From the Jan 2 09 Trib:

The week before Starks died, Sigma Nu members selected him and another student, 22-year-old Mackenzie Perry, as their top choices among the 16 young men who pledged last fall. At the time, Starks was staying at the fraternity, although he had a dorm room. At about 10 p.m. on Nov. 20, Sigma Nu member Christopher Ammon brought Starks and Perry to the Chi Omega sorority next door under the pretext of helping move furniture. The women took custody of the young men and sorority sister Whitney Miller, who had a liter bottle of vodka, drove Starks to the Logan home of fraternity brother Grant Barney at 181 W. 200 North.

Miller, who faces the most serious charges, told police fraternity members asked her to run the “capture.”

“The only direction given by the fraternity was ‘to not let Mack [Perry] drink too much’ because he is small in stature,” the charges state. “Otherwise, she was not prohibited to use alcohol in the activity.”

The women asked the pledges to strip to their boxers, then painted the naked men Aggie blue and white. The men were given two bottles, Miller’s liter bottle of vodka and a smaller one, which the women held to the pledges’ mouths because their hands were covered in paint, charges allege.

“Eventually, however, Michael took the taller bottle — the vodka — and began to drink it himself,” charging documents state. Perry told Starks to quit drinking, but he was so drunk he could not follow through, Perry told investigators. No charges were filed in connection with Perry’s hazing because he is of legal drinking age.

After an hour, the other Sigma Nu pledges appeared and “rescued” Perry and Starks from Barney’s house and took them back to Sigma Nu, at 765 N. 800 East. Fraternity members put the two drunk pledges in the shower, then to bed. Starks needed help washing, but he was talking and lucid before falling asleep, the charges say.[Snip]

USU officials have already suspended the Sigma Nu and Chi Omega chapters as campus organizations, and the chapters’ national offices have likewise suspended them, pending the outcome of the investigation.

Both organizations publicly maintain zero-tolerance toward hazing and alcohol abuse, and Sigma Nu has co-sponsored research into the cultural phenomenon of hazing and ways to eliminate it. The 250-chapter fraternity was founded in 1868 at Virginia Military Institute in opposition to the physical harassment that young officers endured at the hands of their older colleagues, according to Sigma Nu Executive Director Brad Beacham. Contacted late Friday, both he and Chi Omega’s national executive director Anne Emmerth reserved comment on the Starks case until they read the charges.

“We certainly respect law enforcement’s choice to pursue the criminal charges they feel are warranted and appropriate,” Beacham said. “We will take into account any and all new information as it becomes available.”

It’s important to note that the tone of the Trib’s article is dismissive – describing the hazing as “playful” and as “hijinks gone awry.” Brian Maffly – the article’s author – needs to hear from the public about his apparent inability to discern the obvious in his own writing.

The hazing to which the victim – Michael Stark – was subjected was not some playful incident. He was kidnapped by women his own age, sexually humiliated by being forced to strip and then having those women paint his body. Stark’s death is being justifiably defined as a felony but I for one would like to see tougher charges brought. And before anyone suggests that these are “good kids” let’s just be clear – good kids don’t kill people and this event is not one that went awry.

The sexual shaming aspect of the hazing is doubly concerning. The perpetrators – both the fraternity brothers and the sorority sisters – were using nudity – which is largely taboo in our culture – and an unfair power balance to coerce and mistreat the pledges in question. Given the circumstances, and the fact that the pledges had been physically separated from their peers and had been driven away from campus (if I’m reading the account correctly) makes it highly unlikely that they were fully willing participants. The women and men involved in this incident are guilty of sexual assault in my not so humble opinion.

If the prosecutors have any self respect, they’ll make darn sure the people responsible serve jail time. Sounds to me like they’re guilty of some form of manslaughter or even murder – they committed a series of acts whose foreseeable outcome was someone’s death and someone died.

And not for nothing, but USU needs to kick these two organizations off campus once and for all.

Before anyone asks, yes, hazing pisses me the hell off. It’s not just fun and games and inevitably it leaves carnage in its wake. Hazing isn’t initiation, it isn’t about forming healthy bonds or building a strong community. It’s about the naked exercise of power over another person (or other persons) and the young people in this frat and sorority enjoyed that exercise of power and they pushed it as far as it would go; hazing is abuse, it is violation, it is violence and that it is socially acceptable in many circles doesn’t make it right. A few years ago, I heard an account of a high school coach who prided himself on designing a workout so tough that many of the adolescent males on his team were physically ill afterwards – he worked them out until they were vomiting in trash cans. That coach and these young men and women are cut from the same sadistic cloth and they do not deserve our sympathy or our pity or our leniency.

These frat boys and sorority girls “fun and games” now have a body count. How do you put that on your resume?

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