Fraternities fall to stem tide of binge-drinking deaths, lawsuits claim.

Daniel Reardon, a freshman at the University of Maryland, attended a pledge party known as "Bid Night" at the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity house in 2002. While there, he drank enough Jim Beam whiskey to fall unconscious onto the floor, and lay there for several hours. Someone called an ambulance in the early morning, and Reardon, who was 19, was taken to the hospital, where he died a week later. An autopsy showed that his blood-alcohol level was around 5.0; according to standard blood-alcohol charts, 4.0 is the level at which a person can fall into a coma.

Reardon's family filed a wrongful death suit against the fraternity, its chapter president, and its pledge inductor. The case was settled earlier this year.

In February 2004, a Florida jury found the Kappa Sigma fraternity at fault for the death of 18-year-old Chad Meredith, a University of Miami freshman who drowned while attempting a drunken early-morning swim across Lake Osceola during a hurricane as part of a fraternity-initiation stunt, Kappa Sigma had already been cited for violating the school's alcohol and anti-hazing policies just two months before Meredith's death. (Johnston v. Meredith, No. 02-11335CA02 (Fla. Cir. Ct. Feb. 6, 2004).)

And in August, the family of Walter Dean Jennings sued the Psi Epsilon Chi chapter of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Jennings died in Marcia 2003 of acute water intoxication during a pledge ceremony in which he was forced to drink alcohol and ingest enough water to make his lungs collapse, a condition normally found in drowning victims. (Jennings v. Psi-Epsilon Chi, No. 2004-2100 (N.Y., Saratoga County Sup. Ct. filed Aug. 6, 2004).)

These cases and others around tire country, said Douglas Fierberg, the Reardons' Washington, D.C., lawyer, point to a growing awareness that fraternities have taken advantage oft curious legal limbo that allows them to operate virtually unregulated and unaccountable for the injuries and deaths associated with their members' and pledges' alcohol abuse.

"This litigation is based on a newer understanding that the fraternity system is an industry, and an industry fraught with danger to innocent victims," Fierberg said.

Flying under the radar 

Many people don't realize that fraternities--which have been named with Greek letters since the 18th century--are not official college groups but independent corporate entities. The fraternities have executive offices, and they apply to colleges for charters to operate individual chapters on school grounds and collect membership dues. Members pay for their own housing and social events.

A fraternity chapter is expected to comply with the school's alcohol regulations and with state law, and if it violates them, the university or tire corporate entity can revoke its operating charter But, Fierberg said, in reality there is little oversight of fraternity activities until a lawsuit forces them into the light. Furthermore, when a fraternity applies for a charter, it isn't required to disclose any previous disciplinary actions, lawsuits, or suspensions--and must school administrators don't think to ask about them.

The result is a de facto fraternity-only alcohol policy that's more lax than requirements for other alcohol providers. Liquor boards regulate taverns and restaurants, colleges themselves follow state drinking law, "and flying under that radar screen," Fierberg said, "is the Greek industry."

Legally, fraternities are comparable to social hosts--people who provide alcohol to guests in their own homes. Fraternities often rely on dram-shop or social-host laws, which grant immunity from liability to such providers, in their defense. But Fierberg noted that there are key differences between a private provider of alcohol and a fraternity, because in the latter, "it's not an individual problem, it's systemic."

He explained: "There are three main issues here. The first is the volume of the alcohol. The second is the manner in which it's consumed: It's a pressure situation, there is a compulsion to drink. And the third is the fact that situations happen in fraternities that cannot happen anywhere else."

Under state law, bar or restaurant employees are required to stop serving people who are clearly intoxicated. In a fraternity, Fierberg said, "they keep making them drink. Daniel Reardon dropped down unconscious and lay on the floor for four hours, and nobody called 911, even though [witnesses] testified later that they knew he needed to go to a hospital. When did someone ever drop down unconscious in a public place and lie there for hours until someone called 911? Never. This would never happen in a bar or a restaurant. In fact, it probably has never happened. But in fraternities, it's just one in a string of many such incidents."

A 2002 task force study by Boston University's School of Public Health estimated that 500,000 college students each year are injured while under the influence of alcohol, and that 1,400 alcohol-related deaths occur on college campuses each year.

Hank Nuwer, a fraternity member and author of the book Broken Pledges, writes on Iris Web site that "until the 1970s, hazing deaths occurred infrequently enough that college presidents who suffered one could lament them as 'isolated' accidents. But the presence of alcohol in the initiations of local and National Interfraternity Conference (NIC) fraternities contributed to a documentable rise in initiation deaths."

He notes that an NIC study found that alcohol played a role in 90 percent of fraternity-related sexual assaults and in tour out of five fraternity deaths. Nuwer coined the term "fraternal alcohol syndrome" to describe this link.

"It's terrible to think of parents sending their kids off to college without any awareness of what is happening," said David Bianchi of Latham, New York, who represented the Meredith family. "And schools don't like to acknowledge the problem."

Some universities have taken action against fraternities, however. After Reardon's death, the University of Maryland revoked Phi Sigma Kappa's charter. In October 2003, Sigma Chi lost its charter at the University of Michigan, when a 21-year-old student ended up on kidney dialysis after a pledge party. And in November, Colgate University banished Kappa Delta Rho after repeated reports of underage drinking and hazing at the fraternity house.

