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Hazing News

Jonathan Martin admits lying about Richie Incognito

Nearly 12 years after former Miami Dolphins offensive lineman Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito dominated NFL headlines with a bullying scandal, the story has resurfaced and reopened some old wounds.

Scabs have been ripped off, exposing hard feelings that still exist, at least from Incognito, who claims that reporting on the story threatened his NFL career.

During the 2013 season, the 6-foot-5, 315-pound Martin took a leave of absence from the Dolphins allegedly due to bullying and teasing from fellow offensive linemen that went back to the previous year, when he was a rookie. Reports indicated that the behavior directed at Martin went beyond rookie hazing and crossed a line with threats and racist remarks.

FILE - In this July 24, 2013, file photol, Miami Dolphins guard Richie Incognito (68) and tackle Jonathan Martin (71) stand on the field during NFL football practice in Davie, Fla. Martin, the offensive tackle at the center of the Dolphins' bullying scandal, has been traded to the San Francisco 49ers. The Dolphins announced the deal Tuesday night, March 11, 2014, on the first day of NFL free agency. Martin's move cross country brings him back to the Bay Area to be reunited with his former Stanford coach, Jim Harbaugh. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
The Miami Dolphins’ 2013 season was marred by a bullying scandal involving offensive linemen Richie Incognito (68) and tackle Jonathan Martin (71). Incognito was eventually suspended indefinitely for his behavior. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

Incognito, then a seven-year veteran, was identified as the main culprit and the Dolphins eventually suspended him indefinitely for conduct detrimental to the team. He missed the remaining eight games of the season and after a report commissioned by the NFL determined Incognito and two teammates had regularly harassed Martin, he did not play the entire 2014 season.

Martin, now 35, returned to the headlines with an ESPN.com profile that caught up with him 10 years after he retired from the NFL. A Stanford alum, Martin is now pursuing an MBA at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He’s still trying to put his football days in the past while moving on to another stage of his life.

However, in the ESPN story, he said, “I never believed for a second I was being bullied,” adding that he’s been trying to “fix” the story for 10 years.

That admission by Martin sent Incognito on a social media crusade after the article was published on Sunday. The former lineman, who retired from the NFL after the 2020 season, went after ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, demanding responses to Martin’s comments after the two reported on Incognito’s role in the bullying scandal at the time.

“You tried to ruin my career over a lie!” Incognito wrote to the @ProFootballTalk X account. “You tried to ruin my life over this bulls***,” he responded to Schefter. You’ve always been bush league,” he said to Palm Beach Post reporter Joe Schad.

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Hazing News

Hazing Deaths 2000 to 2002: How many chapters are active in 2025?

