Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 2/18/03 Section: Campus News

Nearly four weeks after two rival San Jose State University fraternities met at Flickinger Park for a midnight brawl that left one SJSU student dead and others injured, campus officials have not yet initiated judicial proceedings in the matter.

First, San Jose police must be allowed to complete their investigation, said St. Saffold, associate vice president for campus life.

"Upon the conclusion of that investigation, the San Jose Police Department will communicate its results to the University Police Department, which then will communicate them to our judicial affairs office," Saffold said. "That springs us into action, if you will."

In the meantime, a university police detective functions as a liaison with the city's homicide unit, said UPD Capt. Bruce Lowe.

"We hope to get names from San Jose police in two to three weeks," Lowe said.

SJPD Sgt. Steve Dixon said releasing names prematurely would jeopardize criminal justice proceedings.

"We'll give our case to the district attorney's office, and they will tell us what names we can release to the university," Dixon said.

Judicial affairs will then initiate conferences and hearings that could produce probations, suspensions and expulsions for indicted (university code-violating) members of Pi Alpha Phi and Lambda Phi Epsilon, as well as any other SJSU students cited by city police, Saffold said.

During the Jan. 22 brawl at the park, 23-year-old SJSU student and Lambda member Alam Kim was stabbed in the heart and killed, according to the SJPD.

San Jose police issued a $1 million warrant on Jan. 29 for 20-year-old De Anza College student Long Duy Tran of San Jose in connection with the fight.

So far Tran has evaded city police.

"We'll pick him up," Dixon said.

Confused and hurting

For now, SJSU students involved in the deadly rumble may still come to class, even though SJSU President Robert Caret has cut all university ties to their organizations, said Angela Harper, Greek Life coordinator.

"The students are still part of the campus community, unless they have chosen to voluntarily not be," Harper said.

With a fellow student dead, a murder investigation hanging over their heads and probable criminal and civil court proceedings in their futures, those who convoyed to Flickinger Park last month may be too stressed to attend classes now, Harper said.

"There is some obvious concern for how they are dealing with something as difficult as this," Harper said.

Some of the fraternity brothers have phoned and e-mailed the Mosaic Cross Cultural Center for advice and comfort, said Coordinator Hyon Chu Yi.

"We know that they're afraid and that they feel isolated - in part because a lot of them thought they were being automatically expelled from the university," Yi said. "We know that's not the case - that's not how our judicial process plays out. It will be on a case-by-case basis."

Yi said she heard that some of the students involved in the Flickinger incident are taking the semester off to recover emotionally.

"They are confused, and they are hurting right now," Yi said. "Some of the students have decided to lower their class loads this semester, and some of them have decided they're not going to attend their classes this semester, and they hope to come back next fall."

The unprecedented magnitude of this school tragedy - and the uncertainty of the SJPD's investigation - means the university may not know how and what to communicate to the members of shell-shocked fraternities, Yi said.

"There's been a mix of emotions, but for the most part I know they're not very clear as to where the university stands because they have not been directly told what's going to happen to them," Yi said.

Checking the files

Students who fought at Flickinger Park and are now taking time off to cope with the loss of Kim and the devastation of SJSU's two premier Asian American fraternities will not dodge disciplinary action by being absent, Yi said.

"One of the assumptions may be, 'If I don't take classes this semester then judicial affairs can't do anything to me,' which is not true," Yi said.

Saffold said he has heard the same thing. In this case, he said, there will be no statute of limitations.

"We will be checking the files in subsequent semesters to see if (those involved in the brawl) are enrolled, and we will contact them and bring them in at whatever point they choose to return," Saffold said.

Saffold said two SJSU codes of conduct apply in this situation - one for students and one for student organizations.

"There are really two processes that are kind of parallel," Saffold said.

Despite disarray and abandoned fraternity houses, full and proper judicial proceedings will unfold, Saffold said.

"We have been made to understand that one of the two fraternities has elected to disband itself," he said. "Regardless, both organizations will be put through the process (of a judicial review) simply because one of things we know is that they went (to Flickinger Park) and they did battle. That alone puts them in violation."

Holding leaders responsible for groups

Officers of Pi Alpha Phi and Lambda Phi Epsilon will be called upon to represent their fraternities in campus hearings but will not necessarily face individual hearings, Saffold said.

"They do have some responsibility with regards to exercising some leadership control over the membership," Saffold said. "But if a member (of the fraternities) was fighting or having some significant involvement in this incident - and the officers were not fighting - you kind of have to pull the member out. As student officers, they may only have so much control over the members, so to hold them responsible for the individuals' acts might be unfair and a stretch at best."

Yet the question of officer culpability could surface in civil court, Saffold said.

San Jose police said that the fraternities were involved in taunting and egg throwing the afternoon before the Flickinger fight, and that members of the organizations managed to contact outsiders and recruit them into battle.

"There were people at Flickinger Park who weren't fraternity members or (SJSU) students," Dixon said.

Dixon said homicide investigators are interviewing more than 70 people in connection with the brawl.

