UCI Frat Suspended Amid Inquiry

A UC Irvine fraternity has been suspended by its national headquarters while it investigates a pledge’s claim that he suffered a grand mal seizure and was hospitalized following a weekend of hazing in the Big Bear area.

UCI, meanwhile, is conducting its own investigation of Beta Theta Pi in connection with a lawsuit filed Nov. 28 by Jeff Warden, who said he was forced to exercise in freezing temperatures and had beer forced down his throat while being subjected to continuous verbal abuse during the initiation in December 2000.

Diane Kim, the campus director of student judicial affairs, said a decision on whether to impose a penalty is expected by the end of the month. Sanctions could include suspending the fraternity for an extended period or making it the first Greek organization to be banned from UCI.

Hazing is a misdemeanor under the state Education Code and is punishable by fines of $50 to $5,000 or not more than a year in the county jail. Kim also will decide whether to refer the matter to police, said Randy Lewis, UCI’s associate dean of students.

Beta Theta Pi, which has had a chapter at UCI for 26 years, has a reputation for being the top-ranked fraternity academically.

“Basically, we’re a bunch of smart guys who are good at sports,” said Edwin Steen, president of the fraternity. He declined to comment on the incident other than to confirm that investigations are taking place. The local chapter has not hired an attorney, he said.

Although hazing is prohibited by UCI, “it’s hard to enforce,” said Paul Suhr, president of UCI’s Interfraternity Council. Suhr said the Betas had a good reputation among the 1,300 Greeks at UCI and those who were unaffiliated. “They’d never had an incident like this, so it came as a shock, as you can imagine,” he said of the lawsuit.

Warden, 20, is a sophomore film studies major from Colorado Springs, Colo., who wants to be a director. He received nearly straight As in high school. He is close to 6 feet tall and thin, with spiked brown hair.

Warden’s suit, filed in Orange County Superior Court, seeks unspecified monetary damages for assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The suit also names 13 Beta brothers as defendants.

In describing the stay at Big Bear in an interview and in his lawsuit, Warden tells a tale of 18- and 19-year-old pledges pushed so hard they broke down in tears.

Snowboarding Wasn’t on Weekend Agenda

Warden said he was a prospective UCI student when he first heard of the Betas. The fraternity mailed him a letter in Colorado, suggesting he apply for its $500 scholarship. He didn’t receive any money, but during his interview, the Betas tried to recruit him.

The newcomer from Colorado figured it was a way to meet people and make friends. “Frats in my eyes were something good,” he said.

Once school started in the fall of 2000, Warden said he received bids from three fraternities. He chose the Betas because of their small size, about 23 members, their reputation for strong academics and assurances that they didn’t haze.

Rush was in its final weekend on Dec. 8, 2000, when Warden and two other pledges drove with about 15 fraternity members and alumni to a group of cabins at Big Bear. Warden said he thought they were going snowboarding.

“They assured us we’d go up as pledges and come down as actives,” he said in an interview in his lawyer’s Laguna Hills office.

When the group arrived in Big Bear about midnight, Steen, then the vice president, told pledges to hand over their cell phones and valuables for safekeeping. The pledges were offered beer, and Warden said marijuana was passed around.

He said he didn’t smoke and insisted on having a soft drink. As the evening went on and Warden still refused to drink beer, fraternity members chanted his name, “Jeff, Jeff, Jeff,” so loudly that he couldn’t hear himself talk.

Finally, two members picked him up and shoved the keg hose into his mouth while the others counted to 20. “I tried not to swallow,” Warden said.

What followed, Warden said, was a night of the fraternity members imitating drill sergeants, yelling abuse at the pledges and forcing them to stay up most of the night. Pillowcases were placed over their heads as they were moved from cabins that were as hot as a sauna to those that were unheated.

After several hours, Warden broke down in tears. “I was scared,” he said. “I thought I was going to get hurt.”

When morning came, it was time for breakfast. Pledges each were handed a cup filled with what Warden thinks were raw eggs and hot sauce. Next came a main course of eggs--raw and scrambled, with green food coloring added--that pledges were told to eat without using their hands. One pledge objected, and a member pushed the youth’s face into the plate, Warden said.

“It scared us,” Warden said. “We knew if we didn’t do it, we’d be next.”

When they finished eating, pledges were ordered to hold Warden by the legs and the head and use him as a human squeegee to clean the table, Warden said.

Then he was handed a mop and told to clean the floor. “I dropped the mop. . . . I told them, ‘That’s not what we’re here for.’ I was confused and furious at the same time.”

Warden said another drinking game began, and he was made to do push-ups. By this time, he said he was so tired, he could barely finish one. As he lay on the ground, he said, he was forced to join in a simulated sex act with the two other pledges.

When he got up, Warden said, he told the frat members he didn’t feel well and went outside for a few minutes. When he returned to the cabin, he felt his field of vision constricting.

“I was coherent, and then I wasn’t,” Warden said. “I could feel something happen to me.”

The next thing he remembered he was in leg and arm restraints at Bear Valley Community Hospital, he said. A nurse asked him if he knew where he was. He said, “Colorado.”

He was diagnosed with having had a grand mal seizure. Warden said he never experienced one before and hasn’t had one since. Members and pledges told him he had been foaming at the mouth, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

Hospital records show Warden was admitted to the hospital Saturday, Dec. 9, at 9 p.m. and released the next day, although the release time wasn’t noted, his attorney said.

Fraternity members took him from the hospital and dropped him off at his aunt’s house in San Juan Capistrano.

A few days later, Warden’s temperature hit 101.5 degrees, and he went to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he was subjected to a battery of tests, which turned up no abnormalities.

Because of the seizure, Warden said, his driver’s license was revoked until August, and he had to rely on friends to take him to his job at Disneyland and elsewhere.

Betas told him not to tell anyone what had happened because the fraternity would get into trouble, he said. They left phone messages asking him to come to meetings. Several members even told him his initiation was easier than theirs.

But he said he had had enough of the Greek life. He avoided fraternity members for the rest of the school year. Over the summer, he said he considered transferring but decided that would only mean those who had hurt him would win.

This fall, he reported the Big Bear events to a campus ombudsman. “He said I definitely had a case, and I should get counseling and get a lawyer, and he’d notify the school.”

‘I Thought They Stood for Brotherhood . . .’

Warden said that originally he didn’t plan to sue. The fraternity had assured him they would pay the $10,000 in medical bills. But they paid him only $3,000 and he was worried his credit rating would suffer.

“It’s kind of sad,” Warden said. “My whole view of fraternities has changed. “I thought they stood for brotherhood, friendship and people you’d know for life.”

Most U.S. colleges have antihazing rules, as do more than 40 states. California’s Education Code prohibits activities including “creation of excessive fatigue; physical and psychological shocks; encouraging, forcing or coercing the use of alcohol and/or controlled substances; morally degrading or humiliating games and activities. . . .”

“All of us in educational institutions emphasize over and over again it’s against the law,” said John Williamson, executive vice president of the North American Interfraternity Conference, which represents 66 fraternities on 800 campuses.

Tom Olver, a spokesman for the Beta’s national office in Oxford, Ohio, said his office didn’t learn of the allegations until the lawsuit was filed, nearly a year after the incident. By taking so long to report the event to the national office, the UCI chapter appears to have violated the fraternity’s rules. Beta policy requires chapters to report serious problems to the national office within 48 hours, Olver said.

“Certainly a kid being hospitalized would qualify,” he said. Olver declined to comment on the suit.