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Old 01-24-2003, 04:50 AM
pinkpixie pinkpixie is offline
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Unhappy http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2003/January/23/local/stories/03local.htm

January 23, 2003

UCSC students involved in fatal frat brawl
By NICOLE STRICKER and HEATHER BOERNER
Sentinel STAFF WRITERS

SAN JOSE — An early-morning brawl between rival San Jose State University fraternities left one man dead and four injured Wednesday.

Several UC Santa Cruz fraternity members joined the melee, according to San Jose police Sgt. Steve Dixon. None of the injured were from UCSC, campus spokeswoman Liz Irwin said.

Alam Kim, 23, of Los Altos died of stab wounds at 12:49 a.m., according to the Santa Clara County coroner.

Kim, whose birthday was Wednesday, was a student at San Jose State in fall 2002 but was not registered this term, said a spokesman at the registrar’s office.

The fight started at a San Jose pool hall Monday night and escalated by midnight Tuesday to a brawl at Flickinger Park in northeast San Jose, police said. Thirty to 60 members of the San Jose State University chapters of Pi Alpha Phi and Lambda Phi Epsilon were involved, Dixon said. When police arrived, they found men fighting with knives, tire irons and clubs.

"Quite honestly, except for the lack of the tattoos, this is a gang fight," Dixon said.

"Instead of gang members, it’s frat members."

Kim and three others were stabbed and one suffered a blow to the head. Wednesday afternoon, a 25-year-old man was in serious condition at San Jose Medical Center’s Intensive Care Unit. The other injured men were treated and released.

Police detained "20 some-odd" men but no one had been charged in connection with the stabbing by Wednesday night.

Dixon said it’s still not clear what started the pool-hall dispute.

"They decided to get together and resolve their differences," he said. "It’s unlikely they were going to talk it out — you sit down in a restaurant to do that. These guys were meeting at midnight in a park."

Both Pi Alpha Phi and Lambda Phi Epsilon claim to be the first Asian-American interest fraternities in the nation.

According to their local Web sites, Pi Alpha Phi was founded in 1926 at UC Berkeley and established a UCSC chapter in 1995.

Lambda Phi Epsilon was founded in 1981 at UC Los Angeles, the UCSC chapter began in 1992.

The UCSC students who may have been involved were members of Pi Alpha Phi, Dixon said. It was unclear how many UCSC students were at the park and whether they were involved in the stabbing. They likely were recruited by their fraternity brothers at San Jose State, Dixon said.

UCSC Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood said, "Clearly, this is a tragic situation, one that deeply saddens all of us who are dedicated to education and the success of promising young people.

"Whether our students had a substantive role — or any role — I want to emphasize that such violent behavior is completely intolerable," Greenwood said. "Should our investigations discover that any of our students were engaged in illegal activity or have violated campus policies, we will implement the student judiciary process and determine appropriate consequences."

Students at UCSC were tightlipped about the incident Wednesday, and no one from the campus Pi Alpha Phi chapter responded to requests for interviews. Students in other Asian-American groups also declined to comment. Students at the Maxine Hong Kingston-Jenny Lim Asian theme dorm at Oakes College declined to answer questions about the incident as well.

One student at the UCSC Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center, who declined to give his name, said his group was still trying to figure out if any UCSC students were involved, if so, how many and whether any of the rumors they were hearing were true.

"It’s definitely been a random day," he said.

Rumors spread quickly through campus Wednesday that Asian American student organizations had postponed their yearly receptions because of the incident. The resource center representative said that some events were postponed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday but he wasn’t aware of anything being postponed because of the brawl.

Likewise, it was difficult to get information about the fraternity itself, Pi Alpha Phi. It was started in 1927 at UC Berkeley, but the founding fraternity had no phone number listed, and soon after 1 p.m., the server on which the group’s Web site was posted shut down. Likewise for the national chapter of Lambda Phi Epsilon, whose Web site shut down around the same time.

As of fall quarter, there were 22 members of Pi Alpha Phi at UCSC, said Irwin.

Though Greek organizations are relatively new to the UCSC campus, they have a history of community service, Irwin said, noting that brawls like the one Wednesday are unusual.

"It’s completely unacceptable, and a real shame for a few to do so much to dispel a fine reputation," she said.

Dixon agreed.

"It’s very rare," he said. "I can’t remember something like this in 20 years."

UCSC is in the process of creating a campuswide Greek council, which will oversee the university’s fraternities and sororities.

Delia Rou, a graduate student and coordinator of the forming council, said neither she nor anyone else in UCSC’s Greek system would comment on the incident until the San Jose Police Department issued a statement.

If the university determines a UCSC student was involved in the fight, they would be investigated by the UCSC Student Judiciary Association, and they could be suspended or expelled, Irwin said.

It’s unclear whether any disciplinary action would be taken against the fraternity itself if UCSC students were involved in the fight.

Contact Nicole Stricker at

nstricker@santa-cruz.com.

Contact Heather Boerner at

hboerner@santa-cruz.com.