Some colleges--including Waynesburg, Middlebury, Amherst, and Colby--have banned the Greek system entirely. In 2009, Alfred University closed its fraternities after finding that in one semester alone, 6 of the 12 on campus had violated the school's alcohol regulations. Even Dartmouth, whose raucous fraternity, houses were the model for the 1978 movie Animal House, banned single-sex housing two years ago, in what many students considered a direct blow to the Greek system.

According to the Fraternal Information Program Group (FIPG), a risk-management consultant to fraternities, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners ranked fraternities as sixth in the top 10 highest-risk groups to underwrite, just behind asbestos contractors and hazardous-waste disposers.

Liability costs for fraternities have skyrocketed, and many companies will not insure them. A report by the University of Arizona student newspaper, the Wildcat, found that fraternities paid anywhere from $150 to $300 per member for insurance coverage, compared with $7 to $14 for sororities.

Fraternities say they are getting a bad reputation based on the actions of a few out-of control individuals, and they stress that partying is a small part of the fraternity experience.

"Fraternities have been quick to respond, and we have done a superb job of addressing societal issues," said Pete Smith Hisler, vice president of the North American Interfraternity Conference. "Alcohol abuse is not just a fraternity problem, not just a campus problem; it is a societal problem, and fraternities have done an excellent job of addressing it."

Reform efforts

It appears that many fraternities are aware that they have a problem. Many have abolished all drinking and adopted zero-tolerance policies on hazing. Several have called for "dry rushes" and dry chapter houses, and some have signed an intrafraternity agreement that all houses be dry within a few years. Several have published anti-hazing brochures that stress a return to what fraternities call their "values-based founding principles" of brotherhood and scholarship.

"In the last two decades," said Hisler, "risk management has been a very high priority, and fraternities have instituted solid policies and solid enforcement of them."

In formulating their alcohol policies, most fraternities use the risk-management guidelines set out by the FIPG. They call for abolishing underage drinking, "bring your own booze" (BYOB) parties, hazing, and "open" parties (which nonmembers can attend). To enforce these rules, fraternities rely on a network of district managers who visit chapter houses to oversee the parties and report infractions.

"We have spent thousands of dollars and manpower hours and resources to educate each member about alcohol abuse and find a way for fraternities to end it," said Hisler.

Bianchi agreed: "They have instituted meaningful reform. The FIPG policies are some of the best-written, most complete risk-management policies you can imagine. The fraternities truly do want to stop this problem. They're trying like crazy to stop it."

But Fierberg said even the best-intentioned, best-written policies can fail when young, inexperienced managers attempt to stem a tide of hard drinking. A 1996 study conducted by Henry Wechsler, director of the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Studies Program, found that the strongest predictor for binge drinking in college was membership in a fraternity or sorority. Wechsler also found that four out of five Greek system members qualified as binge drinkers, defined as having five or more drinks in one sitting.

Fierberg said the fraternities' reform claims are disingenuous and that most don't follow their own recommendations: "Yes, on paper these are excellent guidelines. But in the Reardon case, for instance, the fraternity evaluated its own documents and its own risk-management structure and found that they just weren't working. After Reardon, they acknowledged the problem. They even acknowledged that they couldn't manage it; they said, we have to go dry--and then nothing was done."

After Reardon, the University of Maryland appointed a task force to recommend changes to its fraternities' alcohol policies. According to the university's Diamondback newspaper, the only change the intrafraternity council adopted was to its BYOB policy: Each guest at fraternity parties can now bring only one six-pack of beer, not two.

At the other end of the spectrum, the University of Virginia's intrafraternity council credits its "Party Patrols"--students who visit frat houses three nights a week to make sure rules are being followed--with preventing injuries that could lead to litigation. None of its 30 fraternities has faced a lawsuit.

Do fraternities just need better policing? "That's arguably possible," Fierberg said. "But alcohol laws and risk-management policies are complex and difficult. And in the case of fraternities, you have them being overseen by a group of officers who are often underage and who, themselves, have an interest in partying, an interest in drinking, an interest in making friends.

"No other liquor-related industry regulates itself this way. Twenty-year-olds don't manage bars. They don't manage concerts or festivals. There is no industry serving alcohol in the outside world that operates this way, or that could operate this way."

Two-pronged fights

Meredith, which Bianchi tried, is currently on appeal. And the fraternity's insurer has filed suit in federal court against the fraternity,, arguing that it does not have to cover its insured in this case.

"So we're fighting a two-pronged war at the moment," Bianchi said, "but I'm highly confident. These are very sympathetic cases to juries."

He noted that while alcohol played a role in Meredith's death, "it was not the centerpiece of the case. I argued it as a straightforward negligence case. With these" cases, lawyers need to be more creative about the legal theories they pursue."

Fierberg said there have been strong cases on dais issue, but litigation has been "piecemeal. It's often being done with no reference to other suits or to the larger problem within the Greek industry, or how the industry defends itself."

He would like to see more coordination among lawyers working in this area. "There are so many issues connected to it: hazing, sexual assault, and premises liability when, say, some kid gets drunk and falls out a window. The fraternity industry is way ahead of us; they have studies going back to 1988 showing that they're aware of the problem. We are just playing catch-up now."

He said ongoing litigation will in crease awareness of the issue, and that many colleges and parents still have little idea of the problem's magnitude. "You don't get to be a bigger insurance risk than asbestos or toxic-waste handlers by having a small problem," Fierberg said.

Hisler agreed that the ultimate responsibility is with fraternities themselves. "We set very high standards for our members, and we expect our members to live up to them," he said. "This is a double-edged sword for us, because it also presents the challenge: Are we truly living what we say?"