Carroll: "It was a gigantic misunderstanding"

[hoosier]

Carroll student denies hazing

Passer-by reports man held in trunk

By REID J. EPSTEIN
repstein@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Nov. 14, 2005

Waukesha - When a man with a hood tied over his head was led out the back hatch of a car and walked to the Fox River bank just before midnight, it might have looked like a mob hit in progress.


It certainly did to a passer-by, who called Waukesha police to report that a hooded man with bound arms was being pulled from the trunk of a car and led to the river at a boat launch, Waukesha Police Capt. Mike Babe said Monday.

According to Babe, the passer-by saw the five men drive arrive at the Fox River boat landing near Les Paul Parkway about 11:40 p.m. Saturday. Babe said the witness saw men pull a man who had a covered head and bound wrists from the trunk of their car, then walk the bound man to the river's edge and return without him.

But before investigators searched the river, they found five men, all members or alumni of Carroll College's Delta Rho Upsilon fraternity.

No one had been tossed in the river Sopranos-style. But Babe said the men forced the hooded man to do push-ups and sit-ups at the river's edge.

One of the men, Peter Seroogy, 20, said Monday that the incident was not hazing, and that the men did nothing wrong.

"It was a gigantic misunderstanding," said Seroogy, who is the editor of Carroll's student newspaper, The New Perspective, and is the fraternity's rush chairman.

Seroogy said the incident was a prank, and that the five men were "just talking" near the river.

He declined to say why they were near the river or why one man was hooded.

Along with Seroogy, Brian Dornbos, 21, Joshua Dettman, 22, Jesse Pilachowski, 26, and Robert Schlicht, 22, were issued $162 disorderly conduct citations, Babe said. Dettman is the fraternity's president, and Pilachowski and Schlicht are alumni, Seroogy said. Dornbos is an active fraternity member, Seroogy said.

Seroogy said the Saturday night incident is unrelated to the fraternity's Founder's Day event, which took place earlier Saturday to mark the organization's anniversary. He also said that no one had his hands bound.