CCU Fraternity Allegedly Shoots New Recruits with BBs, Forced to Drink Bong Water, Report Says
CCU Suspends Alpha Chi Rho Fraternity
In Conway, S.C, fresh details have emerged revealing the reasons behind a five-year ban imposed on a fraternity at Coastal Carolina University (CCU). According to documents retrieved under the Freedom of Information Act, the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity chapter at CCU was suspended in January 2024 due to alleged severe hazing violations.
The Alpha Chi Rho fraternity, one of the newest additions to the university’s fraternity circles, reportedly hazed its new members off-campus in 2022. This incident, confirmed through an email from CCU Director of Communication Jerry Rashid, came to light in university circles by March of the following year.
Inside the Fraternity Hazing Investigation
According to the exhaustive investigation, which employed a series of interviews conducted by an impartial, third-party investigator, new recruits were subjected to a range of demeaning hazing rituals. These included being lined up to play “the name game”, a ritual that required new members to recite the names and majors of all the fraternity’s members while sitting in a circle. If any name was forgotten or mistaken, the erring recruit was doused in water or had an egg smashed on their head.
Escalating Hazing Rituals
A witness reported that the initiations escalated in severity over the semester, graduating to the new members being forced to consume bong water, eat dirt-coated butter, and endure being shot at close range with BB guns in the stomach and back.
Additional rituals alleged in the report include locking recruits in a room and forcing them to separate colored sprinkles in the dark, extinguishing cigarettes on the pledges, and compelling them to memorise specific information under extreme circumstances, like sleeping in an attic with no phones.
In a particularly chilling account, a member’s girlfriend revealed that her boyfriend had to seek hospital treatment after enduring a BB gun initiation. “There were welts all over his body, everywhere. Big, red bruises and markings all on his skull. Some on the back of his neck. On his spine, there were four or five down the area of his spine. There were many on his ribs and his chest,” she reported.
CCU and its Stand on Hazing
The reports of hazing in the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity chapter have raised severe concerns about such practices in fraternities at CCU and universities nationwide. The university has traditionally taken a firm stand against hazing, and actions like the suspension of the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity chapter serve to underline their commitment to student safety. Eight fraternities and sororities at Coastal Carolina University have been accused of hazing violations since 2013, data compiled from the Tucker Hipps Transparency Act report revealed.
Echoing this, the representatives of the university stated, “We do not condone the actions of Alpha Chi Rho fraternity. We take hazing allegations very seriously“.
