Fraternity at UCLA Shut by National Board

A UCLA fraternity, two of whose members drowned during a May outing at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, has been suspended indefinitely by its national board.

The national board of directors for the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity said it was closing the UCLA chapter after an investigation into the Lake Mead incident. That probe, the board said, revealed a “disregard for Lambda Chi Alpha’s alcohol and risk management policies.”

Brian Thomas Pearce, 22, and Brian Toshio Sanders, 19, were among 50 fraternity members who participated in the outing. Witnesses told authorities that Pearce, from Indian Wells, and Sanders, from San Carlos, dove into the water from a 20-foot cliff.

The board said it based its decision on a series of infractions, including the UCLA group’s failure to register the Lake Mead event with the national organization, as is required.

The local chapter, the board added, has failed to implement proper procedures relating to alcohol, including a failure to check the age of those drinking at its house or functions and a failure to produce educational programs about such rules.

But the severity of the decision reflects a growing national intolerance of even apparent infractions of the rules governing fraternities, said UCLA Dean of Students Robert J. Naples.

“I think the climate is changing,” Naples said. “I’ve told them this: Stop doing stupid things, the consequences being that you will be responsible for your behavior.”

With the costs of insurance premiums and the lawsuits that result from parties gone awry, fraternities of late have more than just bad reputations to worry about.

“I think that what raises the national [fraternities] eyebrows and their attention greater than anything else is the notion of risk management and liability,” Naples said. “They can’t afford to be facing these lawsuits and they can’t afford it image-wise.”

In response to their increasing burden, a growing number of national groups are advocating a zero-alcohol policy at fraternity houses, led by the national headquarters of the Sigma Nu fraternity. Phi Delta Theta has, like Sigma Nu, pledged to make all its houses alcohol-free by 2000.

Jason Pearce, a spokesman for the national board of Lambda Chi Alpha, said his organization has a responsibility to uphold a certain model of behavior.

“The purpose of holding members accountable is that they’ve joined an organization that sets themselves at a higher standard,” Pearce said. “When members choose not to adhere to such standards, then they choose to no longer have the privileges of membership and the responsibility that goes with it.”

Members of UCLA’s Lambda Chi house--who will no longer be able to use the name, trademark or insignia of the fraternity that has been on campus since 1930--say they feel unfairly targeted by the national board.

“At a very sensitive time--we lost two fraternity brothers--we feel a little abandoned by the national fraternity in this decision,” said the chapter’s recruitment chairman, Michael Vinck, 23, of San Diego.

Although barred from appealing the board’s decision for a year, the UCLA group has found allies among some of its alumni.

Victor Caldwell, president of the UCLA chapter’s alumni board and a 1978 UCLA graduate, said he shares the younger men’s dismay.

“We feel that a fraternity is a family and you don’t cast out a family member,” said Caldwell. “This is when fraternity and brotherhood is supposed to come in and help. In trying to distance themselves, I don’t believe they are helping.”