The parents of a Tennessee State University student who died during a fraternity
initiation ritual in January 2001 have sued the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and two
of its members for $15 million.
Joseph T. Green Jr.'s parents said in a lawsuit filed Monday that he was a physically healthy veteran of the U.S. Navy when he pledged the historically black fraternity last year.
Green's parents, Lentora Parker and Joseph T. Green Sr., said that members of the Omega Psi Phi chapter at TSU ordered him and seven other pledges to meet at Whites Creek High School before dawn Jan. 29, 2001, for ''illegal hazing activities.''
The student's parents said that fraternity members Rajual Brown and Tyrone
Rogers were in charge of the initiation activities, which resulted in Green
suffering hyperthermia (elevated body temperature) and an acute asthma attack.
The initiation started about 3 or 4 a.m., Metro Medical Examiner Bruce Levy
said in a report on Green's death. Levy said witnesses told Metro police that
Green, 25, collapsed while running on the Whites Creek track and had a temperature
of 103.7 degrees before he died.
No criminal charges were filed in connection with Green's death, but TSU officials decided last spring to suspend the Omega Psi Phi chapter for five years. The national organization can petition to reactivate the local chapter after that period, Ron Myles, the university's director of student activities, said yesterday.
Green's parents are seeking $5 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages from Omega Psi Phi's Decatur, Ga.-based national organization, its TSU chapter and Brown and Rogers.
A university spokeswoman said yesterday that Brown and Rogers no longer attend TSU. They could not be reached yesterday for comment.
An official at Omega Psi Phi's national headquarters, who would not give his name, also would not comment on the lawsuit.
Green was the second Omega Psi Phi pledge at TSU to die in the last two decades.
Vann L. Watts, a 20-year-old junior, was found dead with a blood-alcohol level of 0.52% — more than five times the reading necessary for a drunken-driving conviction — on the morning after an initiation ceremony in 1983. Watts also had a number of bruises indicating he had been beaten with switches.