Frat Pledge Says He Needed Skin Grafts After Hazing

Johnson & Wales student sues, saying flesh necrotized after 'torturous' TKE ritual
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 21, 2015 2:04 PM CDT
Frat Pledge Says He Needed Skin Grafts After Hazing
Worcester Polytechnic Institute students and members of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity jump from the frat house porch roof into the snow in Worcester, Mass., Feb. 9, 2013.   (AP Photo/Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Paul Kapteyn)

He was branded, hit with wooden paddles, burned with cigarettes, made to eat raw onions and butter until he vomited, and then forced to shower in that vomit—and his resulting injuries were so bad he needed skin grafts afterward. Those are the claims of a Rhode Island student who filed a complaint on April 16 against the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Providence's Johnson & Wales University; he says his "torturous" hazing—which TKE members reportedly carried out "in the name of brotherhood" during rush week last fall—caused his flesh to necrotize, the Courthouse News Service reports. The New York resident says in the suit that he was the last man standing out of three during what he's now calling an "extreme and brutal" rush ritual.

The complaint says after the hazing, the student "was in so much pain he could not walk or sit" and that "he developed jaundice and a fever," but he says he didn't initially turn in TKE or seek medical help because he didn't want to get the frat in trouble. That changed after he went to sleep on the night of Nov. 2 and woke up in the ICU, where he's said to have stayed for almost a month; it's during that period he says he received the skin grafts. The suit was brought against not only TKE, but five frat officials, with the student seeking damages for negligence, malicious misconduct, and other claims. (Jon Hamm recently garnered some unwanted attention for allegedly being involved in a 1990 frat hazing.)

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