Blows to the buttocks.
Punches to the back.
Pledges in Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity endured
those forms of punishment for weeks in self-described ``hazing''
incidents that ended when an Old Dominion University freshman
temporarily stopped breathing last week, according to university
police documents.
``All of the ongoing punishment activities, especially Friday,
March 16, led up to the hospitalization of'' the 18-year-old student
on March 21, one pledge wrote in his statement to police.
Nine fraternity members face punishment for the incident, said
Dana Burnett, the university's vice president for student services.
Five of those students have been ``summarily dismissed'' from ODU,
though they can appeal their expulsions.
Disciplinary hearings for all of the students started Thursday.
After a hearing officer and student-faculty committee review the
evidence and make recommendations, Burnett
will have the final say on the students' fate. A final
disposition on the students' status is not expected for at least 10
days, he said. But the students could encounter far harsher punishment as part
of an ongoing criminal investigation.
``Upon consulting with the Commonwealth Attorney, criminal
charges are pending,'' ODU police Sgt. Kimberly S. Wortham wrote in
her incident report. The report indicates that police could be considering felony
aggravated assault charges against the students involved. She
declined to comment Thursday.
Police and university officials also declined to confirm the
names of the accused fraternity members and of the pledge who needed
medical treatment.
In their detailed, handwritten statements, three of the
fraternity's pledges provided ODU police an inside look at their
activities since January.
One student wrote that he was offered two ways to join the
fraternity: ``paper'' or ``pledge.''
The paper way lacked respect in the eyes of fraternity members,
according to the statement. The pledge way would entail ``mental,
physical and emotion abuse,'' but ``would grant you all of the
respect, benefits and privileges of the organization.''
In late January, the pledge said he chose the abuse.
He wrote that he was forced to eat onions, perform push-ups and
receive slaps on his back.
When the activities moved to an off-campus house on the 2500
block of Wyoming Ave., the hazing turned ``intense,'' he wrote.
``Hand slaps to the face, punches, hits to the shin area and
blows on the butt(ocks) via a cane,'' he wrote. ``As of March 22, we
have been `on-line' for 50 days.''
He called the night of March 16 ``the most violent.'' His account
described fraternity members who used their knees to pummel the
chests of their pledges.
``The wind was kind of knocked out of us several times,'' he
wrote.
The pledges bonded by wearing the same uniform on campus: white
T-shirts, dark blue jeans, white shoelaces as a belt and white
Converse sneakers. But they also received beatings for failing to
learn information about the fraternity and its members, according to
statements to police.
On March 21, the three pledges again waited at the ``set'' house
for the fraternity brothers. In statements to police, they described
what went wrong:
One freshman pledge began to complain about chest pains, saying
he was having difficulty breathing.
At first, the freshman said he was all right. But then he dropped
to his knees and starting vomiting. When the fraternity members
placed him in a car to take him to the hospital, he stopped
breathing.
They carried him out of the car and started CPR. Someone called
911. His breathing wavered as an ambulance arrived and rushed him to
Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
``It was determined that the victim had suffered some type of
trauma/injury to the tops of his hands and buttocks area,'' Wortham,
the ODU sergeant, wrote in her report. ``Further investigation
revealed alleged acts of hazing performed by various members of the
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity resulting in the
aforementioned injuries.''
Documents also indicate that the once-hospitalized freshman was
scheduled to testify at the hearings, but his medical condition
could not be determined Thursday.
A nursing supervisor at Sentara Norfolk General said she could
not provide information about the student, including whether he had
been released. She explained that ODU and Norfolk police requested
that the man be listed under an alias for his protection.
Statements from the pledges to ODU police link members of a
Norfolk State University fraternity to the hazing activities, but an
NSU spokeswoman said Thursday night that none of their students had
been charged with a campus code violation.
University officials said that Kappa Alpha Psi is
no longer active on the ODU campus, though a national representative
of the fraternity could not confirm the chapter's status this week.
Founded in 1911, Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity has
come under fire in recent years over alleged hazing incidents.
In 1994, an incident at Southeast Missouri State University left
a Kappa pledge dead. At Illinois State University in
1999, students were photographed beating pledges with wooden
paddles. Officials closed that chapter through 2003.
Last year, a Maryland appeals court upheld the conviction of a
University of Maryland Eastern Shore student who was one of 10
Kappa members accused of paddling and caning pledges
daily for two months.
Two other chapters - one at Louisiana State University, the other
at Western Kentucky University - are under investigation this
spring. A pledge at the LSU chapter reportedly had severe wounds and
needed surgery.
Slaps to the face.