CSUN fraternity shuts down after pledge’s death during hazing

The young men in the Angeles National Forest were dirty and exhausted.

Piled onto sleeping bags, they looked dehydrated and lacked cellphones. About a mile down the road, one member of the group, Cal State Northridge student Armando Villa, 19, lay barefoot and blistered in a ditch.

A hiker who had come across the men watched as a firefighter began administering CPR until Villa was airlifted to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Villa’s death July 1 shocked the college community, and for two months, the other Pi Kappa Phi pledges who took part in the event that day have revealed little about what happened.

But on Friday, Cal State Northridge administrators released the results of a university investigation that concluded the fraternity had engaged in hazing and that Villa and other pledges ran out of water well before finishing a mandatory hike for students hoping to join the fraternity.

School President Dianne F. Harrison announced that the fraternity was shutting down its campus chapter after voting this week to withdraw from the university.

“Hazing is stupid, senseless, it is dangerous and it is against the law in California,” Harrison, said. “It is a vestige of toxic thinking in which somehow it is OK to degrade, to humiliate and potentially harm others....It will not be tolerated.”

Harrison said the university would determine what discipline to impose on students once the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department concluded a criminal investigation into Villa’s death. Some who were involved could face penalties as harsh as expulsion, she said.

Villa’s parents issued a statement Friday condemning what they called a “barbaric ritual.”

“Hazing is an awful practice. It cost our son his life. And it ought to be banned across the country,” Villa’s mother, Betty, and stepfather, Joseph Serrato, said.

The death prompted administrators this summer to announce new guidelines for Greek organizations and other clubs, including that they submit student recruitment plans in advance and have members participate in new training programs.

A summary of the investigation released by the university said Villa died after a hike named the Super Awesome Weekend. The report’s author, attorney Carl Botterud, said most students estimated that the hike was a round trip of about 14 miles to 16 miles, and the event typically took place in the winter or late spring. This year’s event was unusually late.

The pledges were instructed to wear cheap “slip-on” shoes. Villa, whose feet were size 10, wore one shoe that was a size 9 and another size 81/2, which explained “the rough condition” of his feet at the end of the hike, the report said.

The hike began early in the morning after the students were given little time to sleep. Each carried a gallon of water, and the group had an additional case of 12-ounce bottles of water.

Toward the end of the hike, amid the heat of the day, many “were becoming disoriented, dehydrated and may have been suffering from heat exhaustion or heatstroke,” the report said. “Some hikers reported that they had stopped sweating, [and were] feeling dizzy, faint and disoriented.”

The official determination of Villa’s cause of death is still pending, although it is presumed to be heat-related.

Ruben Lopez was one of three hikers who came across Villa and the other young men that day on Big Tujunga Canyon Road.

He told The Times that the students, who were in two groups and were clearly unprepared for such a hike, told him friends had dropped them off earlier that day.

Lopez offered to give the young men in both groups a lift, but they turned him down, he said, despite clearly needing help.

“I thought the whole thing was weird. Nothing made sense,” Lopez said.

The university’s investigation found that the fraternity held several annual events that flouted the school’s prohibition against hazing.

Pledges, the report said, were crammed into a single tent overnight and given little time to sleep. They were made to eat hot dogs loaded with excessive quantities of condiments, including sardines, pickle juice, hot sauce and gummy vitamins. On one retreat in the Angeles National Forest, pledges were told to crawl on their elbows on a large rock, leaving some of them with scraped and bloody elbows, the report said.

At one retreat, students were blindfolded and taken on a short drive while being told they were to meet “Betsy,” a barnyard animal, according to the report. The pledges were told to put on condoms to meet “Betsy” and were led to what they thought was a barn. But when the blindfolds were removed, the students realized they were at a roadside diner. Inside was “Betsy,” a waitress at the restaurant where they would eat dinner to conclude the retreat, the report said.

Pi Kappa Phi released a statement Friday expressing sympathy for Villa’s loved ones and saying that the local chapter had violated the organization’s standards.

Alex Arballo, a former Pi Kappa Phi pledge, told The Times that he was a victim of hazing in October 2013. Arballo recalled that for his fraternity “retreat,” he arrived blindfolded in the desert somewhere near Palmdale.

He was ordered to run and perform sets of push-ups and sit-ups. When he got thirsty, he said, he was forced to drink beer — a lot of it. (Botterud’s report concluded that pledges drank alcohol during the events but were not forced to.)

For water, the dozen or so pledges were allowed to split a single bottle. At least one of them passed out, Arballo said.

At dawn, the students were permitted to sleep for half an hour. None of them wanted to be there, Arballo said, but they had to push through it — otherwise, “you look like a wimp, a dog.”

“You don’t want to be treated like a lower guy, so you have to do it.”

caitlin.owens@latimes.com

ruben.vives@latimes.com