UNR frat warned before death

Jennifer Knight

Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

Just weeks before the drowning of fraternity pledge A.J. Refuerzo Santos, a University of Nevada, Reno official warned members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity to do away with traditions that do not advance the organization.

"I told them that they need to think about the traditions they set," said Rich Whitney, UNR leadership and Greek coordinator. "I said that if they are not willing to tell me about it, or their parents, should they really be doing this?"

Santos, an 18-year-old Centennial High School graduate, was pulled from Lake Manzanita on the UNR campus early Thursday morning. Santos was pledging for Pi Kappa Alpha when he and a group of other men stripped down to their underwear and dove into the lake. His body was found by divers seven feet below water.

UNR campus police are investigating whether the incident was hazing.

Mike Gonzales, deputy coroner for Washoe County in Reno, said the department is ruling last Santos' death an accidental drowning -- Santos was not a good swimmer, according to people information gathered by the coroner's office.

Santos and members of his fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha were believed to be participating in an initiation ritual at the time.

"For members it was kind of a ritual that they did," Gonzales said. "That is just based on what the fraternity members said at the time of the accident. Whether it was hazing is for the police to determine."

UNR campus police are expected to wrap up their investigation of Santos' death sometime this week. So far, they have interviewed 26 students, said UNR police Lt. Todd Renwick.

"It's safe to say that it was a common practice among all fraternities to jump in the lake and get their hair wet," Renwick said. "We don't think they were all told or threatened they had to be there."

University administrators are now looking to step up preventative education as a way to avert such incidents.

State Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said she believes the drowning was due to hazing and urged officials to take a no-tolerance approach.

"It's terrible that we had this (anti-hazing) policy that the administration and students signed off on, and now, obviously they just considered it symbolic rather than a priority," Titus said. "Maybe we need to have campuses develop a policy that has an aggressive approach to monitoring this type of behavior."

Titus is credited with pushing legislation in 1999 that made hazing illegal in Nevada.

UNR temporarily suspended the fraternity's recognition pending a review.

Attempts to contact Pi Kappa Alpha members were not successful.

Whitney said UNR officials have tried to educate students about the dangers of alcohol and hazing by handing out leaflets during rush week. Now the school is considering adopting some of the practices used at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

UNLV currently has a system in which all new members pledging for a Greek organization must attend Greek convocation night -- or "Greek 101." The seminar lays down the rules of fraternity and sorority behavior.

New members are taught alcohol awareness and are expected to know what hazing is.

Santos had been drinking that night but the amount of alcohol in his system found in a coroner's toxicology screening probably "did not have too much of an effect on him," Gonzales said.

He had a blood alcohol level of 0.062. Someone is considered legally drunk with a blood alcohol level of 0.1 or higher.

"That's a pretty low level," Gonzales said. "I would guess that (alcohol) did not have too much of an effect on him.

"From what we heard he wasn't a very strong swimmer. That probably has more to do with it than the level of alcohol in his system."

While hazing usually brings to mind behavior such as paddling or drinking excessively , it can be as simple as requiring a new recruit to participate in an event or action that he or she is not comfortable with.

Whitney said he wants to put a plan in place that would bring new pledges together at UNR for an educational seminar on alcohol use, hazing and risk assessment.

"We were planning to start this, and this just tells us we need to start even more," Whitney said. With 30 percent of UNR's freshman class coming from Southern Nevada this year, parents are concerned, Regent Steve Sisolak said.

"I've had parents calling me wondering if this is the place to send their kids," Sisolak said. "They assumed we had more safeguards in place. When you send your kid away to college, this is absolutely the last thing you think will happen."