The fraternity pledges gathered for a run before dawn.
In single file, led by three brothers, the 27 pledges set out for about two miles, turning onto Old Greenville Highway, crossing the bridge over Lake Hartwell and back.
One of them, Tucker Hipps, never returned.
The sophomore’s body was found that afternoon, floating under the bridge. He died from blunt-force trauma to his face, palms, and chest — the result of a head-first fall from 20 feet, according to the coroner. A toxicology report turned up no alcohol or drugs in his system.
His fellow runners, all students at Clemson University, haven’t offered a clear explanation of what happened on that day last September. Local police have interviewed 50 people, including everyone on the run that day, and concluded that some of them have been withholding information or lying. Either that, the Oconee County sheriff told the local news, “or we’ve got the greatest mystery in the world.” The case is now in the hands of an unsolved-crimes investigator.
Tucker’s parents, Gary and Cindy Hipps, allege in a pair of lawsuits that a pattern of hazing climaxed in a confrontation between Tucker and a fraternity member on the bridge.
The circumstances of Tucker’s death, to the extent that they’re known, evoke broader tensions that confound many universities, national fraternities, parents, and their children: how to promote a culture of responsibility while reducing risk, how to encourage a basic desire to belong while guarding against coercion. The Hipps’s claims also paint a picture of a toxic mix of forces — self-governance, secrecy, and the lure of tradition — that allow dangerous behavior to persist at fraternities and draw undergraduates like Tucker to them in the first place.
Self-governance, a bedrock notion for fraternities, has long been credited with endowing the experience with its developmental power. It gives young men the space to assert their independence and, crucially, to hold one another accountable. No pledge would say self-governance is what attracted him to fraternity life, but it is that concept that grants these organizations their unusually wide latitude on campus and, ultimately, their ability to sell themselves as hives for alcohol, parties, and sex.
Fraternities also tap into something deep, almost atavistic, for some people. Bound in tradition and secrecy, offering power and connection, fraternities draw young men who crave belonging and ritual a way to come of age.
Tucker’s parents maintain that both individuals and institutions let their son down. They have sued three fraternity brothers, the local chapter and national office of Sigma Phi Epsilon, and Clemson, all of whom have denied many of the assertions made. Most are seeking to have the case dismissed.
“If you have youth, autonomy, and misguided allegiance, that combination is a tragedy waiting to happen.”
His parents wish that what happened to Tucker was an anomaly, but they believe it is not. His death was one of at least four fraternity-related fatalities nationwide this past academic year. At least one hazing-related death has occurred in the Greek system each year since 1970, according to Hank Nuwer, an expert on the topic.
“If you have youth, autonomy, and misguided allegiance,” Mr. Hipps says, “that combination is a tragedy waiting to happen.”
Joining a fraternity held a powerful appeal for Tucker Hipps.
His plans to rush surprised his father, who had never joined the Greek system. What, he thought, did his son need a fraternity for? Tucker already had plenty of friends from home; he grew up half an hour away from campus. His high-school sweetheart was also at Clemson, so he didn’t need help meeting women.
His parents were also worried about money. They had budgeted for four years of college and thought that fraternity activities might push him off track.
But Tucker loved feeling a sense of brotherhood. He thrived at Palmetto Boys State, a leadership program run by the American Legion, which he attended as a camper and counselor over three summers. His penchant for hugs and his infectious smile stuck in people’s minds there. So did his leadership skills.
Tucker pushed back against his father’s doubts. He told him that a fraternity could help him with contacts for a job. The Greek system claimed about one in four students at Clemson, and Tucker saw fraternities as the locus of social life. He rushed Sigma Phi Epsilon, his first choice.
One Thursday night in September, Tucker’s parents treated him, his girlfriend, and his roommate to dinner at Pixie and Bill’s, a steak-and-seafood house. Tucker’s mother asked him if the news she’d heard from a friend was true: Was he really pledge president?
He was, he told them, even though he didn’t seek the office. The news heightened Mr. Hipps’s concern that the fraternity was becoming all-engrossing. His son’s role seemed to make him a gofer and dispatcher who was constantly on call. During dinner, Tucker was peppered with messages from the fraternity; in two hours, he received four texts and a phone call, and tracked 15 posts on a group messaging app.
After Tucker’s death, his parents read the messages. Mr. and Ms. Hipps allege that Tucker and other pledges had to clean, move furniture, pick up food, mow grass, run errands, and ferry fraternity brothers around campus. Clemson found a similar pattern of servitude, which violates its hazing policy, and which the fraternity brothers deny. No one disputes that the pledges had to keep “pledge packs,” which included condoms, cigarettes, and chewing tobacco, in their cars for the brothers.
