GreekChat.com Forums - Remember the local GLO on MTV that ate the campus fish?

This was Page One of the local section in today's Chronicle.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...AGCC66R6F1.DTL

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
Pair who killed Goldie sentenced to service
Court showed tape of culprits with koi

Alan Gathright
Chronicle Staff Writer
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Saturday, April 17, 2004

The boozy frat boys reveled in their 15 minutes of reality show fame, laughing and mugging for MTV cameras that captured them stealing a beloved jumbo golden fish from a UC Santa Cruz pond last summer -- then bludgeoning it with a beer bottle and gutting, frying and eating it at their off-campus fraternity house.

But Casey Loop and Matthew Cox weren't smiling Friday when a prosecutor played 11 minutes of damning outtakes of the infamous fish slaying -- which never aired on MTV's "Fraternity Life" series -- before Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Jeff Almquist sentenced them to 200 hours and 300 hours of community service, respectively. The hours are to be served working at either the county animal shelter or Long Marine Laboratory and at an institute for raising ornamental koi.

They also have to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, pay $500 restitution each to UCSC and send a written apology to the university professor who donated the fish to the koi pond.

The killing of Goldie, a gentle, 18-inch koi, by seven members of Delta Omega Chi fraternity prompted nationwide outrage, but especially angered students on a campus renowned for vegetarian devotion and counterculture values.

While MTV officials denied involvement and a prosecutor found no evidence the film crew encouraged the cruel prank, the judge Friday criticized the youth music network and a reality-show culture that "will put anything that people do on TV. It's a shame."

Almquist stressed that MTV filmed the events, rented the frat house and provided the young men with two SUVs, mounted with automatic video cameras, that were used in the midnight May 20, 2003, raid of the pond at UCSC's Porter College.

"It's clear that these were a bunch of guys playing to the TV sets,'' Almquist said. "This act offended the entire community,'' he added, stressing that the frat members had "desecrated'' the peaceful koi pond that students enjoyed as "a place of reflection.''

Loop, 23, and Cox pleaded no contest last month to misdemeanor grand theft and vandalism, effectively accepting conviction without openly admitting guilt.

Prosecutor Gretchen Brock portrayed Loop, now a San Jose bartender, as the unrepentant ringleader in the fish-napping. She warned Almquist that Loop repeatedly maintained his innocence in media interviews, saying he pleaded no contest only to avoid jail time.

Brock countered Loop's recent statement to a local newspaper that "they have no evidence whatsoever" by playing a video clip showing Loop and his buddies playing the hand game Paper, Scissors, Rock to see who got to go "catch" the fish.

As the SUV passed through the campus security booth, the interior camera captured Loop saying from the backseat, out of earshot of the guard, "OK, we're going to steal your f -- fish."

Cameras did not record the actual capture of the whiskered carp, which the frat boys scooped up with a garden rake.

But back at the seaside frat house, Loop was shown walking in with the huge koi hoisted triumphantly over his head and bellowing: "Yawwwwh!" Then he showed the fish was still living by flicking its head with his fingers.

Some fellow frat brothers were put off by the cruelty.

"This is so morally wrong," a young chubby guy in a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts said. "Don't kill the fish.''

But Loop insisted, "We've got to kill it. What are we going to do, throw it in the ocean?''

Then Cox is seen on an outside deck, clubbing the fish with a 40-ounce beer bottle as some guys turn away, groaning in disgust. Loop then guts it with a kitchen cleaver.

After Cox fried the tiny filet in a skillet, some frat members pick at it with forks. Then Loop suggested hiding the carcass under the house and warned: "The fewer people who know about this right now the better.''

Defense attorneys for the two men stressed that soon after the incident, before being charged, they went to campus officials to take responsibility and paid $650 for a replacement koi.

Cox's attorney, Greg Coben, portrayed the koi killing as a "traditional hazing" -- forcing pledges to swallow live, tiny goldfish -- gone awry.

"It's not like they were targeting this particular, beloved fish,'' Coben said.

Both Coben and Paul Meltzer, Loop's attorney, blamed drunkenness and MTV cameras for spurring the foolish young men on.

"Some people do really stupid things with a camera trained on them," Meltzer said, "and I think Mr. Loop is one of those people."

Finally, Loop rose and said: "Deep, deep down, I do apologize to the Santa Cruz community for everything that I've done.''

After court, however, he added: "I do have remorse. ... But at the end of the day, it's a fish. To some people out there (in Santa Cruz), every fish in the bay is their friend. Every fish is spiritual to them."

The judge didn't buy the defense attorneys' argument that, as experienced fishermen, Loop and Cox were engaging in behavior -- cleaning and eating fish -- that many anglers legally do every day at the Santa Cruz harbor.

Almquist noted that Loop, speaking with his probation officer, compared the incident to "fishing out of season" and added that only in Santa Cruz would he be convicted of a crime.

"To sit there and say this is not an act of animal cruelty," the judge said in response to Coben's plea for leniency, "beggars the sensitivity that many people have in this community."

But one frat member might have offered the ultimate commentary on the videotape: "This is the f -- stupidest thing we've ever done in the entire world.''

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle