Keene State’s Office of Community Standards found the Zeta Xi chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi (Alpha Sig) responsible for hazing and alcohol violations and handed down sanctions, including college probation effective until Dec. 13, 2025.
The college’s student code of conduct defines college probation as restricting or altering “the relationship between a Responding Party and Keene State College placing the Responding Party out of good standing with the College.”
According to the negotiated agreement created between the chapter and community standards, other sanctions against the chapter include:
- completion of social host training for all members who have not attended a previous session
- completion of an online hazing module titled “Responsible Sig” provided by the fraternity’s national headquarters
- restricting social events to one organization or allowing each brother to invite only two to three students.
Hazing
The hazing violation occurred during the chapter’s Big/Little reveal event on February 22, 2024, at the house at 22 Blake Street associated with the fraternity, according to an incident report by Director of Campus Safety and Compliance Chris Buckley. The Big/Little event is one in which new pledges (“Littles”) are assigned older members (“Bigs”) of the fraternity as mentors.
During the Big/Little reveal night, Alpha Sig brothers performed a ritual where pledges were led by fraternity brothers wearing dark cloaks to the dimly lit fraternity house living room and were told to pass a candle around in a circle, according to the incident report. Loud music was playing, which one of the pledges described as “spiritual,” resembling the soundtrack to the video game “Halo.”
From the incident report: “[Redacted] was asked if the music was being played extremely loud so that pledges can’t hear what’s happening downstairs. [Redacted], ‘Yes.’”
The cloaks partially covered some of the brothers’ faces, according to the report.
“‘It’s a cohesive look. They recommend we wear them at our formal chapters too,’” one interviewee from the report was quoted as saying. “‘It’s one of those things that has been in the book and we’ve been doing it. I enjoy the robes for the purpose of multiple times. We harken back to the unbroken chain of brothers, which is where the robes truly are put to the most metaphorical use. Where we will cover our face, and in that moment, we are supposed to represent Alpha Sigs from the founders to the newest pledge class.’”
Pledges were told to be silent and were then called one at a time to a dark room in the house’s basement. 13 or 14 pledges ended up in the room together by the end of the ritual.
One of the pledges said in the incident report he was yelled at by one of the brothers for being on his phone during the ritual. Several other interviewees from the report described it as “[raising] his voice” or “sternly and loudly talking to someone.”
Several brothers interviewed during the investigation were asked if the factors of the ritual such as the darkness, the single red light, the music, the stern talking or the cloaks could cause emotional strain to someone.
“We hadn’t ever had anyone have react [sic] that way to the robes and things like that before,” said one. “I guess we just didn’t know that that was something that would affect someone that way.”
“Yes. I guess I didn’t think of it that way, but it probably, since they don’t know that we’re not going to hurt them, that I guess they could be under the impression of a moment like that, that we would maybe try to physically harm them,” another said.
One interviewee was asked if he was ever forced to drink excessively.
“No. It was never physical,” he said. “Nothing was ever physical.”
Former Student Center Programs Coordinator and Advisor to the Interfraternity Council (IFC) Brandon Carta said in an interview with The Equinox that he had been informed the chapter was going to do a ritual with the new pledges, but not the full extent of the activity.
“It was proposed to us like one at a time, members are brought into a room and then they stand in a circle and the brother [is] blowing a candle as it’s passed around … It doesn’t sound bad,” Carta said. “What they didn’t tell us was that people were kept in a weird side room in their basement in the dark.”
Carta said one of the pledges in particular was impacted negatively by the event. The student came forward about the experience about two weeks later.
On March 7, Carta submitted a report of hazing in the chapter.
Alcohol
The case was referred to Campus Safety, at which point Buckley began investigating the claims of hazing. He conducted five interviews during the investigation, according to the incident report.
Buckley expressed in an interview with The Equinox his sympathy for those he spoke with during his investigation.
“I don’t know what these people [interviewees] are going to say most of the time,” Buckley said. “Coming to the Campus Safety Office is probably stressful for many people.”
He added hazing is largely normalized in college culture and that he thinks many want to see that change.
“I don’t see the educational value in putting someone in a dark room,” Buckley said.
In addition to the topic of hazing, interviewees responded to inquiries about alcohol at events that took place at the fraternity house, with one interviewee saying brothers checked both school and state identification before letting any person into an event, while another interviewee said he was able to attend after showing only his Owl Card ID.
“We are not, I guess, trained to identify fake identification,” said one interviewee.
An interviewee also said the chapter does not allow drinks with over 13% alcohol at events.
“We prefer people to bring canned beverages to our events,” he said. “Brothers of age only consume beer at the house. That’s how we try to control it.”
City code
Keene Police Department was dispatched to fraternity events multiple times over the course of the 2023/24 academic year in response to noise complaints, with three of those instances leading community standards to find Alpha Sig responsible for city code violations.
According to a March 25 negotiated agreement between community standards and the chapter, Noise Ordinance Citations were issued Aug. 26, 2023; Sept. 3, 2023 and Jan. 28, 2024.
After the September citation, then-chapter President Harry Biedermann met with Assistant Dean of Students Kat Dougherty on Oct. 17, 2023, according to an Oct. 24 negotiated agreement. The agreement between the two parties consisted of an official warning issued to the chapter. The chapter also agreed to have 70 percent of its members attend social hosting training in keeping with a Gold-level accreditation.
“Should you choose to violate the Code of Conduct in the future, you will be subject to more severe disciplinary action,” the agreement document read.
The Jan. 28 citation came in response to an event at the chapter’s off-campus property which gathered over 350 attendees, according to the March 25 negotiated agreement. Another meeting between Biedermann and Dougherty resulted from the citation.
Alpha Sig was placed on college probation from March 25 to October 1 as a result of its city code violations, according to the March 25 negotiated agreement. Community standards took all three violations into account when handing down the probation.
All in one
Biedermann and Dougherty met again on April 30, about a month after the completion of Director of Campus Safety and Compliance Chris Buckley’s investigation of the hazing report.
With all the violations over the academic year, a new agreement was reached, resulting in the chapter’s current probation, in effect from the day of the meeting to Dec. 13, 2025.
Dougherty said in an interview that Biedermann chose an extension of the probation period over an advancement to a higher level of sanctions such as deferred suspension.
“That’s part of the negotiated agreement process, and I, in that conversation, thought that that was appropriate and there was some good context from the leadership of the organization about why they thought that was a good idea, for them to be on a status for a longer period of time,” Dougherty said.
Former Student Center Programs Coordinator and Advisor to the IFC Brandon Carta said he was not present at any of the agreement meetings.
“[Biedermann] decided they didn’t want me there, which I think might have been a mistake for him because I probably would have advocated that that probation they got not be three semesters,” Carta said. “That’s a little long, in my opinion, for the very low-level things that happened. But [Biedermann] did a really good job of accepting responsibility for stuff and agreed to some good things that will help the organization move forward.”
Carta added he hoped Alpha Sig’s status as the largest fraternity chapter on campus would not lead them down a similar path as the college’s Lambda Sigma chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE), which is currently suspended until May 9, 2025.
“I don’t want them to keep getting little things and then eventually close,” Carta said. “What I am worried about is that they will be the group [with] everyone going into their house, they’re unable to control the size of their events and then they get in trouble again or make a mistake. And then that’s the end, which would be unfortunate.”
Junior and Alpha Sig’s Zeta Xi current Chapter President Ian Carter did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