Tucker’s father had already warned the young man not to burn all his spending money on gas to drive fraternity members around in his truck. But Tucker hoped he wouldn’t have to be their lackey for much longer. He was sure to get inducted soon.
As they left the restaurant, Tucker’s parents hugged him and told him they loved him. It was the last time they would see him alive.
Colleges often have complicated relationships with their fraternities, sometimes holding them close, other times keeping their distance.
Clemson is no different. Publicly, it peddles a positive picture of Greek life. The university’s website plays up the pluses: making lifelong friends, serving the community, and developing leadership potential. The negative portrayals of Greek life in the media, it assures parents, are stereotypes, the result of incomplete information. The university also offers parents a presentation during summer orientation. “It’s intended to be a frank discussion,” said Cathy Sams, Clemson’s chief public-affairs officer. Tucker’s parents say they heard how students in the Greek system excel academically and develop great time-management skills. Ms. Hipps left the session thinking that there would be strong oversight.
But in private last fall, Clemson’s administrators expressed a growing sense of alarm as fraternities’ behavior grew more unruly.
“There have been unprecedented conduct issues over the course of the first three weeks of school,” Gail DiSabatino, then the vice president of student affairs, wrote to James P. Clements, Clemson’s president. There had been 15 complaints about fraternities from parents and students during the first month of the semester: Five involved hazing, three sexual misconduct, and seven alcohol abuse.
Ms. DiSabatino outlined her plan: Impose a three-week moratorium on all social activities at fraternities. Require the Interfraternity Council to present a safety and risk-management plan. Shorten the number of weeks dedicated to new-member initiation. “We hope,” she wrote on a Saturday in September, “that this shortened period will reduce the likelihood of hazing activities.”
Mr. Clements responded the next afternoon, according to emails obtained through an open-records request. The president said he shared her concerns. He told Ms. DiSabatino the university’s response to the conduct issues should “be proportionate to the problem, being mindful that the safety of our students is of paramount concern.” The details of Clemson’s actions, the president said, would be up to her.
On Sunday night, Ms. DiSabatino updated the president on her revised plans. The Interfraternity Council’s response to Clemson’s concerns — suspending parties that weekend — and the lack of problems during that time had persuaded her to back off of the moratorium. She hoped it would mean, she wrote, “little to no media attention or community angst.”
The next morning, Tucker died.
Afterward, Clemson suspended the activities of its 24 fraternities. Many members chafed at being punished as a group for what seemed like the poor choices of a few. Some members of the Greek community said that Ms. DiSabatino overreacted. In early December, Mr. Clements dismissed her.
“The issues impacting your effectiveness are beyond rehabilitation,” he wrote to her in a letter that was later published in local media. It stood in stark contrast to her last formal evaluation, the year before, by Mr. Clements’s predecessor. “Clemson is a better place because of Gail DiSabatino,” James F. Barker wrote in a letter that The Chronicle acquired via an open-records request. Ms. DiSabatino declined to be interviewed for this article, citing her departure agreement.
Clemson has also declined, through its media office, to talk about the particulars of the lawsuit, instead providing brief reports from its Office of Community and Ethical Standards. In Clemson’s legal filings, it says Ms. DiSabatino’s dismissal was not related to Tucker’s death.
At Clemson, as elsewhere, institutional oversight of fraternities can be inadequate. Few universities dedicate more than a handful of staff members to Greek life, and those employees are often young and inexperienced, say student-advising experts. Clemson’s Greek-life office is staffed by eight people, five of them graduate assistants, who serve 4,600 fraternity and sorority members. The size of Clemson’s office is typical for universities of its size, experts say.
Colleges have little incentive to exert more authority over their Greek systems, says Scott D. Schneider, a former associate general counsel at Tulane University. Institutions can expose themselves to greater risk if they take an active role in monitoring Greek life. That’s the lesson of an influential appeals-court ruling from 1999, which found that the University of Idaho had to live up to a higher standard of responsibility because it stationed two Greek-life employees at a fraternity party. A young woman who got drunk at that party later plummeted from a third-floor fire escape and sustained permanent injuries.
There are also practical considerations, Mr. Schneider said. It’s unrealistic, he said, to expect a college to be able to fully protect students from themselves.
“Let’s say I hire 100 people to police Greek life,” he said. “Is that going to stop these sorts of incidents from taking place? My intuition says it’s not.”
Since Tucker’s death, Clemson has announced that it is stepping up its oversight. A report released in July described an inconsistent culture of accountability among fraternities and a lack of trust between Clemson and its Greek organizations. The plan calls for more staffers and oversight; more training of chapter heads, members, and advisers; stronger disciplinary procedures; stricter sanctions for violations; and a requirement that security guards check IDs at parties. With these measures, the university aspires to change campus culture around alcohol and hazing.