The thought of fraternity presidents mobilizing for such a battle is reprehensible, Harper said.

"The expectation of an officer would be not to be engaging in (physical violence)," Harper said.

The officers of Greek organizations are supposedly the most responsible people in their chapters, said Meredith Moran, director of the Student Life Center.

However, Moran said she agreed with Harper in that the group dynamics of this situation may be complicated.

"Being an elected leader is different from being the (inherent) leader of a group," Harper said. "From my experience, it's not like the members of the group are following three or four people, doing everything they say."

Saffold said the officers may have done all they could to prevent the catastrophic conflict.

"A conceivable situation is that the officers may very well have tried to exercise their responsibility by traveling along with the group and trying to dissuade them from going into battle," he said. "It's going to be difficult to make that determination."

Cultural norms

and counseling

Students involved in the SJPD's investigation can still use on-campus counseling services, Moran said.

"The university definitely has reached out to individuals to ensure that they understand the (judicial) process, and the university services are still available to them," Moran said.

Despite good intentions, counseling services could go unused by grieving Asian American students for cultural reasons, Yi said.

"I think within the Asian community there's always been a taboo about seeking any kind of psychological counseling," Yi said. "It's not something that's encouraged because of a fear of feeling like you're weak. This is a generalization, but for the most part counseling has not always been viewed as a good thing."

Nevertheless, Yi said her staff continues to suggest counseling for any troubled students.

"Certainly, we've been encouraging them to get help if they feel like this is way too much on their shoulders if they've been having a difficult time in their classes or a difficult time period," Yi said.

Yi said SJSU counselors are very culturally sensitive.

"If the students choose not to use the service, I don't think it's necessarily because the counseling center is insensitive," Yi said.

Though the Mosaic Cross Cultural Center has talked with local and national leaders of Pi Alpha Phi and Lambda Phi Epsilon, communication has tapered off recently possibly because lawyers now represent the groups, Yi said.

"I know that there's an attorney working with the Lambdas, and I'm pretty positive that Pi Alpha Phi also has an attorney," she said. "I'm sure they've been given advice to be very careful about what they share."

More than drinking

and fighting

Meanwhile, other SJSU Greek organizations have been meeting individually and in their respective councils to discus the scrutiny they are under, Harper said.

"They certainly understand the challenges this puts on them," she said. "But to incriminate them because they have Greek letters is not at all fair."

Harper said a date is being set for all 35 SJSU fraternities and sororities to formally convene.

"'How can we as a community show the best of ourselves' is definitely something (campus Greeks) have talked about," she said.

Going drinking and getting into fights does not wholly describe the past behavior of Pi Alpha Phi and Lambda Phi Epsilon, Yi said.

"Certainly, both the organizations have a history of being service organizations," she said. "I know the Lambdas put on a successful bone marrow drive, which is very hard to do in the Asian American Community."

Yi said rumors of all-out war between the fraternities are overblown, and that the groups mingled in the same social circles.

"My understanding is that they were social outside their fraternities," she said. "They did hang out with each other - maybe not on an everyday basis."

Yi also said that both groups had planned to attend Mosaic workshops in order to receive funding from the center.

Competition for pledges did cause tension between the fraternities, Yi said.

"They had the inherent competitive rivalry like you have in any Greek organization, but more so because they were the two dominant Asian American fraternities on campus," Yi said.

Both organizations were relatively new, having formed in the last 10 years, Harper said, and they may have been structurally weaker than other fraternities that have stood for 100 to 150 years.

"That's not to put down new (Greek) groups in the sense that this is a danger, but, sure, that might have contributed to their particular challenges," Harper said.

However, Harper said gang-like midnight brawls could be called a rare occurrence anywhere Greek life thrives, new or old.

Brushes with law offered no warning

The Spartan Daily has obtained a police report from the university police in which witnesses identify Kim and six other Lambdas as instigators of an on-campus scuffle on Feb. 24, 2002.

Also, university police responded to 15 disturbances of the peace at the Pi Alpha Phi house since 1999, according to police media logs. No reports were filed regarding the disturbances.

All campus officials contacted for this story denied that the university could have used this information to prevent the Flickinger catastrophe.

Yi said past UPD incidents had nothing to do with last month's violence.

"It's so unfortunate (that the media implied) that the university knew something and could have intervened," Yi said.

The SJPD's investigation will offer campus officials a chance to reevaluate the dynamics of a new generation of SJSU students, Harper said.

"Our hope is that we can come out of this with some ideas about how these things happen - and use them to do positive and proactive things for the campus," she said.

Beyond gloomy regrets lies enlightenment, Moran said.

"I'm sure everyone would like to turn back the clock. Hopefully we'll gain more insight and understanding down the road," Moran said.

Because of recent tragedies involving the deaths of four SJSU students, Yi said an open memorial would bolster campus morale.

"I know there's been some talk about using Spartan Memorial as a space for students to memorialize those who died and to express their condolences to their families," Yi said. "Even if we didn't know (those who have died) intimately, they were part of our community."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools