Two dozen frat boys are charged with hazing new members at Sigma Alpha Epsilon at University of New Hampshire – the latest in a series of high profile hazing incidents that have left students across America maimed or dead
- 46 fraternity members face charges over an alleged hazing incident at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of New Hampshire
- On Tuesday at 3 pm, police arrested 19 fraternity members of the SAE chapter. They have all since been released
- It follows ten arrests on Friday and 19 arrests on Tuesday with more arrests expected, according to Durnham police
- It is not clear exactly when the 17 remaining fraternity members, who police issued warrants for on June 7, will be arrested
- Durham police got involved after representatives from the University of New Hampshire contacted them about a ‘possible student hazing incident’
- The fraternity members could each be fined up to $1,200, and the SAE Beta chapter could face a fine of up to $20,000 if convicted
- There have been 281 hazing-related deaths since 1838 across America
- Most involve alcohol – in 2021, three boys died from alcohol poisoning after taking part in pledge challenges at their schools
Police have issued arrest warrants for 46 frat boys over an alleged hazing incident at the University of New Hampshire.
The alleged hazing incident took place on April 13 at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) chapter house located at 28 Madbury Road in Durham, New Hampshire.
University of New Hampshire reported the ‘possible student hazing incident’ to police and on Tuesday at 3pm, cops arrested 19 fraternity members of the SAE chapter. They have all since been released.
On July 13, they are scheduled to be arraigned at the 7th Circuit Court: Dover District Division, on Wednesday at 8:30 am.
The arrests were made after ten SAE frat boys were taken into custody last week. They have also since been released.
It is not clear exactly when the 17 remaining fraternity members, who police issued warrants for on June 7, will be arrested. But more arrests are anticipated to made in the following days and weeks, police said.
Durham Police Department PIO and Deputy Chief David Holmstock told DailyMail.com on Wednesday, in part: ‘We are not sending out arrests one at a time as this will probably drag on piecemeal over the summer as they turn themselves in.’
He confirmed that ‘there were no deaths related,’ to this alleged hazing incident.
An exterior photo of the stately Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity house located at 28 Madbury Road in Durham, New Hampshire where the allegations of student hazing took place
A photo of one of the buildings on the bucolic New Hampshire University campus
The hazing charges are considered a class B misdemeanor. All 46 fraternity members could get fined up to $1,200 if convicted.
The Sigma Alpha Epsilon, New Hampshire Beta Chapter, was also charged with Student Hazing by an Institution and could face a fine of up to $20,000.
Emily C. Garod, the deputy county attorney for the Strafford County Attorney’s Office told FOX13 News that there is ‘no potential jail time’ associated with the offense.
‘Student Hazing is the only charges we expect to be forthcoming from this incident,’ Garod said.
‘New Hampshire law permits us to charge both the actor and subject of hazing, as well as any person present for hazing and fails to report it. The 46 individuals charged are associated with the fraternity SAE and fall within those three categories.’
Erika Mantz, the spokesperson for the University of New Hampshire said the fraternity has since been suspended.
‘We were made aware of the incident by the fraternity’s national headquarters and immediately notified the Durham Police Department,’ Mantz said, the news outlet reported.
‘We have cooperated with police throughout the investigation and the fraternity was interim suspended pending the outcome of the police investigation. We take any allegation of hazing very seriously, and now that the police investigation is complete, we will be initiating a formal conduct process.’
David Pascarella, a spokesperson for the national Sigma Alpha Epsilon organization, told Fox 13 that they had launched an investigation into the allegations until the police launched their own probe, and had issued a Cease and Desist of the chapter.
‘Sigma Alpha Epsilon denounces all acts of hazing and misconduct that do not represent the Fraternity’s values defined by our creed, The True Gentleman,’ he said, adding that the organization were ‘fully cooperating with the local authorities’ investigation and have urged all of our members to do the same.’
Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members: Brendan Apkan, 21, of South Hampton, New Hampshire (pictured left) and Charlies Kavanagh, 19, of Sudbury, Massachusetts (pictured right)
Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members: Matthew Ray, 18, of Sudbury, Massachusetts (pictured left) and Samuel Patterson, 20, of Avon, Connecticut (pictured right)
Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members: Christopher Pacios, 19, of Northborough, Massachusetts (pictured left) and Nikolas Boruvka, 20, Westwood, Massachusetts (pictured right)
Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members: Simon Roy, 20, of Portsmouth, Rhode Island (pictured left) and Nore Mendes, 18, Weymouth, Massachusetts (pictured right)
Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members: Thomas Langlois, 20, of Windham, New Hampshire (pictured left) and Matthew Smeltzer, 20, of Harwich, Massachusetts (pictured right)
Kevin Russell, 19, of Ashland, Massachusetts was one of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members that was arrested for allegedly participating in the alleged student hazing incident
His death was one of more than 280 hazing-related fatalities across America over the last 150 years. Some of the most recent incidents – dating back to 2011 – are shown above
America has a long, dark history of college hazing that has seen nearly 300 young students die in accidents while being initiated into Greek life.