From 2000 to 2002, these hazing death fraternity chapters were suspended or prohibited from operating. How many are back in 2025?
One sorority lost its chapter. It has not returned.
16 fraternity chapters lost their charter. One chapter lost it one more time after coming back. 11 fraternity chapters once pulled of charters are now operating.
1 high school service club had a death but never stopped operating. It is operating in Florida at the same high school.
2000
Chico State University (California).
Pi Kappa Phi fraternity (not honor society). Alcohol death caused by hazing.
Pledge Adrian Heideman died after being encouraged to drink
190) 2000
Alpha Tau Omega, Old Dominion University
Big Brother/Little Brother bottle exchange led to death on Dec. 1, 2000. The victim who died of alcohol poisoning was Terry Ryan Stirling, 19. The family sued ATO.
No longer active
191) 2000
Alpha Tau Omega, University of Georgia
Road trip death: Pledge sneaks—events in which pledges kidnap members—have widely been condemned by national organizations. Blindfolded and handcuffed Ben Folsom Grantham III died on an apparent pledge sneak.
ATO is back on Georgia campus.
192) 2001
Theta Chi, Indiana University
Accidental rush death: Seth Korona of New Jersey died from the effects of a head injury contracted after consuming beer during a keg stand. Alcohol was a contributing factor but other factors also were involved (namely a previous illness).
Theta Chi is back on campus
193) 2001
Omega Psi Phi, Tennessee State University
Pledging death: A coroner ruled that Joseph T. Green died on a run during an exercise session “suggested” by members. Physical hazing was a cause of death. Unknown if alcohol was present but seems unlikely. This is the second death at this university’s chapter.
Omega Psi Phi is now back on campus.
194) 2001
Kappa Sigma, University of Miami (Fla.)
Accidental drowning of pledge (hazing was ruled out until May 2002 when family attorney reopened and won case
Interesting, Kappa Sigma was back and lost its charter in 2019. It is now back on campus.
195) 2001
Men’s & women’s rugby initiation, University of Minnesota, Duluth
Rugby is no longer a recognized sport here.
196) 2001
Texas Tech University
Delta Sigma Phi
Hazing-related auto fatality
Driver Zachary Jameson fell asleep and flipped the car he was driving, killing Mullins unintentionally.
This chapter is back on campus.
197) 2001
Manatee High School “Interact” Club sponsored by the Bradenton (FL) Rotary Club.
Beating death related to initiation
James Brier was hazed while trying to gain admission into the Manatee High School “Interact” Club sponsored by the Bradenton (FL) Rotary Club. Alcohol was served and he was hazed. He behaved badly and was subsequently bullied by classmate John (Juan) Albert Acosta, son of a Cuba-born physician, Jose Acosta.
The service club remains at Manatee H.S.
198) 2002
Texas Tech University
Tau Kappa Epsilon
Preventable accident due to sleep deprivation
Tragically, the year following the death of Mullins at Texas Tech, another preventable death occurred, this time in TKE.
This chapter is back on campus.
199) 2002
Zeta Beta Tau, Alfred University
Suicide after beating for revealing hazing tradition:
Member Ben Klein was beaten after turning his chapter in for hazing and later died in a creek near the fraternity house.
The university banned fraternities and sororities in 2002.
200, 201) 2002
Tau Kappa Epsilon, San Diego State University
High-speed pledging-related truck crash and rollover accident: Two males associated with the SDSU Tekes, on suspension for hazing, were killed when thrown from their truck as pledges were being taken somewhere from campus.
TKE is active at SDSU
202, 203) 2002
Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, California State, Los Angeles
Drowning but hazing disputed by chapter:The Associated Press reports that the mother of a drowning victim and her friend may have been partaking in a sorority ritual.
204) 2002
Pi Kappa Alpha, University of Nevada, Reno
Drowning Death: Pledge Albert (A.J.) Santos drowned in a University of Nevada campus lake. He was a pledge of Pi Kappa Alpha. There were no arrests. A district attorney refused to call it hazing but instead a prank. Alcohol contributed to the death.
The chapter is not operating in 2025. However, it is on a list of troubled chapters for “outstanding conduct matters.”
205) 2002
Phi Sigma Kappa, University of Maryland
Alcohol connected to Bid Night death:
Daniel Reardon (Photo), 19, was found in a coma in January at the Phi Sigma Kappa house following Bid Night.
father and numerous media reports.
It was banned and never returned.
207) 2002
Occidental College (California)
Alpha Tau Omega
Sleep deprivation of pledges sent on an annual Eagle Rock, Ca. to Las Vegas pledging “tradition”
It was banned and has not returned.
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Hazing News

JMU fraternities have been involved historically in alleged atrocious behaviors and death of Alpha Phi Marisa Curlen

