Posted on 11/23/2025 5:16:31 AM PST by C19fan
A University of Texas freshman took his own life after months of 'demeaning and cruel hazing' which saw him burned with cigarettes and beaten, a lawsuit claims.
Sawyer Lee Updike was allegedly 'speared with a fishhook' during an alcohol-fueled event and had his hip pierced with a staple gun, according to the filing from his parents. The lawsuit also alleges that he was forced to take cocaine.
Updike, 18, died alone in a convenience-store parking lot just months after joining UT Austin's Sigma Chi's Alpha Nu.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I am a Sigma Chi.
It was never Catholic fraternity.
Though it is Christian based. It’s founded on the principles of Emperor Constantine seeing a cross in the sky before battle.
In Hoc Signo Vinces
Did you debrotherize in the end?
*******
I personally know people that have depledged once they found out how stupid the “greek” thingy was.
The whole college system is a huge waste of time, energy, and money.
My good friend who became a Presbyterian minister was a Sigma Chi at Wake forest.
How about charging the perps with murder?
as written by a poorly educated person who did not get formally educated beyond highschool
They were around in the university I attended in 1989 but I was not the fraternity type at all. Preferred to focus on my studies, playing hockey, and working out at the sportsplex on campus. There was a Sigma Chi chapter there and if you got through their pledge/initiation process, the membership was for about 2 or 3 thousand, so that was another reason for me to have no interest in joining one.
I recall reading a story a number of years ago about somewhere in the U.S., a frat pledge was ordered into the trunk of a car and told to drink all of the alcoholic beverages in the trunk before being allowed out. He ended up drinking himself to death and this is for me an example of how having the drinking age at 21 is a veritable disaster as it does not really teach youngsters about safe and responsible drinking habits.
Not sufficient for ongoing abuse. Could simply have gone to police, had girlfriend go home with him, or whatever.
If true the fraternity should be banned…
I am a Sigma Chi and I agree with you.
Maybe I was just in a good chapter. Maybe most are good and occasionally a bad one pops up. Maybe a lot of the claims made about this one are not true or twisted.
But back in the day, our initiation was by the book and was glorious. Amazing. Like being given a final piece of a puzzle that makes you finally see the big picture.
The only comparison I can make is like being Born Again, just on a smaller scale.
Yea, I was hazed (by today’s standards), yelled at, forced to drink a bit, required to clean the floor after a party or two, made to memorize a tom of information including details about every brother.
But it was worth it.
I was never in the military but I got my boot camp. I grew up more in that six months than any other time in my life. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
This chapter has possibly run off the rails. What is described is not the building of brotherhood that I knew from 50 years ago. It is Lord of the Flies, not Signa Chi.
The question is, why did this young man submit to this? Why did he not react to such outrageous attacks?
He could have left. He could have done anything other than submit.
Money? Future prospects? A career? Contacts? Apparently integrity, a conscience and an intact ego are lacking, especially in this sadist group of young men.
Sorry the kid chose this, but didn’t his parents teach him any common sense or how not to have a need to join, or be around stupid or evil influenced people?
Sigma Chi - I believe their pin is in the shape of a cross.
Regardiing hazing: I believe a bit of hazing is worthwhile. I went through “Hell Week” back when it really was a WEEK.
The brothers made us clean, scrub and wax the fraternity house. We pledges got no sleep, had to do pushups, situps, etc everytime we saw a Brother. At the end there was a ritual and we got to understand the value of unity with one another.
Even today, when I see a brother, I know that he has gone through the same initiation as I and I respect and love him for that.
But these UT Sigma Chis seem to have gone over the deep end. You DON’T do physical harm to a pledge.
If you’re referring to me I have a doctorate in engineering. My argument is university should be drastically reformed. Far too much time is spent on subjects that have nothing to do with your major but simply rehash what was taught in high school.
A physician I know went to Princeton and she said it was mostly “fluff”. That’s an excellent way to describe what many experienced.
I do not understand the “frat hazing” mentality.
You have to suffer to be part of a club? No thanks.
is it?
I was raised Catholic, and when I hear Christian, I hear born again.
I am genuinely curious, not arguing your point, to be clear.
A desire for acceptance? Freshman? On his own for probably the first time? It can be a rough go for some kids. Heartbreaking.
Strangest part of the story is that the guy was already initiated.
He was a brother.
I have never seen or heard of a brother hazing another brother.
I don’t think that even counts!
Guys can play some rough games on each other.
But that is not hazing.
“The question is, why did this young man submit to this? Why did he not react to such outrageous attacks?”
Groupthink is a powerful thing. This is nothing new.
Why did so many people willingly participate in excoriating those who saw through the garbage and refused to wear a mask and gloves and who did not submit to a potentially dangerous unproven injection?
Why did so many in the late 30’s and early 40’s stand idly by as the trains left for the ovens?
It is no big mystery. It is the “everyone else is doing it” fallacy.
Fraternity hazing should be something you look back on with humor or fondness after you endure it as a new recruit (a “pledge”). It should be for bonding with other pledges and somehow constructive.
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