The latest incident to shock the country was the October 2021 hazing of Danny Santulli, a 19-year-old who survived severe alcohol poisoning but is now blind and wheelchair-ridden as a result of it.
Danny’s family’s lawyer, David Bianchi, described it as the worst case of hazing injury the country has ever seen.
‘You can’t be more injured and still be alive,’ he told DailyMail.com this week after filing a lawsuit against two of the frat boys involved. While Danny survived, more than 200 other kids have not.
There is no official database for hazing deaths or injuries thanks largely to the blanket of secrecy that is immediately thrown on incidents by universities, fraternities and sororities.
The closest count to an official tally is that of Hank Nuwer, a journalist who has covered hazing and written multiple books on the topic.
By his count, there were 179 hazing deaths at American colleges between 1838 and 1999, and an additional 101 between 2000 and 2022.
Three boys died in 2021 after schools reopened following a year-long shutdown thanks to COVID. There were no hazing deaths in 2020 and so far, there have not been any in 2022.
In recent years, alcohol poisoning deaths have been on the rise. In all three suspected hazing deaths of 2021, the victim died as a result of acute alcohol poisoning.
There was a brief gap in hazing deaths in 2020 when college campuses closed as a result of COVID-19.
Now, with more kids rushing back to school, there are fears of an uptick – and experts however say hazing will be harder to police now that more and more kids are taking the rituals off-campus, out of the view of the schools which monitor them.
Adam Oakes (left) died at Virginia Commonwealth University last February as a result of alcohol poisoning. Phat Nguyen (right) died in November at Michigan State University
The frat members who have been arrested include: Brendan Akpan, 21, of Springfield, New Hamphsire; Nikolaos Beka, 19, of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts; Nikolas Boruvka, 20, of Westwood, Massachusetts; Joseph Cleary, 20, of Plymouth, New Hampshire; Jason Crocker, 19, of Malden, Massachusetts; Anthony Gionta, 19, of Baldwin Place, NY; Tucker Guard, 20, of Marion, Massachusetts; Charlie Kavanagh, 19, of Sudbury, Massachusetts; Thomas Langlois, 20, Windham, New Hampshire; Nore Mendes, 19, of Weymouth, Massachusetts; Christopher Pacios, 19, of Northborough, Massachusetts; Samuel Patterson, 20, of Avon, Connecticut; Tyler Prout, 19, of Grafton, Massachusetts; Matthew Ray, 18, of Sudbury, Massachusetts; Simon Roy, 20. of Portsmouth, Rhode Island; Kevin Russell, 19, of Ashland, Massachusetts; Matthew Smeltzer, 20, of Harwich, Massachusetts; Joshua Tobin, 18, of Bedford, New Hampshire, and Austin Wackrow, 19, of Woburn, Massachusetts.
Seth Burdick, 19, of South Hampton, New Hampshire; Benjamin Chase, 18, of Hampton, New Hampshire; Robert Doherty, 19, of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire; Daniel Fachiol, 21 of Hampden, Maine; Charles Farrah, 20, of Grafton, Massachusetts; Robert Hardy, 21, of Atkinson, New Hampshire; Oliver Jacques, 19, of Auburn, Maine; Gabriel Kwan, 21 of Winchester, Massachusetts; Mason Steele, 19, of Williston, Vermont and Colby Travis, 19, of Pelham, New Hampshire.
DailyMail.com reached out to the Stafford County Attorney’s Office as well as the University of Hampshire and the national chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon organization.
They have not yet responded to our request for comment.
Adam Oakes, 19, died in February 2021 after allegedly being ordered to drink a large bottle of whiskey during a rush party for the Delta Chi fraternity at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Oakes was a freshman at the university when he received a bid to the Delta Chi fraternity and attended a party on February 26, 2021 where he would receive his ‘big brother.’
There, his family claims, he was told to drink a large bottle of whiskey and later passed out on a couch at an off-campus residence.
He was found dead the next morning, and the office of the chief medical examiner ruled that his death was caused by alcohol poisoning.