“This is pretty significant for us,” said Almeda Jacks, Ms. DiSabatino’s replacement, after the report was made public, “certainly going beyond and above the national expectations and requirements.”
Still, Clemson, like other universities, continues to be caught between its desires to promote the positive aspects of Greek life with its duties to warn of the problems. Click past the smiling faces of two sorority sisters on Clemson’s Greek-life home page, and a link titled “Important News” brings readers to descriptions of enforcement actions taken against fraternity chapters. The blurbs reflect the scope of the investigations Clemson has conducted of its student-conduct code violations. They are written in bureaucratese. Sigma Phi Epsilon, it’s explained, was suspended for five years for violating regulations related to “alcohol, hazing, harm to person, failure to comply with official request, disruption of community and ethical standards, and student organization conduct.”
You wouldn’t know a student had died.
An arm’s-length relationship can also characterize national fraternities’ oversight of their chapters. This is true of Sigma Phi Epsilon, even though it has built a reputation among fraternities as one of the reformers.
After a rash of bad publicity in the 1990s, Sigma Phi Epsilon created the Balanced Man Program, a curriculum of presentations, readings, discussions, and other activities intended to help its members make the transition to college, socially, physically, and academically, and to continue developing.
It also banned traditional pledging, creating a single tier of membership instead of the customary two: member and pledge. “Generally the concept of two-tiered membership is only going to lead to one place,” Brian C. Warren Jr., the national office’s chief executive, said in an interview. “And that’s hazing.”
But its national policies have not applied everywhere. The Balanced Man Program has been optional for chapters, although that might change. Clemson was one of the 16 chapters, out of Sigma Phi Epsilon’s 228, that didn’t adopt the program. The Clemson chapter also continued to treat new members as pledges.
Mr. Warren said the national office had grown increasingly concerned about Clemson’s chapter before Tucker’s death. His staff paid it more attention than was customary, visiting at least four times a year and calling and emailing. Knowing the culture in place at Clemson, Mr. Warren said, the national office tried to encourage an approach to recruiting and accountability that was more in line with the Balanced Man Program.
After Clemson concluded an investigation into Tucker’s death, Sigma Phi Epsilon withdrew the university’s charter. In his letter announcing the decision, Mr. Warren noted that many members’ text messages around the time of the fatal run showed that several brothers had violated fraternity and university policy. Some of them had also, he added, provided false information to Clemson’s staff during their investigation. He counseled them not to bother appealing the university’s decision to kick them off campus.
How did the relationship fray so badly? Part of the explanation is the assumption of independence that underlies the corporate structure of most fraternities. A Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter is an unincorporated association that exists under a charter granted by the national organization. “The undergraduate chapter is responsible for all aspects of its own existence,” the preamble to its bylaws reads.
This arrangement grows out of fraternities’ historical culture of self-governance and the expectation that young men will hold one another accountable. A national office with, say, 15,000 active members, like Sigma Phi Epsilon, can only monitor so much, say lawyers for fraternities.
And so the relationship between campus chapters and the national office can seem tenuous and a bit transactional. Local chapters of Sigma Phi Epsilon paid some $5 million in dues in 2012 to the national office, according to its most recent Form 990, the financial disclosure that nonprofit groups file with the Internal Revenue Service. In return, the members tap into a national network of fellow brothers and attend the national office’s conferences and trainings.
The members must safeguard the group’s secrets and rituals, which bind them to one another and to their history. Sigma Phi Epsilon’s bylaws state that a member can be disciplined for “causing to be written or printed, or revealing in any manner whatsoever, any of the secret work of the fraternity.” And if the local fraternity’s members are found to haze or do something to embarrass the organization, their charter is yanked.
The notion of self-governance may need to be rethought, says Gentry McCreary, chief executive of Dyad Strategies, a research and assessment firm that helps fraternities and sororities develop anti-hazing, ethical-reasoning, and sexual-assault programs.
Over the last two decades, he says, students have changed. Many of them were raised by helicopter parents and arrive on campus with little experience solving conflicts. Compared with previous generations, research has shown, today’s undergraduates exhibit lower levels of moral development and empathy. Students, Mr. McCreary argues, are also more narcissistic and have less experience holding their peers accountable. And without accountability, he says, self-governance is “a really tall order.”
With universities and national fraternities often on the periphery, power at each fraternity house devolves to young men.
In the hours before the run at Clemson, Tucker received a slew of phone calls and text messages, his parents’ lawsuit alleges. He was told to bring 30 McDonald’s biscuits, 30 orders of hash browns, and two gallons of chocolate milk to the fraternity dormitory that morning. Tucker texted back, saying he didn’t have the money.
They met at about 5:30 a.m., dressed in dark clothing so they wouldn’t be seen. Clemson’s policies forbid fraternities from holding new-member events before 7 a.m.
