http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.d...WS01/304030060
Miami frat shut down over hazing
BY LORI KURTZMAN |
LKURTZMAN@ENQUIRER.COM
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Chris Sledzik’s fraternity was in trouble with Miami University. That much he knew. He knew about the hazing allegations. He knew about the visits from the investigators for the International Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta. Something was going on.
He just didn’t know it would be this big.
“We didn’t see it coming at all,” Sledzik said.
At a house meeting Sunday, Miami’s Phi Gamma Delta chapter learned it was being shut down.
Saying the 80-plus-member chapter violated the fraternity’s hazing and alcohol rules, Phi Gamma Delta’s international headquarters in Lexington, Ky., suspended the 50-year-old Miami operation indefinitely. The men have until the end of the semester to leave their house at High Street and Campus Avenue. They were made to take their fraternity flag down from its pole.
“Everybody … was shocked,” said Sledzik, a senior from Akron. “It’s kind of a hard pill to swallow. I still think that pill’s caught in a lot of people’s throats.”
The chapter’s quick demise began March 6, when small groups of men were spotted at Hueston Woods on a cold Saturday afternoon.
Park rangers contacted Miami to report what they suspected was a hazing incident, said Susan Vaughn, director of the university’s office of ethics and student conflict resolution. They believed the men had been left outside for a long period of time without knowing where they were or how to get home, Vaughn said. One group reportedly tried to start a fire in a restroom for warmth.
When asked which fraternity they were with, the men lied.
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