According to JMU’s list of unrecognized fraternities, the sub-rosa chapter involving the deaths of a rushee and two members in 2023 was known under these names at times: List of Unrecognized Organizations: Delta Chi (Also known as: Pi Beta Chi, PBX, Crosskeys Society) – Lost recognition in Fall 2013 due to hazing (forced calisthenics and underage drinking)
__________
Greek life began at Madison College with the addition of Sigma Sigma Sigma in 1939. Madison College in Harrisonburg, Virginia became James Madison University (JMU) on July 1, 1977. Virginia Governor Mills E. Godwin signed the bill changing the name on March 22, 1977.
________________
The attached hazing complaint in 2002 was dismissed and was on my list as an outrage for its dropping in 2002–HN
__________________
This JMU Alpa Phi sorority MEMBER death was termed alcohol poisoning but not ruled hazing in 2015: HARRISONBURG, Va. — The death of 20-year-old James Madison University student Marisa Curlen has stunned a New York community who has lost three students from its 2013 class.
Curlen was found dead in her dorm room in Harrisonburg early Friday morning. An autopsy was pending on Friday night, but the cause appeared to be alcohol poisoning, reported WCBS.
“Preliminary investigation indicates no suspicious circumstances or foul play. The investigation is pending per review from the medical examiner,” Harrisonburg Police Department Lt. Roger Knott. The university has not released an official statement about her death.
Curlen was a sophomore and a member of the Alpha Phi chapter. The sorority posted a picture on Instagram mourning the loss of a sorority sister.
_______________
Sigma Chi at JMU was investigated in 2014:
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What JMU’s Sarah Butters Wants Other Women to Know about “Expulsion After Graduation”
Published
Aug 13, 2014
By
NO MORE
What JMU’s Sarah Butters Wants Other Women to Know about “Expulsion After Graduation”
It was an unfathomably lenient decision: In June, Virginia’s James Madison University punished three Sigma Chi fraternity members for sexually assaulting a female student on spring break by banning them from campus—after graduation.
Two of the attackers could graduate on time; the other would stay on campus for another year until earning his diploma.
Really?
The pathetic punishment crystallized the frustration felt by so many victims of campus rape: Why even bother coming forward? News of the punishment, or lack thereof, went viral. Even Jon Stewart mocked the story.
But there’s a victim behind the headlines and jokes: Sarah Butters. Butters, who’s pursuing her undergraduate degree elsewhere—“I’m just not proud to have a James Madison diploma,” she says—asked to share her side of the story with NO MORE.
As Told to NO MORE
I went on spring break in 2013 with a large portion of my school to Panama City. Everyone there was there was from Greek life. My parents’ big thing was, “Don’t go with someone you don’t know,” but I knew everyone there.
We were drinking on the beach. I was with friends, and at some point I blacked out. I ended up back at the condos we were renting with my friends.
Over the next few days, I heard rumors about a video circulating. Friends were telling me, “You need to say something to these guys.” I immediately went up to one of the guys who I was closest to and asked him, “Do you have a video of me?” I was wondering what I could have done.
photo1He told me that there wasn’t a video. He lied to my face, but I believed him. But later, one of the guys showed it to one of my friends and said: “I could ruin her life with this.”
Friends were telling me what to do: I should press charges; I should just make it go away. I was hearing so many opinions and I couldn’t form my own.
Meanwhile, friends had gotten hold of the video. I was concerned, but I also didn’t want to watch it yet. I was too nervous and helpless. I was dating one of the guys in their frat—I was so close to them.
Two weeks after spring break, I finally sent the video to my best friend, who went to Radford. I needed an outsider to watch it, someone who knew me well. She saw it, and she flipped out. “This looks like what happens before a rape,” she told me. I watched it that night. It was a 90-second video. I was in a bathroom, leaning against a wall, and three guys were groping me, pulling me onto their lap. I kept trying to put my top back on and they’d knock it out of my hand, saying, “You look great.” They were grabbing my breasts, touching me.
I have a scar above my bikini line from an ovarian cyst, and one of the guys kept trying to grab my bikini bottoms to see it. When he tried to do that, I let out a yell. It was such a disturbing yell.
The morning after I watched it, I woke up to a text from one of the guys, saying, “Hey, we didn’t mean for this to be a problem. We’re not sending it around. We can meet up and talk about it.”
I met with them, with my roommate, at my house. I wanted to be in my comfort zone. I get so mad at myself now that I let them in.
They said, “This is an inconvenience for all of us.”
I’ll always remember that. It was such an insincere apology.
I was told by JMU’s judicial affairs office that the common punishment for this kind of harassment is suspension. I was told that it’s very rare for someone to get expelled. I didn’t know what to do—I didn’t want to put myself through the misery of taking action. What if I lost? But I was told, if the judicial board had the video and watched it and could tell who was in it, they’d move forward anyway. So I bought a flash drive and handed them the video. They said they’d review it.
I had a really rough summer emotionally. My grades slipped. I got free counseling at JMU, but it didn’t help.
I was venting with my dad about it a lot. He’s a police officer and he contacted JMU’s director of judicial affairs, Josh Bacon. Bacon said he couldn’t tell if what happened in the video was consensual or not. That was really discouraging. JMU had been my dream school since eighth grade. I trusted them. This is where I felt safe.
I felt I had the short end of the stick. I filed a formal complaint in January 2014. It took JMU over a month to schedule hearings. Once the process started, the guys couldn’t talk to me. If I saw them on campus, it ruined my whole day. It was affecting my whole life, but not theirs at all.
There was a separate trial with each of the three guys. I had to be in the same room during it. It was so disturbing. After the third trial, Josh Bacon said that he’d never seen a case so serious. He told me that he wanted to propose an “abnormal” idea—expulsion after graduation—because they’d just appeal any other punishment, and graduation was coming up anyway. I just started bawling when I heard that. It was not OK. Who would punish them? Who would even know if they were on campus? What if they were tailgating? Or at a reunion? I was told that I’d have to identify them and tell campus police. If they recognized them, they’d be escorted out.
