USD Student Charged in Cross Burning

A University of San Diego fraternity member has been charged with a misdemeanor in connection with a cross burning on Torrey Pines State Reserve in May.

Jeffrey Schizas, 21, was notified Wednesday by the city attorney’s office to appear in court Sept. 6 on a charge of starting a fire in an area of the park where burning is prohibited, said Deputy City Atty. Kim-Thoa Hoang.

Twenty-six others who took part in the Sigma Chi fraternity ritual May 20 will not be prosecuted, Hoang said. The evidence against the others was not strong enough to warrant charges, Hoang said.

Schizas, who could not be reached for comment, could be sentenced to a maximum of 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted.

Official Disappointed

Bob Wohl, park supervisor at the Torrey Pines Reserve, said the decision not to prosecute the other fraternity members was “a disappointment but understandable.”

Wohl, who discovered the group planting and lighting the wooden cross on an isolated bluff, had hoped the other fraternity members would be charged with unlawful assembly.

“We did feel they were culpable and accountable,” but there were constitutional issues raised in charging unlawful assembly in the public park, Wohl said.

Schizas identified himself the night of the incident as spokesman and coordinator of the ritual and was the only one to give statements that would hold up in court, Hoang said.

Schizas signed a written statement the night of the incident describing the ritual as a religious initiation rite that dates back to the Roman Emperor Constantine.

Another fraternity member who confessed to the cross burning was not read his rights, Hoang said.

Wohl said the others involved in the incident “haven’t gotten away scot-free.”

“A lot of attention and outrage has been focused on the fraternity,” Wohl said. “The community as a whole was quite revolted at the thought of burning crosses as a sign of religious devotion.”

Symbolic Ritual

The initiation ritual, the fraternity has said, symbolically rids budding fraternity members of their faults, making them worthy of membership.

A letter, released by Sigma Chi fraternity members shortly after the incident, apologized for the carelessness in starting a fire in the natural reserve, which is covered with dry brush and is home to the rare Torrey Pine tree.

Fraternity members maintained the cross burning was not racially motivated or cult linked, but “was meant to inspire our new associates.”