Eight students were later charged with unlawful hazing of a student in connection with Adam’s untimely death in February 2021
In the aftermath, eight students were charged with unlawful hazing of a student, and four of them were also charged with buying and giving alcohol to a minor.
Seven were held without bond at the Richmond Justice Center. The eighth was arrested in Prince William County and released on bond.
Three more people had also been indicted over the death, and 11 witnesses to his death were charged with a Class 1 misdemeanor, according to Northern Virginia Magazine.
Those 11 individuals could have faced one year in jail, and $2,500 fines each, but were instead ordered to do community service – making presentations at other schools about the dangers of hazing, discussing what happened to Adam and working directly with the Oakes family to explain what they did was wrong.
Meanwhile, the university announced that it would ban alcohol at fraternity and sorority events, publish misconduct instances online and pause new member recruitment.
It also expelled the fraternity in June.
Nine months after Adam died, Phat Nguyen, 21, also passed away after a brutal night of drinking at the Pi Alpha Phi off-campus fraternity house in East Lansing, Michigan.
He was found passed out in his frat house at Michigan State University covered in vomit and urine along with three other victims who were pledges with Nguyen who were taken to a local hospital but survived.
Three students had been charged in Nguyen’s death.
Witnesses say they found Phat in a ‘dirty’ basement room, ‘stripped to his shorts’ with writing on his back.
He was one of four pledges who passed out and had to be taken to the hospital that night – the other three survived despite being found with blood dripping from their noses, and ‘convulsing’.
‘We started walking into the basement and before we were down the stairs all the way, the smell of urine hit me. It was really, really strong. The air got really thick,’ an unidentified witness said.
The unnamed person said multiple people knew what was happening and that kids would take turns going down into the basement to look at the unconscious pledges and laugh at them.
They had the word ‘simp’ written on their backs.
All three suspects are now due back in court on June 23, after being released on bond.
Stone Foltz was also killed as a result of excessive drinking at Bowling Green University in Ohio last year.
He had been forced to drink an entire bottle of bourbon.
Jacob Krinn, 21, and Troy Henricksen, 24, were both charged over his death and are on trial now.
Danny Santulli, left, before he suffered brain damage after a night of forced alcohol at the University of Missouri, and right, recently. He is blind and can no longer walk or talk
Samuel Gandhi (left) and Alec Wetzler (right) have been named as defendants now by the family of Danny Santulli, a teenager whose family say was forced to drink until his heart stopped last October during pledge month at Phi Gamma Delta
Danny Santulli, 19, also suffered from brain damage caused when he stopped breathing after downing vodka and beer, and then passing out on a couch in his fraternity house.
Last week, horrifying surveillance footage emerged of the University of Missouri student being ordered to down a 1.75 liter bottle of Tito’s vodka and being force-fed beer through a tube during a ‘Pledge Dad Reveal Night’ in October 2021.
It shows Danny and the other pledges being led shirtless and blindfolded down a staircase in the frat house.
Later, he is force-fed beer through a tube and then he is seen falling backwards, passing out on a table and then slumped on a couch.
The footage also shows his panicked frat brothers trying to carry him into a car to take him to the hospital once they realized how severe his condition was.
By the time he got to hospital, he had stopped breathing for long enough to cause severe brain damage – and he is now blind, unable to walk and unable to speak.
His family previously sued 23 people, including the fraternity, and won their case with an undisclosed settlement but they are now suing two individual frat boys; Sam Gandhi and Alec Wetzler.
They are also demanding felony charges be brought against the pair.
Wetzler has been charged with misdemeanor providing alcohol to a minor and he is no longer enrolled at the school, but Gandhi has not been charged and he remains a student.
According to the family’s lawsuit, Gandhi saw the dire state Danny was in but did nothing to help until it was too late.
Lawmakers in Congress are now mulling legislation that would require any college that receives federal student aid money to collect information and publicly report twice a year about hazing-related misconduct.
The reports must include descriptions of what happened, and any sanctions placed on the organization.
Additionally, the schools must report to campus police and law enforcement authorities within 72 hours of becoming aware of any allegations of hazing that causes serious bodily injury – or could cause serious bodily injury – under the bill.
Hazing is already a felony crime in 13 states if it causes serious harm or death.
Those states are Florida, Texas, California, Utah, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and New Jersey.
Alaska, Hawaii, New Mexico, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana do not have any specific hazing laws.
America’s dark hazing history: Fraternity initiation rituals have killed nearly 300 college students since 1838 through alcohol poisoning, drunk driving, beatings and deadly pranks
America has a long, dark history of college hazing that has seen nearly 300 young students die in accidents while being initiated into Greek life.
