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An Update:

Las Vegas Sun
October 16, 2002

UNR frat warned before death

By Jennifer Knight

Just weeks before the drowning of fraternity pledge A.J. Refuerzo
Santos, a University of Nevada, Reno official warned members of the
Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity to do away with traditions that do not
advance the organization.

"I told them that they need to think about the traditions they set,"
said Rich Whitney, UNR leadership and Greek coordinator. "I said that
if they are not willing to tell me about it, or their parents, should
they really be doing this?"

Santos, an 18-year-old Centennial High School graduate, was pulled
from Lake Manzanita on the UNR campus early Thursday morning. Santos
was pledging for Pi Kappa Alpha when he and a group of other men
stripped down to their underwear and dove into the lake. His body was
found by divers seven feet below water.

UNR campus police are investigating whether the incident was hazing.

Mike Gonzales, deputy coroner for Washoe County in Reno, said the
department is ruling last Santos' death an accidental drowning --
Santos was not a good swimmer, according to people information
gathered by the coroner's office.

Santos and members of his fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha were believed to
be participating in an initiation ritual at the time.

"For members it was kind of a ritual that they did," Gonzales said.
"That is just based on what the fraternity members said at the time
of the accident. Whether it was hazing is for the police to
determine."

UNR campus police are expected to wrap up their investigation of
Santos' death sometime this week. So far, they have interviewed 26
students, said UNR police Lt. Todd Renwick.

"It's safe to say that it was a common practice among all
fraternities to jump in the lake and get their hair wet," Renwick
said. "We don't think they were all told or threatened they had to be
there."

University administrators are now looking to step up preventative
education as a way to avert such incidents.

State Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said she believes the drowning
was due to hazing and urged officials to take a no-tolerance approach.

"It's terrible that we had this (anti-hazing) policy that the
administration and students signed off on, and now, obviously they
just considered it symbolic rather than a priority," Titus said.
"Maybe we need to have campuses develop a policy that has an
aggressive approach to monitoring this type of behavior."

Titus is credited with pushing legislation in 1999 that made hazing
illegal in Nevada.

UNR temporarily suspended the fraternity's recognition pending a review.

Attempts to contact Pi Kappa Alpha members were not successful.

Whitney said UNR officials have tried to educate students about the
dangers of alcohol and hazing by handing out leaflets during rush
week. Now the school is considering adopting some of the practices
used at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

UNLV currently has a system in which all new members pledging for a
Greek organization must attend Greek convocation night -- or "Greek
101." The seminar lays down the rules of fraternity and sorority
behavior.

New members are taught alcohol awareness and are expected to know
what hazing is.

Santos had been drinking that night but the amount of alcohol in his
system found in a coroner's toxicology screening probably "did not
have too much of an effect on him," Gonzales said.

He had a blood alcohol level of 0.062. Someone is considered legally
drunk with a blood alcohol level of 0.1 or higher.

"That's a pretty low level," Gonzales said. "I would guess that
(alcohol) did not have too much of an effect on him.

"From what we heard he wasn't a very strong swimmer. That probably
has more to do with it than the level of alcohol in his system."

While hazing usually brings to mind behavior such as paddling or
drinking excessively , it can be as simple as requiring a new recruit
to participate in an event or action that he or she is not
comfortable with.

Whitney said he wants to put a plan in place that would bring new
pledges together at UNR for an educational seminar on alcohol use,
hazing and risk assessment.

"We were planning to start this, and this just tells us we need to
start even more," Whitney said. With 30 percent of UNR's freshman
class coming from Southern Nevada this year, parents are concerned,
Regent Steve Sisolak said.

"I've had parents calling me wondering if this is the place to send
their kids," Sisolak said. "They assumed we had more safeguards in
place. When you send your kid away to college, this is absolutely the
last thing you think will happen."