But the burden to identify them was on me. I was devastated.
Bacon went ahead with the expulsion punishment anyway. I read the student handbook; this wasn’t what was supposed to happen. The judicial board had caught them in lies—one guy said he hadn’t grabbed my bikini when clearly he did on the video—it was such crap.
The guys changed their attitude when expulsion was presented. They said they’d earned their diploma and paid for it. They were embarrassed not to be able to bring their kids back to their alma mater.
A local reporter covered my story; it aired locally that June. I didn’t expect it to blow up nationally. I thought it would draw attention to the area but not nationally. The Huffington Post wrote a really fair story about it after that.photo4
When you hear about sexual assault, it’s only recent that the term is “survivor.” It used to be “victim.” I felt like a victim. I felt I never got closure. I never got to move on. But I also got support—from other people who saw the stories, from my sorority who told me how strong I was. My Facebook blew up. Twitter blew up with #standwithbutters. I hadn’t wanted to show myself in these stories, but then I realized if it would help someone else to put a face with the story, I wanted to do it. It helps for people not to read a generic story, but to see who I am.
I filed a federal civil rights violation complaint with the school. That process is going through now. It’s a drawn-out process, but I did it because I don’t want another girl to go through this. If my case was the most serious they’d seen, and I had video evidence, and they still didn’t even get suspended—what would happen to someone else? How could anyone else feel comfortable coming forward?
As for where I am now, I withdrew from JMU. Whenever I used to see a JMU sticker, my heart got happy. But I had to break up with my school.
I’m taking classes at a community college now. I love working with kids, and I want to be a teacher. I’ve always worked to put myself through school, so I need to take one step at a time.
But I’m finding myself through all this. When I saw the NO MORE PSAs, I recognized all the excuses: “She was asking for it. She was drunk.” So I wanted to share my story here.
These are not excuses. I want other women to know—you cannot be bullied into silence.
_____________
James Madison University faces a federal lawsuit due to its unusual punishment of “expulsion after graduation” for three students it deemed to have sexually assaulted a female undergraduate in 2014.
As previously reported by The Huffington Post, JMU found three men responsible for the sexual assault and harassment of Sarah Butters during spring break in 2013, and declared that the students would be punished by not being allowed back on campus after they had graduated.
Jay Kyle Dertzbaugh, Michael Joseph Lunney Jr. and Nicholas John Scallion, who at the time were members of the Sigma Chi fraternity, filmed themselves taking turns groping and fondling Butters and circulated the video to other students on JMU’s campus, according to the suit and legal documents and correspondence Butters provided to HuffPost.
Butters filed a federal complaint against the university in 2014, prompting the Education Department to open an investigation into how the school handles sexual violence. The university said that until now, federal privacy law prevented it from giving its side of the story.
“Now that the plaintiff has filed a civil lawsuit, the university will be at liberty to share the facts and circumstances in the case through the normal channels of litigation in due course,” JMU said Friday in a statement. “As the university already stated, rest assured that as this process unfolds and is resolved, you will see that JMU handles such serious matters with integrity and compassion.”
The university has not made any apology for the punishment that prompted outrage among many in the community. The school has also not elaborated on how it came up with the sanction, except to say it follows guidance from the Association for Student Conduct Administrators, a higher education professionals group that many schools turn to in order to form conduct policies. Higher education policy experts have said they are not aware of any other schools that have used “expulsion after graduation” as a sanction.
Butters’ lawsuit says that the three men assaulted her while she was visibly intoxicated during a spring break trip to Panama City, Florida. After returning to campus, she learned that video of the incident was circulating among members of Greek life. The men initially denied that such a video existed, but Butters obtained a copy, which is now under seal as evidence in her lawsuit.
“We feel really bad and apologize for the drunken stupidity,” Scallion wrote in a text message to Butters shortly after the spring break trip, prior to her filing conduct charges against them with JMU. “We’re not bad guys and we really didn’t mean to disrespect you like this.”
As Butters pursued adjudication against the three men, the chapter president for Sigma Chi expelled the men from the fraternity.
The lawsuit contends the school did not issue a final decision in her case until 396 days after the assault happened. Meanwhile, Butters said in her suit that she “failed all of her classes, lost her financial aid, [and] severed ties with many of her peers” as a result of the incident and how the university handled the adjudication, which she said exacerbated her stress. In May 2014, she dropped out and moved back to her Virginia hometown to work at a hotel.
Categories
Hazing News

2023 death of Joshus (Josh) Mardis and two Pi Beta Chis from JMU called hazing-related by Howard Mardis

Trial begins for driver involved in crash that killed 3 JMU students
youtube.com
Trial begins for driver involved in crash that killed 3 JMU students
Trial begins for the driver in a February crash that killed three James Madison University students. The driver, Campbell Fortune, was 19 at the time of the …

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Hazing News

Pledge set afire for laughs in. a skit: San Diego State University’s Phi Kappa Psi

Story link

Another breaking story from Fox News:

Four members of San Diego State University’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity are facing felony charges after a skit performed at a party last year led to a pledge being set on fire.

The member set on fire suffered third-degree burns that covered more than 16% of his body as a result of the skit performed on Feb. 17, prosecutors said.

Caden Cooper, 22; Lucas Cowling, 20; Christopher Serrano, 20, and Lars Larsen, 19, were each charged Monday with at least one felony, and all four pleaded not guilty. Larsen was the person set on fire.

The charges include recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury, conspiracy to commit an act injurious to the public and violating the social host ordinance. If convicted of all charges, the defendants could face seven years in prison.