed. And now we'll start to gather the information that we need, that hopefully we can use to change the hearts and minds of the general population as they learn how pervasive hazing is and how many people are being injured by it, and also how many people are being killed by it. I think the public's going to turn. It's just a matter of time. The Stop Campus Hazing Act was just a step in the right direction.
“We still have a long ways to go, but the current situation, I think, is God awful. Young men are dying constantly and it's a horrible tragedy and we need to do something about it. But realistically, no one's going to name me king of the world so that I can step in and say ‘We need to do this and this.’ So for the past many years, we've been working within the system, the best way we know how to change the system to get us to that point. So our work isn't anywhere near being done. But this was a huge step forward.”
“You know that it is creating awareness because of all the reported incidents of hazing,” says Julie. “The annual security report that Gary talked about that is coming out October 1st, that all institutions have to have, is going to start giving us an even greater grasp on the magnitude of it. And it's just the beginning.”
