PRINCESS ANNE, MD -- Nearly two weeks after five University of Maryland, Eastern Shore students were hospitalized for injuries sustained during violent hazing, Kansas State University has suspended its chapter of the same fraternity.
Officials at the Manhattan, Kan., campus say the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity could face expulsion after an investigation into how a 23-year-old alumnus was severely injured in an off-campus apartment.
Pat Bosco, dean of student life at Kansas State, said Ernest Harris Jr. graduated in December with a degree in business administration. He was treated at a Kansas hospital Saturday, apparently after being beaten by a member of the fraternity chapter, Bosco said.
In Philadelphia, Richard Lee Snow, national executive director of Kappa Alpha Psi, said the national fraternity is investigating both incidents. But he would not say if the two chapters could face sanctions.
"We will take appropriate action, but at this time we do not have the facts," Snow said. "Our concern goes out to our brothers who were injured. No one should have to undergo something like this in pursuit of an education."
Snow said he had not spoken to anyone at the UMES chapter.
The UMES chapter has "no more than 15 members," Snow said. The five young men who were admitted April 8 to Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury were fraternity members, not pledges, he said.
In an earlier incident, Kappa Alpha Psi agreed in 1996 to pay $2.25 million to the parents of a Southeast Missouri State University student who died after a hazing ritual in 1994.
Walter Kimbrow, an administrator and professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., who has researched the initiation practices of some black fraternities, said national organizations have not done enough to educate members.
"It's happening everywhere, and the national organizations have failed miserably at the campus level," Kimbrow said. "They're preaching a lot about the need for education and re-education about hazing, but it's mostly just rhetoric."
In 1990, the National Pan-Hellenic Council -- a group of historically black national fraternities -- agreed to outlaw pledging, a move to halt violence that appears to have had the opposite effect, Kimbrow said.
"It just seems to have driven these kinds of activities underground and made them more secretive," Kimbrow said. "It's taken it all out of the watchful eye of the national organizations. They tried to legislate a cultural change and that just hasn't worked."
Snow refused to respond to Kimbrow's comments.
In Princess Anne, police are continuing to question Kappa Alpha Psi members about what happened in their house. Police say the five UMES students who were hospitalized appeared to have been beaten daily with canes or wooden paddles from Feb. 8 to April 4.
Prosecutors hope to receive a report this week, but no charges have been filed, said Capt. Greg Shipley, a spokesman for the Maryland State Police.