On the run, Tucker fell to the back of the group. Behind him was Thomas King, a full-fledged member, who hung back, the lawsuit says, to make sure no one fell behind. The group approached a bridge, one of two parallel two-lane spans that cross Lake Hartwell. Mr. King received a phone call. It was a fellow member, back at the dorm, who was “pissed off,” the lawsuit alleges. Tucker had failed to provide breakfast.
Mr. King confronted Tucker when they were on the bridge, according to the parents’ lawsuit, a claim Mr. King denies. “Subsequently,” the parents’ lawsuit continues, “Tucker went over the railing of the bridge into the shallow waters of Lake Hartwell head first.”
Tucker went over. How, or why, remains unclear.
The Hippses, in their lawsuit, suggest one explanation: Sigma Phi Epsilon’s local chapter carried on a tradition of “requiring, pressuring, encouraging, and forcing” pledges to leap off bridges over Lake Hartwell and swim to shore.
The fraternity members deny this assertion. Campbell T. Starr, one of three fraternity members who participated in the run and are now defendants, said he had never jumped off the bridges over the lake during any chapter event nor had he seen anyone else do it. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
The runners returned home and ate breakfast. After Tucker failed to show up, some of them started making calls to find out where he was, his parents’ lawsuit says. A few drove around looking for him. One of them texted Tucker’s girlfriend to reassure her that he had been seen in the library.
After 1 p.m., they called campus police to report him missing. His body was found two hours later.
Several of the defendants blame Tucker for his own demise. His death, the fraternity wrote in its response to the lawsuit, was due to him “voluntarily jumping into the water.” In their responses, two of the fraternity brothers also said Tucker’s “negligence,” “recklessness,” and “willfulness and wantonness” caused his death. No one spelled out why he might have chosen to jump from the bridge.
The argument that a pledge caused his own death is a common defense in such cases, say legal experts. It is increasingly discordant, though, with an evolving view of hazing that considers it a form of interpersonal violence, like bullying and sexual assault, where lines of consent and coercion can quickly get muddy.
While South Carolina law defines hazing in purely physical terms, hazing often operates on a psychological level. Belittling, humiliation, and being ordered around by someone more powerful than you — especially someone whose approval you’re seeking — can undermine a person’s autonomy. When such dynamics are in effect, how much consent can there truly be?
About half of the 44 states with anti-hazing laws include mental harm in their definitions. Florida, which has one of the most-stringent laws in the country, lists examples of mental hazing in its statute: sleep deprivation, exclusion from social contact, extreme embarrassment, forcing someone to do something that compromises their mental health or dignity. Arguing that the victim consented, Florida says, is no defense.
Among fraternity men, 81 percent said they had been hazed, according to research by Elizabeth J. Allan, a professor of higher education at the University of Maine at Orono. But people who have been hazed are far more likely to frame their experience as positive than negative. Ms. Allan found that 31 percent said being hazed made them feel more like a part of their group; 22 percent said it led to a feeling of accomplishment. Only 11 percent said it made them feel stressed.
Or they simply grit their teeth and take it, hoping their endurance will prove their worth. Tucker’s parents remember him as being choosy about his friends, but they think something changed when he started rushing. “He wanted to be a part of this system so bad,” Mr. Hipps says, “that he was willing to turn off some of his alarms.”
Research on hazing is still emerging, but some lessons are becoming clear. Legislating against specific acts is unlikely to fix the problem, Ms. Allan says. For example, when some colleges banned alcohol, pledges still died, as happened at California State University at Chico and the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. The problem wasn’t booze. The pledges drank too much water.
“It’s not about the ‘what’; it’s about the ‘how,’” she said. “It’s all about power, ultimately.”
A billboard near Clemson’s campus offers a reward for tips about what happened to Tucker. Gary and Cindy Hipps have been trying to find meaning in the death of their only child. They lean on their faith to cope with their heartbreak.
They hope their son’s death will lead to changes at Clemson, fraternities, and beyond: more oversight, tort reform to allow larger damages from state institutions, stronger anti-hazing laws. They worry that, under the systems in place, what happened to Tucker will befall someone else. “It’s more,” Mr. Hipps said, “than whoever was on the bridge that day.”
Mr. Hipps keeps his son’s memory alive through social media. He sometimes posts Tucker’s old tweets and responds to them, keeping up a conversation with his dead son.
Tucker’s parents invoke his example as they grapple with how they should act. They imagine that Tucker would forgive the brothers who were on the bridge that day for whatever might have happened.
They like to think they would do the same if they had the chance. But no one has come forward. There is no one to forgive.
Dan Berrett writes about teaching, learning, the curriculum, and educational quality. Follow him on Twitter @danberrett, or write to him at dan.berrett@chronicle.com.