For Mr. Deng, a competitive handball player who graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, the group offered “the possibility of personal connections, friendship, a sense of belonging to the Asian community, and having access to some of those connections because he intended to be involved in international business,” a family lawyer, Douglas E. Fierberg, said on Tuesday.

Image Mr. Deng died on Dec. 9, 2013.

But the Glass Ceiling was a manifestation of the barriers they faced, and a test for new pledges to prove they could surmount them. “We should help each other to enter the mainstream of society,” said Hugh H. Mo, a lawyer for one of the defendants, echoing the group’s guiding philosophy.

On that December morning, he said, the tradition took on a “Lord of the Flies” dynamic.

After they were done tackling him, Mr. Deng’s brothers carried him inside the two-story home. His body felt like a “dead weight,” one member later told the police, according to the grand jury report. Another described it as “straight like a board.”

He was laid down near the fireplace and stripped of the black hooded sweatshirt and black sweatpants that were his uniform for the initiation. They put him in a blanket, then gave him water and chocolate and put sugar on his lips to try waking him up.

After 10 minutes, Mr. Deng “started sucking air and making snoring sounds,” one member said. Some students noticed his pupils did not dilate.

They reached out to the fraternity’s national president at the time, Andy Meng, who told them by phone to hide everything showing the group’s symbol, according to the grand jury report. One member told the police that “the protocol is to first put away fraternity letters, paddles, banners etc.,” to shield the organization.