An Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at California State University in Los Angeles is facing a $100 million lawsuit in connection with the deaths of two of its pledges during an alleged hazing incident.
Kristin High, 22, and Kenitha Saafir, 24, both drowned Sept. 9 at Dockweiler State Beach near Playa del Rey.
The lawsuit filed by the High family says the students were “blindfolded and tied by their hands and their bodies and led into the riptide conditions of the ocean.”
It continues by saying, “that night, the waves were cresting six to eight feet and creating a strong under-current resulting from riptide.”
The two girls were wearing jogging clothes and shoes when they entered the water.
An initial investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department said the two deaths were accidental and unrelated to any hazing actions.
The lawsuit calls AKA’s hazing policy “a sham” and targets the AKA national organization, the regional chapter and individuals from California State’s chapter.
Ron Binder, an expert on hazing who has traveled to over 100 campuses and spoken to nearly 10,000 students, said the parents’ actions are not unusual.
“Typically they sue everybody,” Binder said. “They sue the university, they sue the fraternity or sorority involved, they sue the national organization, the local people, they sue everybody. Then starts the dance of who is going to get out of the lawsuit.”
Binder said the national organization and the university are likely to get out of the lawsuit, leaving the sorority’s members to take the brunt of the litigation.
“Usually universities get out of the lawsuits because unless they have prior knowledge of the hazing going on, they’ll show they provide education, like myself speaking, and then the university will say they brought in a speaker to prevent this type of stuff,” Binder said. “The national fraternities usually get out of it because they have speakers at their conferences and conventions, and they can probably show that people reported hazing, and this is what they did to stop it. Unfortunately, what’s left after everybody is done is the undergraduates.”
Hazing among fraternities and sororities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been relegated to minor incidents according to Ed Mirecki, UW’s fraternity and sorority advisor.
“We’ve been fortunate, and it’s due to the student leadership on this campus, that we haven’t had any significant incidents in the time that I have been here in the past two years,” Mirecki said. “We do get reports of minor incidents that go on, like students wearing different pieces of clothing to class that makes them stand out. Last fall, people were running up Langdon Street throwing eggs. There is still a lot of mystery about what was going on there.”
Mirecki said the university regularly brings in speakers to address the issue of hazing in Greek houses at UW. One such speaker was Ron Binder who came to UW two years ago.
Binder noted that incidents like those at California State are not reflective of the national Greek system. He said there were roughly 500,000 students in fraternities and sororities, compared to 300,000 students on intercollegiate athletic teams.
Binder offered some words of wisdom to those thinking about joining a fraternity or sorority.
“For the people joining fraternities and sororities, make sure you do your homework in the groups you are joining,” Binder said. “Certainly, if you ask students on campus, they’ll tell you which ones are the ones who follow the rules and which ones are the ones that don’t.
“A lot of times people really get into pledging. If we are following through to what our founders put down, then really there should be no need for hazing. My bottom line is no founder ever pledged.”
