Criminal charges have been filed in connection with an alleged night of violent and racist hazing at a University of Alabama fraternity last fall.
One of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon members named in a 5-count lawsuit filed after the incident last August has now been charged with one count of misdemeanor harassment and one count of criminal hazing, the Tuscaloosa Thread reported.
The suspect, who was not named in the report, faces up to three months in jail and a $500 fine on each county, the Thread said. It’s not known if anyone else will be charged in the incident.
The incident took place at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house on the Tuscaloosa campus and reportedly left a freshman pledge with a traumatic brain injury, as CrimeOnline reported. The lawsuit was filed by the parents of the student, identified as “H.B.,” and accuses the 167-year-old fraternity of turning “a blind eye to hazing and pledgeship.”
The lawsuit says that H.B. was ordered to attend the chapter house on August 14 and was pummeled by fraternity members when he refused to “snort a white powdery substance.” When he tried to leave, he was forced into a kiddie pool and doused with a hose before ordering him to yell a racial epithet “at a Black student passerby.” He refused, and the fraternity members hit him with the water hose again and made him run sprints “while active members launched blunt objects at his legs.”
The last act was to force him to do push-ups while members hurled a basketball at his head.
H.B. left the fraternity house and was later taken to an emergency room, where he was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and a concussion.
According to The Thread, the university declined to comment about the charges except to say the school “has zero tolerance for hazing” and that the SAE “chapter was placed on disciplinary probation through the end of Fall Semester 2024.
SAE was founded in Tuscaloosa in 1856 and moved its national headquarters to Evanston, Illinois, in 1929.
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[Featured image: Sigma Alpha Epsilon on the University of Alabama campus/Google Maps]