The latest incident to shock the country was the October 2021 hazing of Danny Santulli, a 19-year-old who survived severe alcohol poisoning but is now blind and wheelchair-ridden as a result of it.
Danny’s family’s lawyer, David Bianchi, described it as the worst case of hazing injury the country has ever seen.
‘You can’t be more injured and still be alive,’ he told DailyMail.com this week after filing a lawsuit against two of the frat boys involved. While Danny survived, more than 400 other kids have not.
There is no official database for hazing deaths or injuries thanks largely to the blanket of secrecy that is immediately thrown on incidents by universities, fraternities and sororities.
Pledges are loaded into the back of a U-Haul van to be driven to a hazing event at Northwestern University
The closest count to an official tally is that of Hank Nuwer, a journalist who has covered hazing and written multiple books on the topic.
By his count, there were 281 between 1838 and 2022.
Three boys died in 2021 after schools reopened following a year-long shutdown thanks to COVID. There were no hazing deaths in 2020 and so far, there have not been any in 2022.
In recent years, alcohol poisoning deaths have been on the rise. In all three suspected hazing deaths of 2021, the victim died as a result of acute alcohol poisoning.
There was a brief gap in hazing deaths in 2020 when college campuses closed as a result of COVID-19.
Now, with more kids rushing back to school, there are fears of an uptick – and experts however say hazing will be harder to police now that more and more kids are taking the rituals off-campus, out of the view of the schools which monitor them.
A 1905 article from The Albuquerque Evening Citizen details how student Stuart L. Pierson was tied to train tracks and hit by a locomotive in a hazing ritual at Kenyon college
Adam Oakes (left) died at Virginia Commonwealth University last February as a result of alcohol poisoning. Phat Nguyen (right) died in November at Michigan State University
‘It’s all going underground,’ Newar told DailyMail.com. He said the uptick began in 1995 when the tradition of ‘bottle passing’ began.
It involves a pledge being gifted an entire bottle of alcohol – normally cheap vodka – to finish in one evening.
Newar’s research – which involves interviews with fraternity brothers and psychologists – reveals that the entire act is underpinned by camaraderie.
‘There’s denial after the incident that occurs, a blindness among fraternity members just like the government in Bay of Pigs.
‘If you do something risky enough long enough something bad is going to occur, but they don’t see it coming. Interview after interview I find them surprised and I don’t think it’s faked surprise.
He said the only way to stop hazing is to stop the tradition of pledging – but colleges and fraternities are hesitant.
‘These slaps on the wrists are not helping anybody. I think it makes frat members arrogant and thinking. Everybody should have a good time but no one should die for a good time.
‘In doing the research and talking to people, [it seems] it’s a form of cheap entertainment – it’s a kind of domestic abuse. They call themselves brothers sons dads, it’s in a house.
‘We have to end pledging – end that power dynamic,’ Nuwer added.
In another incident in 2019, Western Michigan University student Bailey Broderick was killed when she was struck by a van being driven by a drunk pledge carrying out one of his tasks – ferrying his fraternity brothers around campus. Hunter Hudgins was charged with her death =
Stone Foltz, pictured with his parents, died last year in an alcohol hazing at Bowling Green State University
While alcohol poisoning is a leading cause of hazing death, it is not the only root of the problem.
Drum major Robert Champion was beaten to death in 2011 by frat boys taking part in a hazing challenge
Other incidents include that of Stuart Lathrop Pierson, an 18-year-old who died in 1905 after being tied to train tracks as part of a hazing prank at Delta Kappa Epsilon at Kenyon College in Ohio.
A newspaper article from that year has the headline: ‘Was this student hazed to death?’
The coroner found that Stuart had either been tied to the tracks or was somehow unable to get away fast enough as a locomotive train approached him.
In another incident in 2019, Western Michigan University student Bailey Broderick was killed when she was struck by a van being driven by a drunk pledge carrying out one of his tasks – ferrying his fraternity brothers around campus.
In 2018, Collin Wiant died from asphyxiation after inhaling nitrous oxide from a whipped cream canister at Sigma Pi.
Five years earlier, students Marvell Edmondson and Jauwan Holmes both drowned after a night of drinking at Virginia State University. They had attempted to swim in a river.
Hazing is a felony crime in 13 states if it causes serious harm or death.
Those states are Florida, Texas, California, Utah, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and New Jersey.
Alaska, Hawaii, New Mexico, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana do not have any specific hazing laws.
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