A Murder on Campus
Last February 6, 21-year-old Nick Armstrong pledged Tau Kappa Epsilon at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. After the traditional bid-night party, he fell asleep on a couch at the fraternity house. He never woke up.
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That night, students’ attitudes started to change. "I stood out by the stallions on the Quad during the candlelight vigil that week," Lanita Hanson, the director of student activities, told me in September. "The students had to have someplace to gather to mourn together. I watched kids’ lives change that night. I saw them realize that life is short. Absolutely, in no way, should we ever look at Nick’s death as being in vain." The murder had a galvanizing effect on the school, bringing the students together in a desire to change the campus culture and bolstering the administration’s position that the Greek system needed to be revamped. The fraternities were left with little choice but to comply.
Throughout the student body, it didn’t take long for the discussion to shift from the sensational murder to the subject of fraternities and alcohol. The Daily University Star ran letters and editorials both attacking and defending the fraternities, looking for some way to assign blame or make sense of Nick’s death. "I have been attentive to the dialogue that has been going on since this tragedy happened," one editorial proclaimed. "What I have heard and observed sickens me. There are those who are genuinely grieving and miss that young man. Then there are those who are upset because they see the terrible injustice done to them by having their privileges removed. Let me tell you, if it were up to me, disbanding those organizations and not merely suspending privileges would be the order of the day."
The paper quoted another student as saying, "I don’t think all the fraternities should have been suspended . . . they shouldn’t be held accountable for something that could have happened anywhere."
The student body was engaging in a debate as a way of dealing emotionally and rationally with the murder. Key issues that went straight to the heart of the school’s identity—party school or ivory tower—came up repeatedly in the discussion: "All this makes Southwest look bad. Now we live up to our party school image, and the media is making it worse," one student told the paper.
Hanson, a well-spoken and energetic woman who spends most of her workdays interacting with students, had been at the school for only about six months when Nick Armstrong was killed. Having held similar jobs at Texas A&M and other colleges, she has an intimate understanding of the fraternity mentality. Not unlike a camp counselor, she deals with the Greeks in a no-nonsense manner and seems to have a certain affection for them. When it was announced that the fraternities were suspended and, months later, that their houses were to become alcohol-free, Hanson was in a good position to assess the situation. "They [the Greeks] are the most educated people on our campus about risk management because they get it all the time," she told me. (The school expects fraternity members to undergo training in how to minimize the risks associated with drinking.) "So the implementation of risk management is where we’re really hoping they’ll step up. And that’s where the leadership skills come in: Is the chapter just hearing it or are they actually doing it?"
After Nick died, the TKEs were subject to intense scrutiny by the media, the administration, and their fellow students. They abandoned their house as though it were haunted. "The whole last semester was a time of soul-searching," Jon English, then the fraternity’s president, told me. "We asked ourselves, What are we doing? What are we here for? After the murder happened we had two choices: We could either disappear or get together and make something good happen for it."
During rush week at Southwest Texas, the fraternities check out the prospective pledges and make presentations to them describing fraternity life and what it means to be a Sigma Nu or a Pi Kappa Alpha or whatever. The rushees, of course, want to be invited to join the fraternity they think is best, while the fraternity wants the pledges who best fit its profile (for example, some fraternities are known for valuing brains, others brawn or wealth). Rush is climaxed by a high-energy event called Steps, in which the fraternity and sorority rushees—who have earlier received invitations from one or more groups—assemble backstage at the school’s Evans Auditorium and, one by one, step up to a microphone onstage and announce their choice of affiliation. A raucous audience of fraternity and sorority members cheers the new pledges. In the past, building on the frenzy of Steps, the Greeks would then throw themselves into alcohol-fueled bid-night parties.
Last spring, all of this happened on the same day. That was changed for this fall’s rush: To keep the emotions of the rushees and the fraternity and sorority members in check, Steps was held in the middle of the week following rush, and the bid-night parties were delayed until the weekend. The day Nick Armstrong was killed had been intense, a series of highs and lows for the young pledges culminating in big blowouts. The rapidity of the rush process explained why none of Nick’s fraternity brothers seemed to know him well—they had only been around him a week. It also might explain why Nick hadn’t told his mother that he was joining a fraternity. He may not have wanted her to know until he knew the outcome of rush.
This past fall, the TKEs had expected rush to be a sad affair. Given the ignominy they had suffered the previous semester, they were prepared to take only a handful of pledges. But to everyone’s surprise, even shock, they pledged thirty young men, more than any other fraternity on campus. "The whole accreditation process that [the fraternities] went through caused them to spend time assessing who they were and what they really wanted out of their experience, and that’s what we wanted every fraternity to do," said Lanita Hanson. "But I think the TKEs really understood the value of the fraternal experience more poignantly after experiencing the death of Nick."
According to Jon English, there was a new kind of student looking to join the fraternity: "We used to have rush and these kids would figure they could drink and go to parties whenever they wanted. Now they’re looking for brotherhood, and they want leadership skills and connections after they graduate. That’s what they’re looking for, and it’s kind of weird, because I didn’t look for that when I rushed."
One of their new pledges, sophomore Jacob Canonaco from Dallas, explained that it was the sincerity of the TKE presentation that made him want to join. Canonaco, who calls the TKEs "the biggest leaders I ever met," said that he wants to be active at Southwest Texas as a campus leader: "I want to be known on campus, and I want to evolve into a better person."
The new face of TKE and other fraternities isn’t really new. The upstanding image is more in line with the ideals of their charters, vice president Studer told me: "The reason we have fraternities on our campus is that they have some ideals that are pretty good: scholarship, leadership, community service, social. They had been basing it purely around social."
The socializing hasn’t given way entirely to high-minded goals of service and leadership. On September 10 the TKEs, two other fraternities, and three sororities threw a bid-night party for their newest members. Although the alcohol ban would not be enforced for another year, the bash was voluntarily held off campus, at an arena in the little town of Redwood, about eight miles from San Marcos.
As the party began to heat up, a huge Southwest Texas shuttle bus arrived, literally rocking back and forth from the chanting and shaking of the young men and women stuffed inside it. When the door opened, men in jeans, polo shirts, and brown ankle boots and women in short shorts or short skirts spilled out. Many of them were clutching beers as they headed to the front door of the Redwood arena and under a handwritten sign proclaiming that "you must be over 21 to drink." Hanging around outside were several beefy Guadalupe County sheriff’s deputies, who were moonlighting at the party.
Another bus full of excited Greeks pulled up; meanwhile, the number of cars in the parking lot had begun to grow. It seemed responsible that the fraternities would hire buses to take students to the party, but what about those who had driven themselves? For a couple of miles, the road from San Marcos to Redwood is dark and winding, with several sharp S curves. Was there any way they would be sober at the end of the night? Indeed, there are those who fear that the school’s new alcohol policy, in pushing people farther off campus, will result in their having to drive more after drinking. But vice president Studer, for one, doesn’t seem worried. "At a [fraternity house] party with several hundred people, lots of them were driving already," he told me.
When I tried to get into the party, I was stopped by a puffy-faced fraternity member who was working the door. He knew I was a reporter. "Every time we talk to the media, they make us look bad," he said. "Now why don’t you just turn around and leave." Outside, the deputies shrugged. They were jawing amiably with some frat boys, who were teasing the older men about leering at the scantily clad coeds. "You’re jealous of us, aren’t you?" one of the boys asked the cops. I wondered if Nick Armstrong would have said something like that.
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