A fraternity at Rutgers University has been permanently closed as a result of a hazing episode that critically injured a 19-year-old student this month, the fraternity’s parent organization said on Saturday.
The fraternity, the Rutgers chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi, has been under investigation since Oct. 15, when the police responded to its house on College Avenue in New Brunswick, N.J., just after midnight to find the 19-year-old man unconscious and unresponsive. He was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in critical condition.
The Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the possibility of criminal charges, it said in a statement this week. The Alpha Sigma Phi parent organization, in its own investigation, found this week that hazing had taken place.
Hazing is barred by the fraternity and the university, as well as by New Jersey state law. The Alpha Sigma Phi national organization urged Rutgers and prosecutors to take a tough approach to the hazing at the fraternity house to ensure that similar episodes do not occur in the future.
“Hazing is illegal and will not be condoned or tolerated,” Gordy Heminger, the president and chief executive of the Alpha Sigma Phi national organization, said in a statement. He added that all fraternity members directly or indirectly involved in the Rutgers episode would be expelled from the fraternity and that the chapter had been shut down.
The chapter’s status was listed as closed on the university’s website as of Wednesday. Rutgers officials did not immediately return a request for comment on Saturday.
Danny Miller, a spokesman for the national fraternity, said by email on Saturday that the episode had taken place in the basement of the fraternity house and that water had become involved.
A spokeswoman for the county prosecutor’s office on Thursday told Patch, a local news website, that the victim, who has not been identified, had been electrocuted after coming into contact with exposed electrical wires and remained hospitalized, though his condition had been improving. The office did not immediately return a request for comment on Saturday.
The fraternity house, at 106 College Avenue in New Brunswick, has a lengthy history of building violations, including exposed wiring, according to the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs.
The property, owned by the Rutgers Alumni Association and managed by CLVEN, the national housing arm of Alpha Sigma Phi, was declared uninhabitable following the hazing episode and shuttered. The national fraternity declined to comment on questions related to the building’s condition.
Less than a month before the hazing, an inspection found 19 violations, including obstructed exits, broken or missing fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, and several areas that inspectors were unable to access.
New Jersey requires all middle schools, high schools and higher education institutions to have strict anti-hazing policies and penalties under a 2021 law named after Timothy Piazza, a 19-year-old New Jersey resident who died after falling down a flight of stairs while being hazed at Pennsylvania State University in 2017.
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
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